is precisely what they condemned in those who said that the Quran is created. Those who said it was created said no more than this. Thus, they were bound to agree in substance with those who say that the Quran is created, even if they added a claim that has no basis in reality and contradicts both reason and revelation: the affirmation of a single meaning encompassing all the meanings of the Torah, the Gospel, and the Quran. Yet they said this only to escape positions they believed to be false. Their sole intention was to escape what they regarded as false, but they fell into positions whose implications likewise entail their falsity.

When this “second group” saw how these people responded, they said: “His speech consists of eternal, beginningless letters and sounds.” Others refuted them, saying: “Sounds are by their very nature mutually contrary, and two contraries cannot coexist. Yet the least that beginningless things require is that they coexist.” They also said to them: “Sounds necessarily entail movements, which in turn entail power and will. Thus, sounds can occur only through power and will, and whatever is such cannot be beginningless in its individual instances. The dispute, however, concerns whether it is beginningless in kind.”

They also said: “Sounds cannot, by their very nature, endure. Whatever cannot endure cannot be beginningless. Thus, sounds cannot be beginningless.”

“Others” said: “If that is so, then He speaks with letters and sounds that come into being through His will and power and subsist in His essence. But none of these can be beginningless, because things that come into being cannot be beginningless.” They believed that this position would save them from