The Uncreated Qur’an: Divine Speech, Wording, Meaning and Attribution

1. The uncreated Qur’an: defining the claim

الْقُرْآنُ غَيْرُ مَخْلُوقٍ
The Qur’an is uncreated.

In the classical Sunni argument, this assertion primarily affirms that God’s true attribute of speech is eternal and uncreated. It does not make the reader’s tongue, voice, ink, paper or act of writing eternal. “Qur’an” may denote divine speech and may also be applied to the recited and written expression indicating it.

The first analytical question is therefore the subject of the predicate “uncreated” or “originated”: is it the attribute subsisting in God, or a created person’s act of expressing that speech? Confusing the two generates apparent contradictions.

2. Two referents of the name “Qur’an”

وَالْقُرْآنُ كَلَامُ اللَّهِ تَعَالَى غَيْرُ مَخْلُوقٍ
The Qur’an is God’s speech and is uncreated.

The name Qur’an is applied to eternal inner speech with respect to the divine attribute, while the Arabic arrangement that is read serves to signify and express it. Terms such as recited, written, memorized and heard may consequently concern the signs and means by which the divine speech is made known.

The mere occurrence of the word “Qur’an” does not settle whether a speaker means an eternal attribute or our temporal act of reading. Identifying the precise point under dispute is essential before evaluating opposed formulations.

3. Eternal speech and temporal expressions

Eternity of divine speech means that speech is not a property acquired by God at a moment in time. By contrast, the letters of a human recitation are pronounced successively; an utterance begins and ends, and the reciter’s act takes place in time.

Eternity of the attribute and temporality of its signification are distinct judgments. A teacher’s understanding, for example, is different from the later sound produced in explaining it. This human analogy illustrates a distinction; it does not equate the nature of divine speech with human faculties.

If inner speech were defined as a sequence of generated sounds, the temporal succession would conflict with the claim of eternity. The classical distinction avoids precisely that identification.

4. Why changing relations do not change an attribute

God’s knowledge is held to be eternal, although its objects may come into existence, cease to exist or undergo change. Change in what is known does not by itself entail a new attribute arising within eternal knowledge.

Similarly, the content of a divine report may concern past, present or future events. Those relations concern created temporal realities, without making divine speech itself subject to the passage of time.

Distinguish:
1. The attribute’s being eternal in itself.
2. An object of the attribute, or an expression signifying it, having a temporal reference.

Variation in the second does not establish origination in the first.

5. Historical controversy and caution in judgment

The historical controversy over the createdness of the Qur’an involved divergent meanings of similar statements. Some speakers meant the temporal production of letters and sounds; others disputed the eternity of the attribute itself; still others used language that seemed to imply more than they intended.

A short slogan cannot therefore justify a definitive judgment on a person. One must establish the intended referent, subject of the predicate and actual theological claim.

The historical material also transmits severe condemnations by some disputants. Such statements are studied as attributed historical positions, not as permission for hostility toward individuals or communities. Analysis proceeds by careful interpretation and argument.

6. Reported traditions and evidentiary scrutiny

Harsh reports are transmitted in some historical discussions concerning people who asserted the Qur’an’s createdness, but the same material raises questions about their chains of transmission, wording and attribution. Reporting a narration is not equivalent to establishing its authenticity.

Especially in theology, a disputed or judged-fabricated report must not be presented as an unquestionably authentic saying of the Prophet ﷺ. If mentioned for historical context, its evidentiary limitations should be stated.

The main doctrinal question remains what eternal divine speech is and how it relates to the created voice of a reciter. A disputed narration does not settle that conceptual issue.

7. The issue of eternal letters and sounds

فَنَحْنُ لَا نَقُولُ بِقِدَمِ الْأَلْفَاظِ وَالْحُرُوفِ
We do not hold letters and verbal expressions to be eternal.

The argument distinguishes God’s eternal speech from the temporal production of its verbal expression. The succession of phonemes, movements of the tongue and physical generation of a voice are not treated as constituents of an eternal divine attribute.

Admitting that uttered letters and sounds occur in time is one claim; reducing all divine speech to those created sounds is another. The first does not establish that the divine attribute originated. The second is a separate dispute concerning whether inner speech truly exists.

8. Being a speaker and the Muʿtazilī objection

Some Muʿtazilī arguments understand being a speaker (mutakallim) through producing speech sounds or letters, possibly in a created locus. The attribution is thereby understood in terms of an act of creation rather than an eternal attribute subsisting in the divine essence.

Proponents of inner speech reply that merely generating a sound is not identical with possessing speech as an attribute. Sound created at a location does not, on its own, establish the relation of speech intended in the doctrine of an eternal divine attribute.

The schools thus differ not merely in the word “speech,” but in the definition of speech and its relation to the speaker.

9. Revelation and descent do not entail an originated attribute

The Qur’an is described in the language of descent (nuzūl), revelation (tanzīl) and presentation in Arabic. These expressions concern communication to human recipients, historically situated proclamation and intelligibility in a particular language.

An objection states that what descends or appears in an Arabic form at a time must be originated; why, then, call the Qur’an uncreated? The response distinguishes the temporal delivery of revelation from the origination of God’s attribute.

That an utterance is conveyed at a particular time establishes the temporality of the conveyance, not necessarily the beginning of the reality it signifies.

10. “An Arabic Qur’an”: wording and meaning

إِنَّا أَنْزَلْنَاهُ قُرْآنًا عَرَبِيًّا
We have sent it down as an Arabic Qur’an. (Yūsuf 12:2)

“Arabic” plainly describes the linguistic expression familiar to Arabic speakers: the revealed wording by which the message is understood and recited. The temporality of human linguistic expression, however, does not by itself refute the eternity of inner speech.

Conversely, eternity of divine speech does not make each sound uttered by a human reader eternal. The relationship of Arabic arrangement, meaning and the divine attribute must be preserved without assigning identical predicates to each.

11. Temporal recitation, listening and writing

One reciter reads in the morning and another in the evening. Their voices arise at different times and cease. Likewise, written words appear on particular sheets at particular times; the paper and ink are created things.

Recitation is the reader’s act. Writing is an act and a material inscription. Audible sound is an event perceived through hearing. Their temporal character is distinct from the eternity attributed to divine speech.

A genuine attribution of the Qur’an to God does not transfer every material feature of its created medium to the eternal attribute that the medium signifies.

12. The Qur’an in a muṣḥaf: indwelling or indication?

مَكْتُوبٌ فِي مَصَاحِفِنَا
It is written in our copies of the Qur’an.

The Qur’an’s being written in a physical muṣḥaf does not mean an eternal divine attribute inhabits paper as a body does a location. Marks and letters are signs through which the speech signified by them is identified.

A muṣḥaf is revered because it conveys the Qur’anic text, not because its ink is eternal. The key distinction is between the existence of a sign and the existence of what it signifies: the created status of one does not dictate the metaphysical status of the other.

13. Memorization: the memorized and the act of remembering

مَحْفُوظٌ فِي قُلُوبِنَا
It is preserved in our hearts.

A memorizer’s retention, recollection and mental arrangement of words are human acts and states. They may arise, fade or change. None of this requires divine speech itself to move physically into the human mind.

The act of memorizing and what is memorized must be distinguished. A person learns, forgets or repeats a verse; these changes belong to that person’s memory. They are not changes in the divine attribute.

14. Hearing the Qur’an: voice and what is heard

مَسْمُوعٌ بِآذَانِنَا
It is heard by our ears.

When a recitation is heard, the reciter’s produced sound reaches the listener. That sound conveys words and, through them, meanings. Disagreement can arise over exactly which kind of hearing is intended by the phrase “hearing God’s speech.”

One level is perceiving letters and sounds, another is grasping what speech signifies. Conflating them produces the false inference either that every aspect of Qur’anic speech is originated because voices originate, or that a reciter’s voice is eternal because the Qur’an is uncreated.

15. The fire analogy: a word does not inherit its referent’s properties

النَّارُ جَوْهَرٌ مُضِيءٌ مُحْرِقٌ
Fire is something luminous and burning.

Writing “fire” on paper does not set the paper alight, and pronouncing the word does not make the speaker’s tongue hot. A name or sign need not share the properties of the thing named or signified.

Likewise, material ink and paper do not become eternal when they carry Qur’anic verses. But the analogy has limits: fire is a physical object, whereas divine speech is treated as a nonbodily attribute. The example explains signification, not an identity of kinds of existence.

16. Four contexts in which something may be said to exist

وُجُودًا فِي الْأَعْيَانِ، وَوُجُودًا فِي الْأَذْهَانِ، وَوُجُودًا فِي الْعِبَارَةِ، وَوُجُودًا فِي الْكِتَابَةِ
Existence in external things, minds, expressions and writing.

These are not four identical ways of existing. The external reality of a thing, its mental concept, the spoken term and the written mark are distinguishable. The attribution of “existence” must be understood in its relevant context.

Descriptions of the Qur’an as present, recited, written or memorized can similarly concern different levels of signification and reception. A valid relation is not the same as the attribute and medium occupying one identical locus.

17. Literal and figurative use of Qur’anic terminology

Differences in intended meaning and scholarly usage lead some expressions to be treated as literal, figurative, shared or technically transferred. With “Qur’an,” “speech” and “heard,” the key question is whether the principal referent is the meaning subsisting in God or the wording signifying it.

What remains important is that the meaning and its expression have a genuine relation; linguistic attributions are not simply meaningless.

Calling a phrase “figurative” does not complete the analysis. One must identify the primary referent, the relation licensing the attribution and the usage in which it occurs.

18. The term Qur’an as applied to wording and meaning

In legal theory and Qur’anic studies, the Qur’an is identified through its transmitted Arabic wording and meaning. There is the recognized text written in the muṣḥaf and transmitted widely; through that text divine speech is signified and attributed.

A usage of “Qur’an” may include both wording and meaning, but it does not follow that the temporal performance of the wording and the divine attribute must share all predicates.

For example, a translation can communicate much of the meaning without reproducing the exact Arabic arrangement. The translation, act of recitation and original Arabic text therefore remain distinguishable.

19. Where the Qur’an’s inimitability is located

The Qur’an’s inimitability (iʿjāz) and challenge (taḥaddī) concern the revealed Arabic arrangement, its communicative force and the meaning it signifies. If the transmitted verses were entirely excluded from the term Qur’an, the language of challenge and public revelation would become difficult to account for.

The opposite inference is also unwarranted: because the challenge concerns articulated wording, it does not follow that the divine attribute is originated whenever a human recitation occurs.

One can recognize both the inimitable revealed arrangement accessible to people and the eternal attribute of speech, while keeping their respective claims distinct.

20. Hearing divine speech: differing classical explanations

حَتَّى يَسْمَعَ كَلَامَ اللَّهِ
Until he hears the speech of God. (Al-Tawbah 9:6)

This verse speaks of hearing God’s speech. Some theologians interpret such hearing through audible expression that signifies inner speech; others discuss whether God can cause a special perception or hearing of divine speech. Explanations attributed to Māturīdī and Ashʿarī scholars illustrate the distinction.

Ordinarily, a listener hears a reciter’s sound. Whether a different kind of divine hearing is possible is a further theological question. Collapsing these positions erases both their conceptual differences and the historical disagreement.

21. The role of messenger and scripture as intermediaries

Revelation reached human beings through messengers, angels and scripture. The intermediary’s role is to convey or signify the message; this does not require the eternal attribute of divine speech to inhabit the intermediary as a body inhabits a place.

Some theological explanations additionally distinguish special divine hearing from ordinary acoustic perception. Even there, the Creator’s attribute and the perception granted to a servant remain different things.

When a student hears a verse from a teacher, the teacher’s sound is created; its valid signification of God’s speech is a separate relation. The temporal medium does not prove the referent temporal.

22. “God’s speech”: the name and what is named

كَلَامُ اللَّهِ تَعَالَى
The speech of God Most High.

The expression may refer to the eternal attribute, and in other contexts to the Arabic arrangement that signifies it. This creates questions concerning name and named, sign and signified, and wording and meaning.

One scholar may regard one usage as primary and another as figurative; another may describe technical transfer or shared usage. The result depends on context, customary usage and the doctrinal claim attached to the term.

A difference in naming must not automatically be presented as a substantive difference over the existence or eternity of the divine attribute.

23. Sequential words and a nontemporal attribute

In Arabic recitation, the words of بِسْمِ اللَّهِ are spoken in an ordered sequence; one letter is pronounced after another. That order belongs to pronunciation and reading, both temporal activities.

Does eternal inner speech therefore have the same before-and-after arrangement? The reply distinguishes the sequence of utterance from the subsistence of the divine attribute. The problem arises when an eternal attribute is identified with a succession of generated sounds.

Some classical philosophical explanations employ mental forms of words and their sequential manifestation. They should be treated as conceptual models, not verified physical descriptions of the divine attribute.

24. Mass transmission and the eternal referent

Mass transmission (tawātur) is central to the recognition of the Qur’anic text. The familiar Arabic arrangement has been conveyed through sustained recitation and writing, establishing the recognized verses and surahs as the transmitted Qur’an.

A further theological question nevertheless remains: how does that transmitted expression relate to the eternal inner speech? The fact of widespread textual transmission does not, on its own, settle the metaphysical nature of the divine attribute. That requires a distinction between attribute and signification.

Thus the transmitted Arabic wording is neither dismissed as irrelevant nor are all its audible performances treated as eternal parts of God’s speech. Establishing the text and describing the attribute are distinct but related inquiries.

25. Resolving verbal disputes without flattening real differences

One account treats “speech” primarily as the meaning subsisting in God, with words as its signs. Another usage calls the combination of wording and meaning “Qur’an.” Some disagreement concerns linguistic designation, although genuine differences over whether eternal inner speech exists must not be erased.

Result: God’s attribute of speech is affirmed as eternal, while human recitation, sound, writing, memory and their temporal order are created acts or states. The Arabic Qur’an retains its revealed, normative and inimitable character.

This is the conceptual force of “the Qur’an is uncreated.” Objections must be evaluated by distinguishing sign, signified, literal use, figurative use and established convention. The next topic is takwīn and its relation to divine power.