How do we respond to the specious argument that speech is an accident (arad) that neither ascends nor descends, which is raised to interpret the Exalted's saying: "To Him ascends good speech"?

First: Allah's transcendence above His creation is established by evidence from the Qur'an, the Sunnah, the consensus of the Imams, reason, and human nature.

Second: Among the proofs of Allah's transcendence is the narration of things ascending and rising to Him, Glorified be He. This includes His statement: (To Him ascends good speech, and righteous work raises it) [Fatir/10]. Many Imams have used this verse as evidence to affirm Allah's transcendence and His being above.

Third: Speech ascends to Allah Almighty as He informed us, and Ibn Mas'ud (may Allah be pleased with him) explained that the angel causes it to ascend. This interpretation has the ruling of being مرفوع (attributed to the Prophet), and the narration is authentic or good, indicating Allah's transcendence and the ascent of words to Him along with the angel.

Fourth: The fact that speech is an accident (عرض) does not prevent its ascent, just as it does not prevent the weighing of deeds and words on the Day of Judgment. Indeed, Allah transforms accidents into bodies, and one should not pay attention to the statement of the atheist that accidents cannot be weighed.

Fifth: If some claim that speech, being an accident, cannot ascend in order to deny the use of the verse as evidence for transcendence, then what do they say about the ascent of angels to Allah, which are physical bodies, as in His statement: (The angels and the Spirit ascend to Him in a Day the extent of which is fifty thousand years) [Al-Ma'arij/4]?

In conclusion, this is a flimsy doubt, and this is why the Imams commonly used this noble verse as evidence to affirm Allah's transcendence.