[Attribute of Speech]
وَهُوَ مُتَكَلِّمٌ بِكَلامٍ هُوَ صِفَةٌ لَهُ، أَزَلِيَّةٌ، لَيْسَ مِنْ جِنْسِ الحُرُوفِ وَالأَصْوَاتِ، وَهُوَ صِفَةٌ مُنَافِيَةٌ لِلسُّكُوتِ وَالآفَةِ، وَاللَّهُ تَعَالَى مُتَكَلَّمٌ بِهَا آمِرٌ نَاهٍ مُخْبِرٌ.
014- He speaks with [a kind of] Speech which is one of His attributes, from all eternity (azalī), not of the genus of letters (ḥarf) and sounds (ṣawt).1 It is an attribute incompatible with silence and defect. God, the exalted, speaks with [this attribute,] commanding, prohibiting and narrating.
- Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944) Abū Isḥāq al‑Isfarāyīnī (d. 418/1027) holds that God’s speech in and of itself cannot be heard by ears. Speech by definition does not a necessarily have to be heard to qualify as speech. This is in contrast to Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī (d. 303/916) who maintained that just as every existent can be seen, so too can it be heard, just as what is heard when a person recites the Qurʾān is two things: the voice of the reciter, and the speech of God. This topic widely debated on which there are a variety of nuanced opinion all of which agree on the principle of “the Speech of God.” For example, take the case of “God spoke to Moses” (4:164, 7:143) scholars noted that doesn’t necessarily mean that Moses actually heard the “voice of God” as it’s not explicitly said in the Qurʾān that Moses heard the speech of God.