What they rejected deserved affirmation far more than what they affirmed. They turned away from God, from knowing Him and worshipping Him; ignorant of what is due to Him and what He deserves, they worshipped and exalted created beings. Perceiving in those beings a perfection that led them to treat them as deities, they associated partners with God. Meanwhile they abandoned the Lord of all worlds: they neither knew Him nor worshipped Him, nor did they recognize the perfection that makes Him alone worthy of worship—indeed, the very perfection by which one knows that none but He merits worship. All of this is set out in detail elsewhere.
Aristotle and the early Peripatetics ascribed no act to God and did not regard Him as an Originator, being far removed from truly knowing Him; hence their doctrine contains corruption too lengthy to recount. When Ibn Sīnā and his followers, however, depicted Him as an Originator, the same sort of contradiction surfaced in their discourse.
Our purpose here, though, is to discuss logic. We have cited this example only because it touches on one of the most exalted theological issues they claim to establish. The aim is to show that there is no real difference between the universal syllogism and the analogical syllogism when each is given its proper due.
Whatever can be demonstrated by a universal syllogism can be demonstrated more clearly by analogy.
Thus, if what they have stated is assumed to lead them to the conclusion that only one proceeds from the One, that very conclusion can be established more effectively through an analogical syllogism. One might say: “Only one issues from the One; therefore, only one issues from the First, because the One is simple, and from what is simple only something simple can proceed—just as only heat proceeds from what is hot, and only cold from what is cold,” and the like of the examples mentioned in natural philosophy.
Hence they say in metaphysics, “Only one proceeds from the One.” Yet, should they wish to prove this in theology by means of a universal syllogism, and assuming that syllogism to be sound, it could always be reformulated as an analogical syllogism. If, however, they are unable to do so—whether absolutely or specifically with respect to the Lord of all worlds, because the unity they attribute to Him is in reality a negation of Him and a denial of His existence—then they are left with nothing but this analogical argument. When they establish it by analogy and show that the ruling hinges on the common factor, that analogy conveys all that the universal syllogism yields—and more.