the ear’s fluid, and the saltiness of seawater. This leads them to recognize wisdom in matters whose wisdom they do not know. If someone encounters a person highly accomplished in grammar, medicine, arithmetic, or jurisprudence, and knows that the person is more knowledgeable than he is in that field, then whenever he finds some of that person’s words difficult and does not understand them, he defers to his expertise.

How, then, could a servant not be obliged to submit what he does not know (1) of the wisdom of the Lord of the worlds to what he does know of it? His wisdom and mercy astound the intellects; His knowledge encompasses all things, and He has numbered everything precisely. He is the Most Merciful of the merciful, the Wisest of judges, and more merciful to His servants than a mother is to her child.

These matters have been discussed at length elsewhere. The purpose here is to draw attention to those who differ concerning the Book: each of them rejects the other’s position, although the discourse of each contains both truth and falsehood.

We have already mentioned two examples: one concerning names and rulings, as well as divine promise and threat; and another concerning revealed law and divine decree.

[On the Quran Being the Speech of Allah and Uncreated]

We shall mention a third example concerning the Quran. The leading scholars and the Salaf agreed that the Quran is the speech of Allah and is uncreated. Rather, He Himself spoke it by His power and will. None of them said that it was created, nor that it was beginningless.

Those who came after them divided into two positions. One group (2) says: “It is created; [Allah] created it in something other than Himself (3), and no speech subsists in Allah.”

They also say: “Speech is an attribute of action, not an attribute of essence.” By “action,” they mean something separate from the agent that does not subsist in him. Yet this is utterly inconceivable, and no speaker is known whose speech does not subsist in him.