that He has entered into created things and that created things have contained and encompassed Him,’ then this is false. But if he says, ‘I mean that He is separate from created things and distinct from them,’ then this is true.

Likewise, when he says, ‘He is not spatially located,’ if he means that creation does not contain the Creator, he is correct. But if he says that the Creator is not distinct or separate from creation, he is mistaken.

Once this is understood, those who respond to his untenable argument—namely, ‘If I were to say that He spoke to him, speech can only consist of letters and sounds, and letters and sounds are temporally originated’—fall into three groups. One group rejects his first premise; another rejects his second premise; and a third rejects neither premise, but asks him to clarify his meaning and explains that this does not preclude Allah’s having truly spoken to Moses.

The first group comprises Abū Muhammad Abd Allāh ibn Sa‘īd ibn Kullāb, Abū al-Hasan ‘Alī ibn Ismā‘īl al-Ash‘arī, and their followers. They said: ‘We do not concede that speech can only consist of letters and sounds. Rather, speech is a meaning subsisting in the speaker’s essence, and letters and sounds express it.’ That meaning subsisting in Allah’s essence encompasses the command to do everything He has commanded and the information concerning everything He has communicated. If expressed in Syriac, it is the Gospel. They said that the term ‘speech’ applies to it literally. Thus, the term ‘speech’ would either have distinct literal senses, or be figurative when applied to the Creator’s speech and literal when applied to a creature’s speech.