say that He creates His servants’ actions and speech while also maintaining that His speech is created; hence this conclusion necessarily follows from their position. The “Muʿtazila,” however, do not say that Allah creates His servants’ actions, although the proof requires them to affirm this.

Another group said: “Rather, speech must subsist in the speaker, and His speech cannot be created in something other than Him. He speaks by His will and power, so His speech comes into existence after not having existed, since a beginningless succession of temporal events is impossible.” This is the position of the Karrāmiyya and others.

Some of these say: “All His speech is temporally originated (hādith), but not brought into being (muhdath).” Others say: “It is both temporally originated and brought into being.”

Many of those who hold without qualification that a beginningless succession of temporal events is impossible said: “Speech is inseparable from the Lord’s essence, just as life is. It does not depend on His will and power; rather, it is eternal, just as life is eternal. For if we said that it occurs by His power and will, it would necessarily be temporally originated. It would then have to be either created or subsist in the Lord’s essence. The latter would entail temporal events subsisting in Him, which would entail an infinite regress of temporal events, because whatever is capable of receiving something is never without either it or its opposite.”

They said: “An infinite regress of temporal events is impossible”—for the argument here proceeds from this premise.

Then, having affirmed the eternity of speech itself, they disagreed about it. One group said: