And most rational people—both adherents of the Sunnah and adherents of religious innovation—hold that the falsity of this position is self-evident. Likewise, they consider it self-evidently false to claim that the sounds heard from human beings are eternal, or that a speaker speaks by virtue of speech subsisting in someone else, a knower knows by virtue of knowledge subsisting in someone else, or a powerful being possesses power by virtue of power subsisting in someone else.
Most rational people likewise consider it self-evidently false to claim that knowledge is power, that power is will, that knowledge is identical to the knower, or that power is identical to the possessor of power.
The fourth position:
This is the position of groups of speculative theologians and hadith scholars, including the Sālimiyya and others. They maintain that Allah’s speech consists of eternal, beginningless letters and sounds, which nevertheless have meanings subsisting in the speaker’s essence. They agree with the Ash‘arīs and Kullābīs that Allah’s speaking to His servants amounts merely to creating a perception of the speaker, rather than being something separate from the listener.
Most of them, however, do not maintain that those sounds are the ones heard from reciters; rather, they distinguish between the two. Among them is a group—the people of . . . (1)