The third position:

This is the position of Abū Muhammad ‘Abd Allāh ibn Sa‘īd ibn Kullāb al-Basrī and his followers, such as al-Qalānisī, Abū al-Hasan al-Ash‘arī, and others: Allah’s speech is a meaning subsisting in Allah’s essence. It is the command concerning everything Allah has commanded and the report concerning everything Allah has reported. If expressed in Arabic, it is the Quran; if expressed in Hebrew, it is the Torah; and if expressed in Syriac, it is the Gospel.

Command, prohibition, and report are not categories into which speech is divided. Rather, they are all relational attributes of it, just as a single person is described as Zayd’s son, ‘Amr’s paternal uncle, and Bakr’s maternal uncle.

Among those who hold this position, some say that it is a single meaning from all eternity, and that from all eternity it is command, prohibition, and report, as al-Ash‘arī maintains.

Others say that it only becomes command and prohibition when those who are commanded and prohibited come into existence.

Still others say that it consists of several meanings: command, prohibition, report, and inquiry.

People have pointed out to the proponents of this position that it commits them to treating knowledge, power, will, and life as one and the same thing. Their more exacting scholars have acknowledged the validity of this entailment.