Likewise, Allah Most High says in another verse:

“Those to whom We have given the Scripture know that it has been sent down from your Lord in truth.”

This speech is an attribute of Allah Most High. As for what subsists exclusively in us—our movements, voices, understanding, and other attributes—none of it subsists in Allah’s Essence, glorified is He. Likewise, whatever subsists exclusively in the Lord Most High does not pass from Him or subsist in anyone else, nor does anything like it.

When one created being hears another’s speech and conveys it on his behalf, what he conveys is the latter’s speech, as in the previously cited saying of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace:

“May Allah make radiant the face of one who hears a hadith from us and conveys it as he heard it.”

Yet what subsisted in the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace—inwardly, his knowledge, will, and so forth, and outwardly, his movements, voice, and so forth—did not pass from him or subsist in anyone else. Indeed, none of the attributes of created beings leaves their beings and passes from them. How, then, can it be said that an attribute of the Creator has left His Essence and passed from Him?

When a student acquires his teacher’s knowledge and transmits it from him, that knowledge does not leave the first person’s being and pass into the second. Rather, the same reality of knowledge comes to be present in him as in his teacher—or it is not identical to it, but resembles it. This is why knowledge is likened to the light of a lamp: everyone draws light from it, yet it remains undiminished. It is well known that when someone lights his lamp from another’s, no part of the substance of that flame, nor any of the attributes subsisting in it, passes into his lamp. Rather, through contact with the flame, Allah makes it a flame like the first.