the realities, whether he knew them or not; rather, he addressed the general public only with what they could imagine and what would benefit them.”

Thus, those speculative theologians who denied the divine attributes erred in matters of both revelation and reason. Their error became one of the chief reasons the philosophers gained the upper hand, for those eternalist philosophers assumed that there were only two positions on this question: the position of those theologians and their own. Having seen that the theologians’ position was false, they treated this as proof that their own position was correct. Yet the eternalist philosophers have no rational proof whatsoever for their claim that the celestial spheres are eternal. One of the principal causes of this was their failure to ascertain what Allah had sent His Messenger—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—to convey.

The thirteenth point is that misunderstanding this hadith stems from unfamiliarity with the texts of the Quran and Sunnah, and indeed with sound reason itself. This misunderstanding has plunged many speculative thinkers and their followers into bewilderment and misguidance, for they knew only two positions: that of the eternalists, who affirmed the eternity of the world, and that of the Jahmiyyah, who held that He had always been inactive, neither acting nor speaking by His power and will. They saw that the implications of each position entailed its falsity and inconsistency, and so remained bewildered, doubtful, and ignorant. This is the condition of countless people among them. Some expressly acknowledged this about themselves, as al-Rāzī and others did.

One of the principal causes of this was that they examined the true nature of the philosophers’ position and found that, according to it, the particular effect had always coexisted with its agent, from eternity and forever, and sound