The Archeology of the Kingdom of God: Diving a Bit Deeper into a Baha'i Approach to Metaphysics

[RJM]

I always thought the question was If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it -- does it make a sound?

It's the principle

Is the world just a reality of my own perception. Does the world cease to exist when I do?

 

[RJM]

Where am I when I'm dreaming? What's the true reality?

Are there 8 billion worlds -- a world for every person? What about cats and dogs and horses and parrots and caterpillars: each creature the universe unto itself?

 

[Thomas]

I suspect a possible answer goes back to Shaykh Aḥmad, who flips the traditional view (e.g., matter becomes active and shapes form and form becomes receptive to the potential and influence of matter). To use an analogy, traditionally, classical metaphysicians focused on understanding the form (or the image) as the true essence of the painting. Shaykh Aḥmad seems to say we can also understand matter itself (e.g., the texture of the canvas, the way the paint is applied) as part of what makes the painting what it is. If matter is not passive but has its own potential and agency, then it can't be simply nothing waiting to be shaped by God. There's something there. The interaction between matter and form becomes a continuous process, not a one-time act of creation.

I tend to agree ... it's all contextual. Without a greater explanation, or reference to Corbin's commentary, I can't say.

I did read on, from the text you cited above, and will return to it later.

It reminded me of what's propositioned in Transcendental Thomism (a new school of Thomist thought), which talks about 'being-in-relation'.

The Arabic commentaries do seem to make a big deal of Aristotle – understandably – but don't err in thinking that Christian theology follows the same path. The Fathers and the Scholars utilised Plato, and later Neoplatonism, as they did Aristotle, but the latter within the context of dialectical discourse ... the theology was shaped by Scripture. and the philosophers were interpreted in the light of Revelation.

So it may well be 'revolutionary', but that's within the Islamic world ...

 

[Thomas]

Almighty God is Eternal .. so NOT created. Creation implies a beginning.

Yes.

I believe that souls are FROM G-d, OF G-d, and also eternal.

Hmmmm ... I'd say souls are not the essence of God, else they'd be Divine and possess all the Divine attributes?

I'd say souls exist in God from eternity, but as undifferentiated natures (I'm using that word a lot lately) – they have no 'act' or 'being' in God, they are brought into being, and in that sense from nothing (no previous existing substance), but God's knowledge of that soul is eternal ...

 

[Thomas]

How do we acheive it together would most likely be the question you are asking.

I was thinking more along the lines of immanence and hypostasis – of deification and Divine Union ...

 

[Thomas]

"The modality of the union of the soul and the body is a question that is found at the heart of all Christian Scholasticism ... "
(The Archeology of the Kingdom of God, p202)
This is a inaccurate statement which misrepresents and distorts the nature of scholasticism and, indeed, Christian theology. I cannot stress that enough, as it's just one example that highlights the problems with the book when discussing other traditions.

How is the union of soul and body to be of substance founded on scripture? Or is that a later development?

No, it's there from the get-go.

The 'substance' of the union, or the 'essence' of the union (the terms are interchangeable here) is the human person.

Genesis 2:7 says "... and man became a living soul (nefesh) – Nefesh in Scripture can mean 'living being' or 'person' and it particularly reflects the personal dimension: The sense of 'self', of personal desire or attraction, for good or ill.

The Greek term for a particular substance – eg James and not Jane – is hypostasis, whereas substance translated as the Greek ousia is generic. So ousia is the essence of human nature – James and Jane are human by nature (ousia) but as James or as Jane by hypostasis.

I make this point because this relation discussed here is horizontal ... In God there is one ousia and three hypostases

But In Christ there is also the union of two natures ousia in one person hypostasis – which promises much for humanity.

 

[Thomas]

Because there can be no direct tie between the transcendent being of God and His contingent creation ...

Well, Christianity begs to differ. "God vecame man than man might become God' as we say.

Irenaeus of Lyons: Adversus Haereses 5: "[T]he Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ ... become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself."

Athanasius of Alexandria: "He was made human so that he might make us sons of god" (De incarnatione 54,3, cf. Contra Arianos 1.39).
Theosis was taught by Gregory of Nyssa and Cyril of Alexandria. This process however never reaches the absolute ontological distinction between Creator and created. It is a union, with and in Christ.

"the connection between the two takes place through the divine or Primal Will, which, in turn, is the cause of all creation."

This sounds like a repetition of the Arian Position – that the Divine Will is of God, but not God, but before time, etc., ?

Before God 'originated' His will ... what then?

And if there is no 'before', then how does it have an origin ... or were there always two?

 

[Thomas]

Only under a certain theological framework. The possibility of the human soul's death only opens if it indwells the body, like a tenant in a house. This ancient concept is rejected in the Baha'i Faith.

I think it's rejected by the Abrahamic Traditions as such ... it was a 'Gnostic notion ...

Instead, there is a non-physical connection between soul and body, between this world and the other world.

Clearly, as the soul isn't a physical entity.

". . . it is absolutely impossible that the Holy Spirit should ascend and descend, enter, come out, or penetrate, it can only be that the Holy Spirit appears in splendour, as the sun appears in the mirror.”
-Abdu'l-Baha
A baha'i dogmas ... but notably not an Abrahamic one.

"Note that even in divine revelation, the use of spirit is associated with the concept of 'breathing into' the physical frame. This indicates that from the outset the explanation of a spiritual phenomenon appearing in a physical body had to be expressed in sensible and material terms comprehensible and imaginable by the believers . . ."
-Dr. Davudi
One the other hand, one should never be too hasty to dismiss the efficacy of a symbol.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Hmmmm ... I'd say souls are not the essence of God, else they'd be Divine and possess all the Divine attributes?

I'd say souls exist in God from eternity, but as undifferentiated natures (I'm using that word a lot lately) – they have no 'act' or 'being' in God, they are brought into being, and in that sense from nothing (no previous existing substance), but God's knowledge of that soul is eternal ...

I honestly don't know .. I'm not a scholar .. but even scholars vary in their opinions, I've noted.

..but one thing I feel sure of, is that ALL of us will experience the Day of Judgement.
The Qur'an is explicit in that, as is, I feel, the Gospel.

eg. the Sheep & the Goats

..and so death is not the end of our journey, life in some shape or form continues.
We experience existence now, and will do again after physical death.

 

[Thomas]

..but one thing I feel sure of, is that ALL of us will experience the Day of Judgement.
The Qur'an is explicit in that, as is, I feel, the Gospel.

For sure.

..and so death is not the end of our journey, life in some shape or form continues.
We experience existence now, and will do again after physical death.

yep.

 

[Ahanu]

Where is the soul if not in the body?

Not in the body in the sense of literal indwelling, like a tenant in a house.

In another dimension or, as the Baha'i Writings say, in "the invisible realm," which is beyond both space and place.

If we speak of the soul as a spiritual substance - a substance radically different from a material substance - then how can it reside in the brain or body? How can we continue to use categories like entering and exiting?

Outside of the Baha'i Faith, Henry Corbin gathered as much from recent followers of Shaykh Ahmad:

"This theme is amplified in a most interesting way in an important work by the present leader of the Shaikhi community, Shaikh Sarkar Agha, an eminent spiritual figure in Iran today, fifth in line from Shaikh Ahmad Ahsa'i. We were struck by this central thought: the hierarchy of being is ranged in a series of universes, all of which end finally in our terrestrial Earth, this Earth which is like the "tomb" to which they have been entrusted; it is from this tomb that they must emerge and be resurrected. But this resurrection is conceivable only if the "descent" of the eternal Forms onto this Earth is understood in its true sense. Just as the astralness of the Sun does not "descend" from its Heaven, so there is no question of an inherence or an "infusion" nor of a material incarnation, an idea which an "Oriental" philosophy definitely rejects. On the contrary, the idea of epiphany dominates its mode of perception and that is why the comparison with a "mirror" is always suggested to us. Human souls, being eternal, do not themselves mix "in person," so to speak, with the world of material and accidental things, which are temporal. It is their silhouette, their Image, their shadow, which is projected onto it."

Also, outside of the Baha'i Faith, Ismaili writers have noted the soul does not have spatio-temporal properties.

Conscious states lack spatio-temporal properties: Thoughts, sensations, feelings, and intentions do not have mass, momentum, shape, spatial location, spatial extension, or temporal location and they are neither particles nor waves. Meanwhile, material objects do possess some spatio-temporal properties. Since conscious states lack the properties of material objects, it follows that consciousness is neither identical with nor reducible to matter.


“Matter is located in space; one can specify precisely where a given tree, let us say, resides. But if one asks where his perception of the tree is located he can expect difficulties. The difficulties increase if he asks how tall his perception of the tree is; not how tall is the tree he sees, but how tall is his seeing of it.”


– Huston Smith, (Forgotten Truth, 1985,67)


“We perceive, by our various sense organs, a variety of material objects laid out in space, taking up certain volumes and separated by certain distances. We thus conceive of these perceptual objects as spatial entities; perception informs us directly of their spatiality. But conscious subjects and their mental states are not in this way perceptual objects. We do not see or hear or smell or touch them, and a fortiori do not perceive them as spatially individuated.(2) This holds both for the first- and third-person perspectives. Since we do not observe our own states of consciousness, nor those of others, we do not apprehend these states as spatial.”


– Colin McGuin, (Consciousness and Space, Click Here to Read)

 

[Ahanu]

". . . it is absolutely impossible that the Holy Spirit should ascend and descend, enter, come out, or penetrate, it can only be that the Holy Spirit appears in splendour, as the sun appears in the mirror.”
-Abdu'l-Baha

A baha'i dogmas ... but notably not an Abrahamic one.

It's a sensible dogma in my opinion. I don't care if it is an Abrahamic one or not. Just like many Christians don't care whether or not the idea of physical resurrection was actually borrowed from Zoroastrianism, which is not an Abrahamic religion.

 

[Ahanu]

Well, Christianity begs to differ. "God vecame man than man might become God' as we say.

Well, Ebionites would beg to differ.

Before God 'originated' His will ... what then?

It's originated outside of time, so it is a nonsensical question from our limited human perception that exists in time.

And if there is no 'before', then how does it have an origin ... or were there always two?

From our perspective as beings that exist in the flow of time, God's will has always existed with no beginning or end.

"There should be no doubt that, before this Adam, there have been infinite worlds and endless Adams in God's creation, to a degree that none besides God can, or ever will, reckon."
-The Bab

 

[RJM]

the theology was shaped by Scripture. and the philosophers were interpreted in the light ...

I think this has everything to do with it, really.

At base the Baha'i religion derives from Islam and the Quran, with all that implies in relation?

 

[Ahanu]

I think this has everything to do with it, really.

At base the Baha'i religion derives from Islam and the Quran, with all that implies in relation?

The link between Christianity and Islam is James and his followers.

 

[RJM]

The link between Christianity and Islam is James and his followers.

it's a whole other discussion and supports my point that we choose and interpret according to the scripture we prefer?

What doesn't support our preferred scripture we reject it or ignore it -- or of course 'intetpret' it to make it fit?

 

[Ahanu]

it's a whole other discussion and supports my point that we choose and interpret according to the scripture we prefer?

I'll just leave this here from the link:

The historical records are only able to trace the descendants of Jesus’ family to the early second century. However, it is known that the Ebionites and the Nazarenes – two Jewish Christian groups – continued to exist even in the fourth century and traced their faith and traditions back to James the Just. It is widely speculated by scholars that Jewish Christian groups exerted some influence in the origins of Islam. The Qur’an and the Aramaic Gospel Tradition (2013) by Emran al-Badawi has shown that the Qur’an reinterprets, incorporates, and integrates a significant number of themes from the Aramaic Gospels. His study found that “11 percent of the Qur’an is in dialogue with the entirety of the Aramaic Gospel Traditions” and “12 percent of the Gospels are in dialogue with the whole Qur’an.” He concludes that “the Qur’an is in close dialogue with the text and context of the Gospels through their transmission in the Syriac and Christian Palestinian dialects of Aramaic” (p. 212). Below are just a few examples from El-Badawi’s study where the Qur’an has reinterpreted or re-articulated a theme or idea from the New Testament (pp. 220-226):


• Qur’an 3:59 is re-articulating Romans 5:14, 21 on Jesus as the Second Adam
• Qur’an 14:37, 2:126 is re-articulating Luke 3:8 and Matthew 21:43 on Abraham’s Progeny
• Qur’an 5:75, 25:7 is re-articulating Matthew 11:16, 19, 20:3, Mark 5:56 and Luke 7:32-34
• Qur’an 5:18, 9:30 is re-articulating Matthew 5:9 on God’s Servants vs. God’s Sons
• Qur’an 2:210, 6:158, 18:99 is re-articulating Matthew 24:30-31, Mark 13:26-27 on God or Son of Man coming down on the clouds
• Qur’an 24:35-36, 30:57, 61:6-8, 9:32, 25:61, 33:41-46 is re-articulating Matthew 5:14-16, 12:34, Mark 4:21, Luke 6:45, 8:16, 11:33, 13:35, John 8:1, 9:5, 5:35-3 on the Light of God, Light of the World, Lamp, and Houses of God
• Qur’an 1:1-7 is re-articulating Mathew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4 on the al-Fatihah and Lord’s Prayer


According to various Ismaili sources, including the writings of Ja‘far b. Mansur al-Yaman (the Bab of the Imam al-Mu‘izz and second to the Imam in spiritual rank), the Trustee Imam from the successors of Jesus immediately before Prophet Muhammad was the Monk Bahira of Syria. This means that the Trustee Imamat of James was transmitted through the descendants of Jesus’ family until it reached Syrian Monk Bahira, known as Georges, the last Trustee Imam in the Cycle of Jesus and the remnant from Jesus’ family who carried on his true teachings.

 

[Ahanu]

No, it's there from the get-go.

Oh, I am not sure what it meant in its original cultural context. Scholarship does not unanimously support your viewpoint.

The 'substance' of the union, or the 'essence' of the union (the terms are interchangeable here) is the human person.

Genesis 2:7 says "... and man became a living soul (nefesh) – Nefesh in Scripture can mean 'living being' or 'person' and it particularly reflects the personal dimension: The sense of 'self', of personal desire or attraction, for good or ill.

But Wikipedia says:

In Judaism, there was originally little to no concept of a soul. As seen in the Genesis, the divine breath simply animated bodies.

Then Yahweh God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and so the man became a living being.
—Genesis 2:7

The meaning of "nefesh" is debated among scholars. While it can refer to the living person, it can also simply mean "life force" without implying a separate soul entity. The word "nefesh" originally referred to the "throat" or "neck" in Hebrew. Over time it came to encompass ideas like "breath" and "life force." This ambiguity makes it difficult to determine if it refers to a distinct "soul" separate from the body or simply the animating force of life itself.

 

[Thomas]

Not in the body in the sense of literal indwelling, like a tenant in a house.

Quite ... I would agree with that, it's not the sense that we have of it.

In another dimension or, as the Baha'i Writings say, in "the invisible realm," which is beyond both space and place.

OK

If we speak of the soul as a spiritual substance - a substance radically different from a material substance - then how can it reside in the brain or body? How can we continue to use categories like entering and exiting?

I suppose it's the same as the idea of 'person' – that, too, transcends the material body, nevertheless is intimately associated with it.

Outside of the Baha'i Faith, Henry Corbin gathered as much from recent followers of Shaykh Ahmad:

"This theme is amplified in a most interesting way ...

OK. There are a number of issues raised here. By way of short-hand, I'm citing an essay by Frithjof Schuon: The Two Paradises. I cannot recommend this essay enough, especially as it touches upon issues raised and answers the objections with regard to the elements of traditional Christian doctrine.

(T)here are in man two subjects—or two subjectivities—with no common measure and with opposite tendencies, though there is also, in some respect, coincidence between the two. On the one hand, there is the anima (Gk: psyche) or empirical ego, woven out of objective as well as subjective contingencies, such as memories and desires; on the other hand, there is the spiritus (Gk: pneuma) or pure Intelligence, whose subjectivity is rooted in the Absolute, so that it sees the empirical ego as being no more than a husk, that is, something outward and foreign to the true “my-self”, or rather “One-self”, at once transcendent and immanent.
So we have the idea of soul which can refer to the individual egoic self, or the transpersonal self which ascends through the hierarchies to the Absolute. The former sense is very much bodily located, whereas the latter is more numinous.

We speak of taking precedence over the aspirations of individuality, but not of abolishing them ... if this were not the case, one would have to conclude that the Avatâras (Messengers) had completely vanished from the cosmos, and this has never been traditionally admitted.
This is universal metaphysics, inasmuch as it's found in Hinduism and Buddhism, the Abrahamics, and elsewhere. A note here is the classic stand-off between Buddhism, which denies the existence of the soul, and the Abrahamics, who assert it, is resolved when one refers top the metaphysical principles at play. When Buddhism says the self is transient and ephemeral, they are talking of the egoic self.

The world is the plane of phenomena or of contingencies; the ordinary ego, the anima, is thus part of the world and is situated “outside” for him who is able to envisage it from the spiritus, which by definition derives from the Spiritus Sanctus; and this could never be a matter of ambition or affectation: it is a matter of true understanding and of innate perspective.
Here the link between the spirit and the Holy Spirit, which is so evidently attested in the Christ Scriptures, (cf Romans 8:15 & Galatians 4:6) but which some try to rationalise as analogous or metaphor, rather than the degree of actuality. It is this unity of the individual spiritus with the Holy Spirit; of contingent being with the Being of God, which is affirmed in Scripture, in numerous places: "But Christ is all, and in all" (Colossians 3:11).

In fact the Hymn of Colossians (1:15-17), believed to be a liturgical hymn the scribe copied into the letter, is a complete statement of Christian metaphysics with staggering brevity:
(Christ) Who is the image (Logos) of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature (all logoi are in the Logos):
For in him were all things created in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominations,
or principalities, or powers:
all things were created by him and in him.
And he is before all, and by him all things consist."
Here it's clear we are not just talking about human beings, or human things, but all things,

This means that subjectivity can be conceived, or realized, according to three degrees, which correspond precisely to the ternary of corpus, anima, spiritus: the first degree is that of animality, be it human; the second is that of the microcosm of dream, in which the subject is no longer identified with the body alone, but with this ever increasing mirage that is imaginative and sentimental experience; the third degree is that of pure Intelligence, which is the trace in man of the unique and “transcendentally immanent” Subject. The soul is the inner witness of the body, as the spirit is the inner witness of the soul.
A point here is to determine where Corbin's 'Imaginal' fits within the three degrees – I would suggest that the imaginal serves as a kind of interface between the three.

 

[Thomas]

Continued from above:

The two human subjects, the outward or empirical and the inward or intellective,correspond analogically to the two aspects of the Divine Subject, the ontological or personal and the supra-ontological or impersonal; in man, as in divinis, duality is perceptible, or is actualized, only in relation to the element Mâyâ. (In Sufism, the key-notion of Mâyâ is expressed through the terms hijâb, “veil”, and tajallî, “unveiling” or“revelation”.)

Or again, to return to the ternary corpus, anima, spiritus: these three subjectivities respectively reflect the three hypostases—if indeed this term applies here—Existence, Being, Beyond-Being; just as God is not “absolutely Absolute” except as Beyond-Being, so man is not absolutely himself except in the Intellect; whereas the empirical ego nourishes itself with phenomena, the intellective ego burns them and tends toward the Essence.

There could never be any symmetry between the relative and the Absolute; as a result, if there is clearly no such thing as the absolutely relative, there is nonetheless a “relatively absolute”, and this is Being as creator, revealer, and saviour, who is absolute for the world, but not for the Essence: “Beyond-Being” or “Non-Being”.

If God were the Absolute in every respect and without any hypostatic restriction, there could be no contact between Him and the world, and the world would not even exist; for in order to be able to create, speak, and act, it is necessary that God Himself make Himself “world” in some fashion, and He does so through the ontological self-limitation that gives rise to the “personal God”, the world itself being the most extreme and hence the most relative of self-limitations. Pantheism would be right in its own way if it could restrict itself to this aspect without denying transcendence.
This point is telling for me (bold emphasis mine), and highlights a significant 'metaphysical error' or 'limitation' with regard to Christian doctrine and the Abrahamic Traditions generally.

In the face of the paradoxical complexity of the metaphysical Real, the situation of theologies can be summarized as follows: first of all, there is the axiom that God is theAbsolute since nothing can be greater than He; next, there is the logical evidence that there is in God something relative; finally, the conclusion is drawn that since God is the Absolute, what is relative in appearance cannot be other than absolute; the fact that this is contrary to logic proves that logic cannot reach God, who is “mystery” (Christianity) and who “does as He wills” (Islam). Now we have seen that the solution of the problem rests upon two points: objectively, the Absolute is susceptible of gradation, unless one wishes to cease discussing it; subjectively, it is not logic that is at fault, but the opacity of our axioms and the rigidity of our reasonings. Certainly, God “does as He wills”, but that is because we cannot discern all of His motives on the phenomenal plane; certainly, He is a“mystery”, but this is because of the inexhaustibility of His Subjectivity, the only one that is, in the last analysis, and that becomes clear to us only inasmuch as it whelms us in its light.