a requirement that it be composed of discrete parts or admit of separation and division: if he says, “The Lord occupies space in this sense,” meaning that He is distinct from His creatures, he intends a sound meaning. Using this expression, however, is an innovation and introduces confusion, for the meaning he intends is not the linguistic meaning of “occupying space”; rather, it is a technical usage adopted by him and his group. Rational thinkers dispute this technical meaning, so the expression can convey a false meaning from which the Lord must be declared free. A person may not use an expression that conveys a false meaning to someone else, thereby leading that person to understand that false meaning, without explaining what he intends.

Indeed, consider these speculative theologians who mean by “that which occupies space” something composed of indivisible parts—that is, something that admits of division. When they say, “Every contingent being, or every originated being, or every created being, is either something that occupies space or something subsisting in what occupies space,” the great majority of rational thinkers disagree with this classification. No leading Muslim scholar has agreed with them on this classification: neither the Companions, nor those who follow them in goodness until the Day of Judgment, nor any other leading Muslim scholars.

How much more so, then, when one of them says, “Everything that exists either occupies space or subsists in something that occupies space,” intending by “that which occupies space” what these theologians intend! His statement is then further removed from revelation and reason than theirs. This is why their later thinkers demanded that they provide proof that these are the only possibilities. The error of these theologians is not on account of the intelligible substances posited by the philosophers, for the falsity of those has likewise been established by clear reason.