And the other group, who agreed with Ibn Kullāb that Allah does not speak by His will and power, said:
“Rather, eternal speech consists of letters, or letters and sounds, inseparable from the Lord’s essence, without beginning or end. He does not speak them by His will and power, nor does He utter them successively.”
These people failed to distinguish between letters and speech as general categories and particular letters that are eternal and beginningless. This, too, is something that most rational people regard as self-evidently false. For letters that follow one another cannot each be eternal and beginningless, even if their kind is eternal. Words without end and successive letters without end are possible, but each individual letter cannot be eternal and beginningless, since whatever is preceded by something else cannot be beginningless.
Some of them distinguished between their existence and their essence, saying:
“The sequence pertains to their essence, not their existence.”
The falsity of this statement is self-evident to anyone who reflects upon it. For the essence of speech consisting of letters does not occur successively, whereas sound can only occur successively. It is therefore impossible for the existence of the particular essence to be beginningless and thereby precede it, although the distinction between the two is clear—if a distinction between them is assumed. These two considerations entail that their existence must also follow a successive order.
Some among them further claim that this eternal speech is the sounds heard from people reciting the Quran, the Torah and the Gospel, or some of these. This was more manifestly