and it is nothing but the servants’ voices reciting the Quran, so these must be beginningless. Then, upon examining the matter, they found themselves obliged to apply their claims consistently.

The same applies to “faith.” None of the early generations—neither Ahmad ibn Hanbal nor anyone else—ever said that any of the servants’ attributes was uncreated or beginningless. Nor did they describe the Quran as beginningless. Rather, they objected to unqualified assertions that the utterance of the Quran or faith was created. These people then understood “uncreated” to mean “beginningless.” They supposed that an objection to the unqualified assertion that something was created permitted one to say that it was uncreated and beginningless. Thus they said: The servant’s utterance and voice are beginningless, and his faith is beginningless. They then extended their claims consistently to the conclusions we have mentioned.

These matters have been discussed at length elsewhere, in detailed answers to several questions submitted by questioners. This is not the place for those discussions; the purpose here is to draw attention to what follows from this innovated premise.

Underlying all of this is the Jahmiyyah’s argument that bodies have a beginning: whatever is never free of newly occurring events must itself have a beginning. Thus, any being in whom speech subsists by his own choice or will, and who has always been thus, must have a beginning. This committed them to denying the Lord’s speech and action—indeed, to negating His very essence. Matters then culminated in treating created things as beginningless while negating the Lord’s beginningless attributes—indeed, His very essence. And Allah knows best.

Those who uphold this premise and affirm the “indivisible atom” say that the very entities present in the human body and elsewhere existed beforehand, and that their coming into existence cannot be known