from those who agreed with them that it is uncreated: “It is beginningless.” They therefore agreed that it is beginningless without understanding what they were saying. Likewise, some people said, “It is uncreated,” meaning that it is not fabricated. This is something people have never disputed, just as they have never disputed that it is ancient in the sense of preceding other things.

The second position is that Allah speaks by His will and power, while His speech is uncreated. This is the position of the great majority of the people of Sunnah and rational inquiry, and of the leading authorities in Sunnah and hadith. Some of them, however, believed that Allah could not have spoken by His will in beginningless eternity, just as, in their view, He could not have done anything in beginningless eternity. They therefore committed themselves to saying that He spoke by His will after not having spoken, just as He acted after not having acted. This is the position of many scholars of speculative theology, hadith, and Sunnah.

As for the early generations and the leading authorities, they said that Allah speaks by His will and power, while His speech is nevertheless beginningless in kind—meaning that He has always spoken whenever He wills. Speech is an attribute of perfection: one who speaks is more perfect than one who does not speak; one who speaks by his will and power is more perfect than one who does not speak by his will and power; and one who has always spoken by his will and power is more perfect than one for whom speech becomes possible only after having been impossible—even supposing that this were possible. How much more so, then, if