This contradicts what is known by necessity from the religion of the Muslims. [This has been explained at length elsewhere] (1).

They further said:

“Had He not been speaking from eternity, He would necessarily have been characterized by the opposite of speech—silence or muteness (2).”

They further said (3):

“If His speech were created, then if He created it in a locus, it would be the speech of that locus; if He created it subsisting by itself, an attribute and accident would necessarily subsist by itself; and if He created it within Himself, He Himself would necessarily be a locus for created things. (4 And these three necessary consequences are false and disprove that it is created 4) (4), as has been explained at length (5) elsewhere.”

Once it had become established in their view that speech must inhere in the speaker, and they had agreed with the Mu'tazilites that temporal occurrences cannot inhere in the Pre-eternal One (6), these two principles necessarily entailed that speech is pre-eternal.

They said:

“Sounds cannot be pre-eternal, because a sound does not persist for two instants. The pre-eternal speech must therefore be a meaning without letter or sound. If that is so, it must be a single meaning, for if it exceeded one, it would have no determinate limit, and the existence of infinitely many meanings is impossible.”