What determines the access an interpreter has to the Qur’an? On what bases is the Qur’an to be understood? These questions of comprehension and exegesis have far-reaching implications for Islamic thought and society. This paper examines sites of discourse on the proper means of understanding and interpreting the Qur’an in the writings of Abu Bakr al-Baqillani. Al-Baqillani (d. 403/1012) is recognized as being as the most important Ash’ari theologian of his generation, and he authored the first systematic exposition of Ash’arite thought (Kitab al-Tamhid) as well as seminal treatises in discourses including usul al-fiqh (legal theory) and i’jaz al-Qur’an (the doctrine of the Qur’an’s inimitability). These texts have often been read separately for their individual contributions to Islamic disciplines, but as this paper shows, a theme that runs through them is a concern with establishing the status of the Qur’an as clear and comprehensible to its human audience. Al-Baqillani’s multidisciplinary work engages the methods and discussions of several discourses to argue that understanding the Qur’an is possible through systematic understanding of the Arabic language. This paper seeks to understand the concerns behind this argument by situating al-Baqillani’s work in terms of methods of interpretation that were developing and being practiced during the 3rd/9th and 4th/10th centuries. Specifically, this paper makes the case that al-Baqillani was responding to the type of interpretation that came to be known as ta’wil. This method, associated with Sufi and Shi’i exegetes, was typically understood to rely on personal insight with divine guidance proffered to the select few. Rather than overtly or directly dismissing the type of ta’wil methods used by contemporaneous Sufi and Shi'i interpreters, al-Baqillani builds a case for the language, and hence meanings, of the Qur’an being clear and systematically accessible according to the lexicon, grammar, and conventions of the Arabic language. Drawing on recent scholarship on Sufism, tafsir, and Abbasid history, this paper presents an argument for reading al-Baqillani’s work as an attempt to bolster mainstream Sunni Ash’ari approaches to interpreting the Qur’an over and against ta’wil. This new perspective on al-Baqillani’s work both highlights an important theme across his writings and places these writings into the context of contemporaneous discourses on approaches to understanding and interpreting the Qur’an. The result is a historically situated reading of this foundational theologian’s work and its influence on later Ash’arite thought.