Third, if speech were nothing but meaning, there would be no difference between Allah’s speaking to Moses and His revealing to others, nor between His speaking from behind a veil and His speaking through revelation. For all prophets share in having knowledge of abstract meaning conveyed to their hearts.
For this reason, those who built upon this false premise said that someone who practices spiritual discipline may hear Allah’s speech just as Moses son of ʿImrān heard it, as mentioned in “al-Ihyā’” and similar works. Such people came to imagine that the inspirations they received were like Allah’s speaking to Moses son of ʿImrān.
The “philosophers” entered through this door, claiming that Allah’s speaking to Moses was merely an emanation flowing into his soul from the active intellect, and that “Allah’s speech” is nothing but the addresses that arise within souls, just as “angels” are the images produced by the imagination that arise within hearts. Such things may occur both in wakefulness and in sleep. Thus, they made Allah’s speaking to Moses son of ʿImrān something of the same kind as a person seeing his Lord in a dream while He speaks to him, and similar experiences. This necessarily follows from the position of anyone who makes Allah’s speech an abstract meaning. If this entailment is necessarily known to be false in the religion of Islam, then what it entails is known to be false.
Fourth, if speech consisted solely of meanings, the created being would be more perfect than the Creator. Just as we know that the living is more perfect than the dead, the knowledgeable more perfect than the ignorant, the capable more perfect than the incapable, and one who speaks more perfect than one who is mute, we also know that one who speaks with both meanings and letters is more perfect than one who speaks only with meanings, without letters. And since