A Study of Baha’u’llah’s
Kitab-i-Iqan, The Book of Certitude
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In almost all the major religions of the past the quest to understand the nature of God has been a contentious issue. The debates that led to the formulation of the doctrine of Trinity in Christianity are well known. Islamic sects have equally been divided. At one extreme are those who believe that Imam Ali was God (The Aliallahi sect) and those among the Sufi’s that believe human beings can also ‘become’ God through a process of purification. Among the philosophers of both the East and the West there have been both opponents and proponents of pantheism, according to which -- loosely put -- the nature and God are two aspects of the same thing. Baha’u’llah in the Kitab-i-Iqan clearly explains the Baha’i conception of the transcendent nature of God. Shoghi Effendi further elaborates on this issue in the following extract.
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To whoever may read these pages a word of warning seems,
however, advisable before I proceed further with the development of my
argument. Let no one meditating, in the light of the afore-quoted passages, on
the nature of the Revelation of Baha'u'llah, mistake its character or
misconstrue the intent of its Author. The divinity attributed to so great a
Being and the complete incarnation of the names and attributes of God in so
exalted a Person should, under no circumstances, be misconceived or
misinterpreted. The human temple that has been made the vehicle of so
overpowering a Revelation must, if we be faithful to the tenets of our Faith,
ever remain entirely distinguished from that "innermost Spirit of
Spirits" and "eternal Essence of Essences" -- that invisible yet
rational God Who, however much we extol the divinity of His Manifestations on
earth, can in no wise incarnate His infinite, His unknowable, His incorruptible
and all-embracing Reality in the concrete and limited frame of a mortal being.
Indeed, the God Who could so incarnate His own reality would, in the light of
the teachings of Baha'u'llah, cease immediately to be God. So crude and
fantastic a theory of Divine incarnation is as removed from, and incompatible
with, the essentials of Baha'i belief as are the no less inadmissible
pantheistic and anthropomorphic conceptions of God -- both of which the
utterances of Baha'u'llah emphatically repudiate and the fallacy of which they
expose.
He Who in
unnumbered passages claimed His utterance to be the "Voice of Divinity,
the Call of God Himself" thus solemnly affirms in the Kitab-i-Iqan:
"To every discerning and illumined heart it is evident that God, the
unknowable Essence, the Divine Being, is immeasurably exalted beyond every
human attribute such as corporeal existence, ascent and descent, egress and
regress... He is, and hath ever been, veiled in the ancient eternity of His
Essence, and will remain in His Reality everlastingly hidden from the sight of
men... He standeth exalted beyond and above all separation and union, all
proximity and remoteness... 'God was alone; there was none else beside Him' is
a sure testimony of this truth."
"From
time immemorial," Baha'u'llah, speaking of God, explains, "He, the
Divine Being, hath been veiled in the ineffable sanctity of His exalted Self,
and will everlasting continue to be wrapt in the impenetrable mystery of His
unknowable Essence... Ten thousand Prophets, each a Moses, are thunderstruck
upon the Sinai of their search at God's forbidding voice, 'Thou shalt never
behold Me!'; whilst a myriad Messengers, each as great as Jesus, stand dismayed
upon their heavenly thrones by the interdiction 'Mine Essence thou shalt never
apprehend!'" "How bewildering to me, insignificant as I am,"
Baha'u'llah in His communion with God affirms, "is the attempt to fathom
the sacred depths of Thy knowledge! How futile my efforts to visualize the
magnitude of the power inherent in Thine handiwork -- the revelation of Thy
creative power!" "When I contemplate, O my God, the relationship that
bindeth me to Thee," He, in yet another prayer revealed in His own
handwriting, testifies, "I am moved to proclaim to all created things
'verily I am God!'; and when I consider my own self, lo, I find it coarser than
clay!"
"The
door of the knowledge of the Ancient of Days," Baha'u'llah further states
in the Kitab-i-Iqan, "being thus closed in the face of all beings, He, the
Source of infinite grace ... hath caused those luminous Gems of Holiness to
appear out of the realm of the spirit, in the noble form of the human temple,
and be made manifest unto all men, that they may impart unto the world the
mysteries of the unchangeable Being and tell of the subtleties of His
imperishable Essence... All the Prophets of God, His well-favored, His holy and
chosen Messengers are, without exception, the bearers of His names and the
embodiments of His attributes... These Tabernacles of Holiness, these primal
Mirrors which reflect the Light of unfading glory, are but expressions of Him
Who is the Invisible of the Invisibles."
That
Baha'u'llah should, notwithstanding the overwhelming intensity of His
Revelation, be regarded as essentially one of these Manifestations of God,
never to be identified with that invisible Reality, the Essence of Divinity
itself, is one of the major beliefs of our Faith -- a belief which should never
be obscured and the integrity of which no one of its followers should allow to
be compromised.
(Shoghi
Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah, p. 112 )