And this is a distinction concerning individual created beings, and it is a valid one. Yet many people confuse the kind with the individual instance. Many have likewise been confused about speech, failing to distinguish between His speech being beginningless—in the sense that He has always spoken whenever He willed—and a particular utterance being beginningless. Similarly, they have failed to distinguish between a particular act being beginningless and the kind of action to which it belongs being beginningless. The celestial sphere, for example, originated: it is created and preceded by nonexistence, as is everything other than Him.

This is what the Quran, the Sunnah, and the transmitted reports indicate. It is also what sound rational arguments, free of specious doubts, demonstrate, as we have explained at length elsewhere, showing the agreement between sound reason and authentic revelation. Even if philosophers, speculative theologians, or others err concerning both or either of them, true statements known through reason or revelation corroborate rather than contradict one another. The Most High says:

“Those who bring the truth and affirm it—it is they who are the God-fearing.”

This follows His words:

“Who is more unjust than one who fabricates a lie against Allah or denies the truth when it comes to him?”

He praises only those who bring the truth and affirm the truth that comes to them. Such is the condition of someone who accepts nothing but the truth and does not reject the truth brought to him by others. Rather, he accepts it, neither setting the two against one another nor using either to reject the other,