and if truth and falsehood are combined, the truth must be affirmed and the falsehood invalidated.

If two people agree on a meaning but disagree over whether a particular term denotes it, that meaning should be expressed in wording whose intended sense they both accept. Whichever of them accords with established linguistic usage is closer to the truth. An example is their dispute over the term “composite”: does it include an entity described by attributes inhering in it? Likewise, concerning the term “body,” does it denote in ordinary language a composite entity, a corporeal body, or something similar?

As for the expression “spatially located,” linguistically it designates something that moves to join something else, as Allah Most High says:

“Whoever turns his back to them that day—except when maneuvering for battle or withdrawing to join another force”

[Surah al-Anfāl: 16].

Such a thing must necessarily be encompassed by an actually existing spatial domain and must move from one spatial domain to another. It is well known that the Creator—majestic is His glory—is not encompassed by any of His creatures. He is therefore not spatially located in this linguistic sense.

As for the speculative theologians, their technical use of “spatially located” is broader than this. They regard every body as spatially located, and for them a body is anything that can be pointed to. Thus, according to their terminology, the heavens, the earth, and whatever lies between them(1) are spatially located, even though linguistic usage does not describe them as such.

By “spatial domain,” they sometimes mean something existent and at other times something nonexistent. They distinguish between the referent of “spatial domain” and that of “place,” saying that a place is something existent(2), whereas a spatial domain, for them, is a hypothetical place. Consequently, the totality of bodies is not within anything existent and thus is not in a place, although according to them it is spatially located. Among them are those who