Likewise, careful consideration of the arguments advanced by those who say that the Quran is created shows that they support only the position of the early generations and the leading scholars.

As for the first point: those who maintain that speech is eternal rely principally on two rational arguments. These are the arguments relied upon by al-Ash‘arī and his followers, and by those who agreed with them, such as al-Qādī Abū Ya‘lā, Abū al-Hasan ibn al-Zāghūnī, and others like them. They are, in fact, the principal rational arguments of leading speculative theologians such as Ibn Kullāb, al-Ash‘arī, al-Qalānisī, and their like. They are also the mainstay of those who, in foundational matters such as this question and others like it, rely exclusively on rational arguments, such as Abū al-Ma‘ālī and his followers.

The first argument is that, if speech were not eternal, He would necessarily have been characterized from eternity by one of its opposites: either silence or muteness. If either of these were eternal, it could never cease, and He could never speak throughout the eternity to come. Since it is established that He speaks in beginningless eternity, it follows that He has always been speaking. Furthermore, muteness is a defect from which Allah is free.

The second argument is that, if speech were created, He would have created it either within Himself, within something other than Himself, or as something subsisting independently. The first is impossible, because it would entail His being a locus for temporally originated events. The second is invalid, because it would entail that the speech belonged to the locus in which it was created. The third is invalid, because speech is an attribute, and an attribute cannot subsist independently. Since all three possibilities are invalid, it necessarily follows that speech is eternal.

The response is: as for the first argument, it supports the position of the early generations—that He has always been speaking