There are two [well-known] positions. The first (1) is the position of the Salaf and the majority, while the second is the position of Ibn Kullāb and those who followed him (2).

The followers of Ibn Kullāb then disagreed as to whether the beginningless speech that is not subject to His will (* and power is a meaning subsisting [in His Essence] (3), letters (4), or beginningless letters and sounds. There are two positions on this, [as has been explained at length in its proper place] (5).

That being so, according to those who maintain that it is not subject to His will, it is impossible for anything other than *) (6) that with which He is characterized to subsist in Him. In their view, truthfulness is knowledge or a meaning necessarily entailed by knowledge (7). It is well known that His knowledge is a necessary concomitant of His Essence, and that the necessary concomitants of knowledge are necessary concomitants of His Essence. Truthfulness is therefore a necessary concomitant of His Essence (8), making it impossible for Him to be characterized by its opposite. Indeed, regarding a necessary concomitant of the beginningless Essence, which is necessary in itself, it is impossible (9) for that concomitant not to exist, just as it is impossible for the Essence itself not to exist, for the absence of a necessary concomitant entails the absence of that of which it is a concomitant.

Moreover, truthfulness and falsehood are then analogous to sight and blindness, hearing and deafness, and speech and muteness. Just as He must be characterized by sight rather than blindness, hearing rather than deafness, and speech rather than muteness (10), He must likewise be characterized (11) by truthfulness rather than falsehood.