 In several respects this teaching on prophecy fits well with what we know of al-Rāzī’s philosophy more generally. It invokes the idea that reason is given to the soul as a gift from God, something confirmed in other sources and suggested at the beginning of al-Rāzī’s Spiritual Medicine. Furthermore, Abū Ḥātim has al-Rāzī arguing that God would not send prophets because this is an unreasonable and overly difficult way to achieve His goals (Abū Ḥātim, AHR: 1; 131–2). Why not just give everyone the ability to figure things out for themselves? This same premise that God only proceeds in the most rational way is also important in his theodicy as we know it from other sources, as seen above. Furthermore the critique of taqlīd, while admittedly commonplace, does sound like it could come from al-Rāzī: his irreverent approach to Galen bears witness to a similar independence of mind, albeit in a very different context.