The scholastic theologians revere those imams with respect to the practical aspects of the Sacred Law and to juristic questions; but in kalām and the fundamentals of doctrine—matters such as tawḥīd (divine oneness), the divine attributes, destiny, prophethood, and the Hereafter—they do not feel obliged to follow them. Instead, they often consider their own teachers in kalām to be superior on such issues, asserting that although the earlier imams possessed that knowledge, they neither elaborated upon it nor set it out as the later mutakallimūn have done.
In the eyes of these philosophers, then, a prophet resembles a leading mujtahid whom others follow. Hence those who link philosophers with prophets—like the authors of the Epistles of the Ikhwān al-Ṣafā and their ilk—will say, “The prophets and the sages are in agreement,” or they will speak of “the prophets and the philosophers,” just as the uṣūlīs say, “The jurists and the theologians concur—this is the view of the jurists and theologians,” and the like. Their admirers seek to reconcile what the philosophers say with what the prophets brought. As noted earlier, they claim that the three forms of syllogism are the very ones mentioned in Sūrat al-Naḥl; they identify the angels with the separate intellects and souls; and a group among them, such as Abū l-Barakāt, the author of al-Muʿtabar, maintained the multitude of angels, bringing them somewhat closer to the prophets, for the prophets explicitly affirmed the abundance of angels. They likewise interpret the jinn and devils as powers of the soul, whether wholesome or corrupt. I have dealt with them at length elsewhere, demonstrating that the angels spoken of by the messengers are utterly unlike the “intellects and souls” they posit, and that the jinn and devils are living, rational beings that truly exist, not mere accidents inhering in other substances.
A word must now be said about their claim that the three syllogistic modes are drawn from the Qurʾān. What concerns us here is their discourse on logic, for the Exalted says:
“Call to the way of your Lord…” (16:125).