from the earth who can raise the dead?”

“Had there been gods other than Allah in the heavens and the earth, both would have fallen into ruin. Glory be to Allah, Lord of the Throne, far above what they attribute to Him!”

He also said:

“They say, ‘The Most Merciful has taken a child.’ Glory be to Him! Rather, they are honoured servants.”

“They do not speak before He speaks, and they act by His command.”

“He knows what is before them and what is behind them. They intercede only for those with whom He is pleased, and they stand in awe of Him.”

It is well known that those who fabricated sons and daughters for Him without knowledge, those who said, “Allah has begotten”—and they are surely liars—and those who said, “The Messiah is the son of Allah” and “Ezra is the son of Allah”: the rational among them did not mean physical birth of the kind found among animals, whereby a portion separates from the male and enters the female, from which offspring is formed.

The Christians and the Sabians agree in denying this. Likewise, I do not think that the rational among the Arab polytheists believed this. Rather, they described an intellectual, spiritual begetting, as when the Christians say that the substance which is God in one respect and the Word in another clothed itself in a human being created from Mary. Thus, they say that divinity clothed itself in humanity. Its outward aspect—the armour and the shirt—is human, while its inward aspect—the one wearing that armour—is divine: it is the Son, who is the Word, because it is begotten of the Father, who is the substance of being.

In their view, this sonship rests upon two principles:

First: the substance which is the Word is begotten of the substance which is the Father, just as knowledge and speech arise from one who knows and speaks.