Image of God:
A Note on the Scriptural Anthropology
Muhammad Suheyl Umar
Iqbal Academy, Lahore, Pakistan
All the Abrahamic traditions agree that it is only man who, alone among earthly
creatures, is made in the image of
God[1] in a direct
and integral manner. This is, however,
no longer the underpinning of our prevelant view of man. Somewhere,
during the course of its historical development, western thought
took a sharp turn in another direction. It branched off at a tangent
from the collective heritage of all humanity and claimed the autonomy
of reason. It chose to follow reason alone, unguided by revelation
and cut off from the Intellect that was regarded as its transcendent
root.[2]
Political and social realms quickly followed suit. Autonomous statecraft
and excessive individualism in the social order were the elements
that shaped a dominant paradigm that did not prove successful.[3]
A few centuries of unbridled activity
has led Western philosophy to an impasse.[4]
A similar situation could be discerned in the arena of politics, humanities,
and social sciences. The impasse, though with different implications,
was reached by the parallel paradigm of autonomous politics and
social sciences which had refused to accept any "infusion" from
a higher domain.
The need for a revision of the paradigm is being felt. The opinions about
the nature and origin of the "infusions" that could rectify or
change it for the better are, however, divergent. Some try to
find an alternative from within the dominant paradigm. Others
suggest the possibility of a search for these "infusions" in a
different direction: different cultures, other civilizations,
religious doctrines, sapiential traditions. SSR, true to its principle,
has decided to look for it in the Scriptures, because the issue
is just as important for the contemporary world as it was for
the past, and we are often unaware that contemporary arguments
continue in the same lines as earlier theological debates.[5]
The basic assumptions of the dominant discourse and the prevalent world-view
in this regard should be brought into question.[6]
With this end in view I would like to make a probe into the viability
or even authenticity and soundness of the underpinnings of the
contemporary mind-set and ask the inevitable question, "What
is Man" according to the Scriptures? The other inevitable question,
which dovetails with the earlier one, lurks in the wings, "What
is the cosmos"?
"To be human means to be more than human," St. Augustine
recalled. What does this "more" indicate? The supra individual
dimensions of human personality as well as the cosmic order is
linked up with the concept of reality itself: reality as a multistory
building or as a mansion that has no upper story. This in turn
is connected to the microcosmic reality of the human self, of
which we have two models. One regards the human self as the point
of intersection where the Divine touches the human realm, and
this view situates the human microcosm in a hierarchical relationship
with other levels of being. This model and its governing concept
of reality are the shared heritage of all the known spiritual,
metaphysical and religious traditions of mankind. Lord Northbourne
summarizes the two approaches to the question, "What is Man?"
in a simple and straightforward manner:
"Are you in fact a being created by God in His own image,
appointed by him as his representative on earth and accordingly
given dominion over it, and equipped for the fulfillment of that
function with a relative freedom of choice in thought and action
which reflects the total absence of constraint attributable to
God alone, but at the same time makes you liable to err? Are you
essentially that, and only accidentally anything else?
The second is a biological, evolutional model:
Or, alternatively, are you essentially a specimen of
the most advanced product so far known of a continuous and progressive
evolution, starting from the more or less fortuitous stringing
together of a protein molecule in some warm primeval mud, that
mud itself being a rare and more or less fortuitous product of
the evolution of the galaxies from a starting point about which
the physicists have not yet quite made up their minds?"[7]
In other words, the two models suggest that man could either be a Viceroy,
Vicegerent or Pontiff or else a cunning animal with no destiny
beyond the grave.[8]
Regarding the former model, S.
H. Nasr says:
"The concept of man as the pontiff,
bridge between Heaven and earth, which is the traditional view
of the anthropos, lies at the antipode of the modern conception
of man which envisages him as the Promethean earthly creature
who has rebelled against Heaven and tried to misappropriate the
role of the Divinity for himself. Pontifical man, who, in the
sense used here, is none other than the traditional man, lives
in full awareness of the Origin which contains his own perfection
and whose primordial purity and wholeness he seeks to emulate,
recapture, and transmit .... He is aware that precisely because
he is human there is both grandeur and danger connected with all
that he does and thinks. His actions have an effect upon his own
being beyond the limited spatio-temporal conditions in which such
actions take place. He knows that somehow the bark which is to
take him to the shore beyond after that fleeting journey which
comprised his earthly life is constructed by what he does and
how he lives while he is in the human state."[9]
There is a tremendous difference that separates the shared perspective of the Abrahamic faiths represented
by the foregoing texts and the contemporary paradigm of progress
and social development that Tage Lindbom has aptly described as
"the kingdom of man." Given that the prevalent paradigm is losing
its viability and there is a growing mistrust about its future,
we are hardly in a position at this juncture to reject any alternative
out of hand. "Infusions" from other domains hitherto considered
alien to social development may be carefully examined, and we
can ask ourselves, individually as well as collectively, which
of the alternatives has a greater ring of truth. The message which
this overall intellectual exercise conveys is not to underestimate
the magnitude of the challenge presented by these now unfamiliar
"infusions" and systematic claims of the Sriptures, past philosophies
and sapiential doctrines. For what they say to the current thought
and the contemporary mind-set is in effect "either accept this
overall standpoint or do better by finding or inventing a superior
system of thought." The modern world, in all probability, does
not have a superior system of thought that provides sufficient
grounds for disregarding the traditional system.
*****
Every 'revealed' tradition
is agreed upon the essential structure of the human psyche, of
that invisible inner universe which is the properly human kingdom,
from which we have 'fallen' into natural life. All hold our present
state of consciousness as imperfect in relation to that which
we essentially are: man as first created in the order of 'origins',
by which a temporal beginning in the sense of the scientific evolutionists[10]
is not of course meant,
but rather the type, pattern, or archetype of the anthropos,
'made in the image of God'. The 'human', according to tradition,
is not, as for our own society, natural man but the archetypal
perfect humanity, of whom every average man is a more or less
obscured and distorted image. Our own secular society has sought
to make everyone happy by taking as the norm 'fallen' man, Plato's
dwellers in the Cave; but flattery of our fallen, or forgetful
condition can only superficially and briefly deceive us into believing
that all is well, that we are all we should be, since each of
us carries within ourselves, however obscured, the image of the
anthropos.[11]
The goal of human life is the total realization and
attainment in our lives of this archetypal humanity, our true
spiritual identity.
The metaphysical doctrine
of man in the fullness of his being, in what he is, but not necessarily
what he appears to be, is expounded in various languages in the
different traditions with diverse degrees of emphasis which are
far from negligible. Some traditions are based more upon the divinized
human receptacle while others reject this perspective in favour
of the Divinity in Itself. Some depict man in his state of fall
from his primordial perfection and address their message to this
fallen creature, whereas others, while being fully aware that
the humanity they are addressing is not the society of perfect
men living in paradise, address that primordial nature which still
survives in man despite the layers of "forgetfulness" and imperfection
which separate man from himself.[12]
And let us not forget that
the image of man is always the image that man conceives of himself.
The image bears back upon its author, who thus never quite frees
himself from the spell it casts upon him.[13]
In what follows I would
try to have a look at the Islamic image of man
preceded by a few remarks on the Jewish and Christian anthropology.
Expressions differ. But the children of Ibrahim share the basic
insights that inform the concept of man common to all the three
Abrahamic traditons. Other religious and metaphsical traditions
of mankind also express the same vision though in a different
mode of expression and in a different terminology but that is
out of our purview at the moment.[14]
Dust and Divinity
Grappling with the most crucial element in human thinking,
when the Jewish
tradition tried to find meaning in human existence,
it faced the self-directed question "what does it mean to be a
human self?" Jews were intensely interested in human nature, but
not for the brute facts of the case. They wanted truth-for-life.
They wanted to understand the human condition so as to avail themselves
of its highest reaches. They were acutely aware of human limitations.
Compared with the majesty of the heavens, people are "dust",[15]
facing the forces of nature they can be "crushed like a moth".[16]
Their time upon the earth is swiftly spent, like grass that in
the morning flourishes, but "in the evening fades and withers".[17]
Even this brief span is laced with pain that causes our years
to end "as a sigh".[18]
Not once but repeatedly the Jews were forced to the rhetorical
question: "What are human beings" that God should give them a
second thought?[19]
"Human beings ... are only animals. For the fate of humans and the fate
of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other".[20]
Here is a biological interpretation of the human species as uncompromising
as any the nineteenth century ever produced. The significant point,
however, is that this passing thought did not prevail. The striking
feature of the Jewish view of human nature is that without flinching
at its frailty, it went on to affirm its unspeakable grandeur.
We are a blend of dust and divinity. The word unspeakable
is not hyperbole. The King James Version translates the central
Jewish claim concerning the human station as follows: "Thou hast
made him a little lower than the angels".[21]
That last word, we are told by Prof. Huston Smith, is a straight
mistranslation, for the original Hebrew plainly reads "a little
lower than the gods [or God].[22]
Why did the translators reduce deity to angels? The answer seems
obvious: It was not erudition that they lacked, but rather the
boldness — one is tempted to say nerve — of the Hebrews.
We can respect their reserve. Yet no amount of realism could dampen
the aspiration of the Jews. Human beings who on occasion so justly
deserve the epithets "maggot and worm"[23]
are equally the beings whom God has "crowned with glory and honour".[24]
There is a rabbinic saying to the effect that whenever a man or
woman walks down the street he or she is preceded by an invisible
choir of angels crying, "Make way, make way! Make way for the
image of God."
We shall not have plumbed the full scope of its realism,
however, until we add that they saw the basic human limitation
as moral rather than physical. Human beings are not only frail;
they are sinners: "I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother
conceived me".[25]
The
verse contributes something of great importance to Jewish anthropology.[26]
Meant to be noble, they are usually something less; meant to be
generous, they withhold from others. Created more than animal,
they often sink to being nothing else.[27]
Human beings, once created, make or break themselves, forging
their own destinies through their decisions. "Cease to do evil,
learn to do good".[28]
It is only for human beings that this injunction holds. "I have
set before you life and death ... therefore choose life".[29]
Finally, it followed from the Jewish concept of their
God as a loving God that people are God's beloved children. In
one of the tenderest metaphors of the entire Bible, Hosea pictures
God yearning over people as though they were toddling infants.[30]
Even in this world, immense as it is and woven of the mighty powers
of nature, men and women can walk with the confidence of children
in a home in which they are fully accepted.
What are the ingredients of the most creatively meaningful
image of human existence that the mind can conceive? Remove human
frailty — as grass, as a sigh, as dust, as moth-crushed — and
the estimate becomes romantic. Remove grandeur — a
little lower than God — and aspiration recedes. Remove
sin — the tendency to miss the mark — and sentimentality
threatens. Remove freedom — choose ye this day! — and responsibility goes by the board. Remove, finally, divine
parentage and life becomes estranged, cut loose and adrift
on a cold, indifferent sea. With all that has been discovered
about human life in the intervening 2,500 years, it is difficult
to find a flaw in this assessment.
The Christian
tradition has seen a different unfolding of the concept[31]
though it shares the
original insight with regard to the basic meaning
in human existence. 'What is man?' We find the question in the Book of Job, who asks, 'What
is man, that thou shouldst magnify him? and that thou shouldst
set thy heart upon him?[32]
Job is quoting from
a psalm (8:4) which reminds us of the paradox of human littleness
and human greatness:[33]
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,
the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man,
that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thus visitest
him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and
hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have
dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things
under his feet.
All these texts look
back, finally, to the first chapter of Genesis,[34] where the creation of
man is described: "So God created man in his own image, in
the image of God created He him." The passage goes on to describe
the dominion given to man over all living things on the earth.
When Job
reminds God of his exaltation of man he does so in bitterness,
complaining that man is a creature of dust who goes down to the
grave unregarded. Nevertheless the theme which runs through the
Bible, from Genesis to the Epistle to the Hebrews is man as the
image of God, bearer of the divine imprint; Jesus, as the Son
of Man, is the realization of the first-created humanity, the
anthropos, as imagined by the Creator before the Fall.
The Fall is the result of Adam's 'sleep', a loss of consciousness
or a 'descent', as the Greeks would say, from a spiritual to a
natural mode of consciousness, with a consequent self-identification
not with the spiritual but with the natural body; which is, as
Job complains, a thing of dust.
Imago Dei — God's Vicegerent
Turning to the Islamic tradition we find that the Prophet of Islam also
referred to this peculiar characteristic of human beings (a blend
of dust and divinity) when he repeated the famous Biblical
saying quoted above — a saying that has played an important role
in Jewish and Christian understandings of what it means to be
human: "God created Adam in his own form"(khlaqa Allahu al-Adama
'ala suratihi). Many authorities understand
a similar meaning from the Qur'anic verse, "God taught Adam the
name(s), all of them".[35]
That is, all things are present in human beings, because God taught them
the names or realities of all things.[36]
The human being was created in God's form, embracing all God's attributes.
The difference between the whole universe and the human being
is that the signs are infinitely dispersed in the universe, while
they are concentrated into a single, intense focus in each human
individual.
God produces an inconceivably enormous cosmos with an infinite diversity
of created things. If we investigate the creatures one by one
the task can never be completed but if we speak in general terms,
it is possible to classify created things into categories. The
cosmos can be divided into two basic worlds, the unseen and the
visible, sometimes referred to as "the heavens and the earth",
or "the spiritual world and the bodily world". We have mentioned
during our discussions that there is a third world that is both
similar to and different from these two basic worlds, called the
"world of imagination". If these three worlds represent the general
structure of the total macrocosm, the human being can be called
a microcosm, since three parallel domains are found within each
individual: spirit, soul, and body.
When we want to look at other bodily creatures; that is, those physical
things that fill the visible universe we find inanimate objects,
plants, and animals. What is interesting for our purposes is how
these three kinds of creature manifest the signs of God, the divine
attributes that become visible through them. Which attributes
become visible in inanimate objects? Perhaps the best way to answer
the question is to say that more than anything else, inanimate
objects conceal God's attributes instead of revealing them. They
tell us what God is not rather than what He is.
In contrast to inanimate things, plants display several obvious divine
attributes. It is easy to see that plants are alive, and life
is the first of the "Seven Leaders", the seven divine attributes
that predominate in creation. Plants have a certain knowledge.
They certainly have desire: they want water, sunlight, fertilizer,
and they trace elements. If you treat them well and give them
what they really desire – like rich manure — they even show their
gratitude by producing enormous crops; they are not ungrateful
truth–concealers. Plants have power and can destroy stones and
concrete, but they need time. But all these divine attributes
are found rather feebly within plants, so tanzih [incomparability; see note 47] outweighs tashbih
[representation/nearness; see note 51].
In contrast, the divine attributes found in animals are much more intense.
Moreover, animals add other attributes that are difficult to find
in plants. The knowledge possessed by animals can be extraordinary,
though it is always rather specialized.[37]
The animal kingdom represents an incredible diversity
of knowledge and skills, divided among a vast number of specialized
organisms. Desire is also clearly present in animals, but each
species desires different things, and thus a great natural harmony
is created.
Both plants and animals represent a tremendous variety of specific signs.
Each plant or animal species is a special configuration of divine
attributes that is not reproduced in any other species.
Human beings are a species of animal, and they share many characteristics
with them. But there is one remarkable characteristic that differentiates
them from all other animals: Each animal is what it is, with little
or no confusion. But human beings are unknown factors. Each species
of animals is dominated by one or a few characteristics. The human
being is infinitely malleable. What then is a human being? What
brings about this fundamental difference between human beings
and other animals? Muslims answer these questions in many ways.
The easiest approach within our current discussion is to continue
investigating the nature of the relationship between human beings
and the divine attributes. Every creature other
than a human being is a sign of God which reflects a specific,
limited, and defined configuration of divine attributes. In contrast,
a human being reflects God as God. In other creatures, some divine
attributes are permanently manifest while others are permanently
hidden. In human beings, all divine attributes are present, and
any of them can become manifest if circumstances are appropriate.
When it is said that everything is within human beings, this is not meant
in a literal sense. The principle here is easy to understand if
we briefly look at the divine names. God created the universe
as the sum total of his signs. The signs explain the nature of
God inasmuch as he discloses and reveals himself. What does he
disclose? He discloses his attributes, such as life, knowledge,
power, and speech. The cosmos in its full temporal and spatial
extension — everything other than God — illustrates all God's
manifest attributes. Hence the macrocosm is an image, or form,
of God.
The concentration of the attributes within human being makes people God's
vicegerents, that is, creatures who can perform the same functions
as God, with all due respect to tanzih. Human beings manifest
all God's attributes, but in a weakened and dim manner, demanded
by the fact that, although they are similar to God in respect
of having been created in his form, they are different in respect
of spatial and temporal limitations. God remains infinitely beyond
any human being.
God created human beings in his own form, which is to say that he taught
them all the names. Adam had an actualized knowledge of these
names, but he was still susceptible to temporary forgetfulness.
The rest of the human race is born into a heedlessness that is
more than temporary. The divine qualities are latent within them,
but these qualities need to be brought out from latency and be
embodied in people's minds and activities.
God had created Adam to be his vicegerent. Vicegerency is the birthright
of his children. However, they will only achieve the vicegerency
if they follow the prophets. They must adopt the faith and practice
given by God through the scriptures: "God has promised those who
have faith and work wholesome deeds to make them vicegerents in
the earth, even as He made those who were before them vicegerents".[38]
To be God's vicegerent means, among other things, to manifest all the
divine attributes in the form of which human beings were created.
Only by embodying God's own qualities can human being represent
Him. But we know that most people do not live up to their potential.
Even if they do have faith and work wholesome deeds, they never
become dependable servants of God, because caprice and heedlessness
often make them ignore or forget their proper duties.
*****
"God created
Adam in His own form". Likewise, man virtually has all the Divine
Names engraved in the very clay of his being. It is because of
this divine similitude that God has called him to be His khalifah,
his 'vicegerent' on earth. "Vicegerency (khilafah) was assigned to Adam,
to the exclusion of the other creatures of the universe, because
God created him according to His image. A vicegerent must possess
the attributes of the one he represents; otherwise he is not truly
a vicegerent."[39]
But these two favours
granted exclusively to man, his divine form and his governance,
simultaneously expose him to the greatest danger of his existence:
the illusion of sovereignty. As the Shaykh al-Akbar Ibn 'Arabi
points out on a number of occasions, being conscious of his original
theomorphism leads man to forget that he was created from clay — the most humble of substances and
a symbol of his 'ontological servitude' ('ubudiyya). The
power and the authority that his mandate grants him lead him to
consider himself autonomous. He appropriates sovereignty, which
rightfully belongs only to Him Whom he represents, and he betrays
the oath of vassalage, actualization of the human theomorphic
nature (ta'alluh), that he made when he replied to the
question "Am I Not your Lord?" with "Certainly, we are
witnesses!"[40]
When he
refuses to assume his status as 'servant of God' ('abd Allah),
he is henceforth unworthy of being 'God's vicegerent' (khalifah
Allah). "The homeland of man is his servitude; he who leaves
it is forbidden to take on the Divine Names."[41]
To regain his original
nobility, he must reactivate the divine characteristics inscribed
in his primordial form; characteristics that his pretension and
ignorance had covered up. "The Prophet said, 'I have come to complete
the 'noble character traits.'' He who lives in accordance with
the 'noble character traits' follows a law of God even if he is
not aware of it […] To perfect one's character means to strip
it of all that tends to give it a vile status. Actually, vile
characteristics are vile only by accident, while noble characteristics
are noble by essence, for what is vile has no foundation in the
divine while noble characteristics do have foundation in the divine.
The Prophet perfected the noble character traits to the extent
that he established the ways through which a character can maintain
a noble status and exempt from vile status."[42]
Underlying
this passage is a major theme in Ibn 'Arabi's teaching:[43]
It is by the strictest
and most absolute observance of Divine Law that man is able to
re-establish his original theomorphism. Every quality, including
for example jealousy and anger, is noble in essence, since each
has its root in a divine attribute. A quality becomes 'ignoble'
and reprehensible only to the extent that it exists outside the
limits imposed by the Law. Consequently, it is in conforming to
the Prophet's sunnah and to the Law that was revealed to
him that man re-integrates in himself the divine characteristics
that lie dormant deep within him.
Here another
aspect of the same question may also be considered. The Qur'an is
God's Word, and God's Word is his self-expression.[44]
Likewise,
the human being is God's form — therefore his self-expression.
But the Qur'an takes oral and verbal form, while the human being
takes spiritual and bodily form. The Qur'an's outward form is
fully manifest, in the sense that it was received once and for
all and never changes. But no human being is fully present in
this world at any time from birth to death. The Qur'an is all
there, but none of us is all here.[45]
The point
of this comparison between the oral word of God, which is the
Qur'an, and the embodied form of God, which is the human being,
is to bring out the Islamic teaching that in the Qur'an we see
God's self-expression fully manifest. In the human being, we cannot
see the whole because we are situated on a small segment of the
historical unfolding of that whole, an unfolding that precedes
our life in this world and extends beyond our death. The Qur'an
is thus a full image of God, but we, at any given point, are partial
and incomplete images. Made in God's form, we have the potential
to bring all God's attributes into externalized and embodied existence
through our activities. But in order to grasp what those divine
attributes are — attributes which comprise ourselves — we
need an external model. That model, for Muslims, is the Qur'an,
which displays the image openly. Muslims must follow the Prophet
so that the Qur'an becomes their character and determines the way
they think, feel, and act. This is not a closing down, but an
opening up:[46]
whomsoever God desires to guide,
He expands his breast to Islam; whomsoever He desires to misguide,
He makes his breast narrow, tight.
Islam is to embody the Qur'an. It is an opening up because, through imitating
the Prophet and gaining the Qur'an as their character, people
come to establish real relationships with every attribute of Reality;
that is, everything good, beautiful, positive, praiseworthy, and
lovable. When people follow any other way — or rather, any
non-prophetic way — they constrict themselves; they close down their
personalities to many of the diverse dimensions of the divine
form that make them what they are. To model themselves upon anything
other than God is to fall into shirk: it is
to be confused about their own reality; to think that they are
this or that, or that they should be this or that, and to be unaware
that God is not this or that, but the creator of every this and
that. Likewise, his image cannot be limited to this and that,
but embraces every this and that without being held back by any
of them. The vision of human perfection that Islam offers is one
of infinite possibility conjoined with total fulfillment, everlasting
good fortune, and complete happiness.
The whole book, just as it expresses God, also expresses the perfected
human substance of God's foremost messenger. Muhammad is the actualized
divine form who, for Muslims, stands above the other actualized
divine forms, the prophets and friends of God from Adam down to
the end of time.
Muhammad is a mortal like everyone else, the Qur'an says. He is a human
being.[47]
But remember
that human beings were taught all the names, and the angels prostrated
themselves before Adam. To be human is not exactly ordinary. It
is a divine Trust, a special privilege, and very few people live
up to it.[48]
What distinguishes
Muhammad from others is that he has lived up to the responsibilities
of being human.[49]
Yes, Muhammad
is a mortal like other people. But no, he is not forgetful and
negligent like them, refusing to carry the Trust. He has carried
it, and the whole world benefits as a result. The qualities he
manifests are not his own qualities. They are the divine names
and attributes.
The downward journey of mankind in terms of human perfection needs also
to be taken into consideration, and we shall turn to it shortly,
but here some further remarks on the Islamic conception of
human beings with regard to the idea of "trust" seem called for.
The Trust
It is impossible to understand Islam's
conception of prophecy without understanding its view of human
beings; and likewise, we cannot grasp what a human being is until
we grasp the role of prophets in human history.
The story begins with Adam, as it does
in Judaism and Christianity, but the Qur'an's depiction of Adam
diverges in important details from that of the Hebrew Bible. The
result is an explanation of human nature that can be surprising — and even
shocking — to people familiar only with certain other
interpretations of Adam's fall.
The Qur'anic details of Adam's creation
are well known.[50]
Here we can provide a few remarks that bring into focus
Islam's understanding of what it means to be human. We may remember
that Adam is the first human being and the prototype for the whole
race. What is said about Adam has something to do with the situation
of everyone.
Human beings have specific characteristics
that set them apart from other creatures. In one famous verse,
the Qur'an refers to the sum total of these specific characteristics
as "the Trust" (amana):
We offered the Trust
to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, but they refused
to carry it and were afraid of it. And the human being carried
it. Surely he is very ignorant, a great wrongdoer (33:72)
In order
to begin the task of understanding the sense of this verse, we
have to remember that a trust is something precious that one person
asks another person to hold for safekeeping. In this case, God
has entrusted something to human beings, and they are to hold
it for him. On the appropriate occasion, they will have to return
it, as the word itself implies. The Qur'an says, "God commands
you to deliver trusts back to their owners" (4:58).
What have
human beings received on trust from God? Like all other created
things, human beings have received everything they have from God.
Nothing good belongs to them, since "The good, all of it, is
in Thy hands." They will have to give back everything that
they have, sooner or later, simply through the natural course
of events. However, all creatures are compelled to give this kind
of trust back to God, and human beings are no different here from
anything else. Creatures are all muslim and 'abd in
the most general sense of the terms, so they have no choice but
to give back to God what belongs to Him. Hence, this compulsory
trust is not at issue here, since choice does not enter into it.
The verse of the Trust is apparently referring to some sort of
free choice, and it clearly is talking about something that pertains
exclusively to human beings.
The heavens,
the earth, and the mountains refused to carry the Trust. The term
"heavens" refers to the high and luminous things of the universe
and "earth" to the low and dark things. "Mountains" seems to mean
everything that is neither high nor low. These three terms can
be understood as referring to everything other than human beings.
Human beings are neither high like the angels, nor low like the
minerals, nor in between like the plants and animals. Or rather,
they possess all three qualities: They are high through their
spirits, low through their bodies, and in between through their
souls. As microcosms, they embrace the heavens, the earth, and
the mountains.
Most authorities
maintain that the Trust is God's vicegerency. Only human beings
are able to carry it because the vicegerency depends upon having
been taught all the names. But it is not enough simply to be human
to carry the Trust. People have to accept freely to be God's servants
before they can become his vicegerents. Hence, carrying the Trust
involves human freedom. Compulsory muslims — like the heavens, the earth, and the mountains — cannot
carry it.[51] One must be a voluntary
muslim through accepting the guidance offered by God and
putting it into practice.[52]
The verse
of the Trust concludes by saying that the human being "is very
ignorant, a great wrongdoer!" The most obvious interpretation
of these qualities is that they refer to those children of Adam
who do not live up to the Trust. All children of Adam have been
given the Trust, but most of them pretend to be ignorant of the
truth of their own situation, of the fact that they are, in essence;
vicegerents of God. And they are wrongdoers; that is, they put
things in the wrong places and overstep the bounds of what is
true and right. They arrogate the power and prerogatives of the
vicegerency to themselves. They do not treat the divine attributes
that they have received from God as a trust. On the contrary,
they act as if the attributes belong to themselves and can be
used in any way they see fit.
Muslim
thinkers have justified this Qur'anic picture of things in many
ways, but we will limit ourselves to commenting on a single Qur'anic
verse that they frequently cite in this context. Having created
Adam, God wanted to make clear to him and to his children why
they had been created. Hence, he gathered all the children of
Adam together and spoke to them. The Qur'an reports what happened
as follows:[53]
When your Lord took their
offspring from the loins of the children of Adam and made them
bear witness concerning themselves "Am I not your Lord?"-they
said, "Yes, we bear witness!"
This verse
indicates in mythic fashion that human beings, somewhere in the
depths of their souls, have all borne witness to God's Lordship.
The Arabic word employed for "we bear witness" is the verb from
which the word Shahadah (witnessing) is derived. The event
referred to here is commonly called the Covenant of Alast,
the word alast being the Arabic for "Am I not?" At this
time, all human beings entered into a covenant with God by acknowledging
Him as the one and sole Reality and agreeing to worship none but
him.[54]
The verse
of Alast continues by explaining God's purpose in calling
everyone to witness:[55]
Lest you say on the Day of Resurrection, "As for
us, we were heedless of this, "or lest you say, "Our fathers associated
others with God before us, and we were their offspring after them.
What, wilt Thou destroy us for what the vain-doers did?"
Interpretations
of this verse differ, but most authorities maintain that it means
that on the day of judgment, people will be held responsible for
recognizing the truth of God being the one and sole Reality, whether
or not they have heard the message of a prophet. However, they
will not be held responsible for the specific teachings of a prophet
if such teachings have not reached them.
*****
To have a broader look at the question, by taking other traditions of mankind
into consideration as well, the genesis of man, according to all
traditions, occurred in many stages: first, in the Divinity Itself
so that there is an uncreated aspect to man. That is why man can
experience annihilation in God and subsistence in Him[56]
and achieve
supreme union. Then man is born in the Logos which is in fact
the prototype of man and another face of that same reality which
the Muslims call the Universal Man, which each tradition identifies
with its founder. Next, man is created on the cosmic level and
what the Bible refers to as the celestial paradise, where he is
dressed with a luminous body in conformity with the paradisal
state. He then descends to the level of the terrestrial paradise
and is given yet another body of an ethereal and incorruptible
nature. Finally, he is born into the physical world with a body
which perishes but which has its principle in the subtle and luminous
bodies belonging to the earlier stages of the elaboration of man
and his genesis before his appearance on earth.[57]
The traditional doctrine of man, in general and non-theological
terms, is based in one way or another on the concept of primordial
man as the source of perfection, the total and complete reflection
of the Divinity and the archetypal reality containing the possibilities
of cosmic existence itself. Man is the model of the universe because
he is himself the reflection of those possibilities in the principal
domain which manifest themselves as the world. Man is more than
merely man so that this way of envisaging his rapport with respect
to the cosmos is far from being anthropomorphic in the usual sense
of his term. The world is not seen as the reflection of man qua
man but of man as being himself the total and plenary reflection
of all those Divine Qualities whose reflections, in scattered
and segmented fashion, comprise the manifested order.
Man's actions have an effect upon his own being beyond
the limited spatio-temporal conditions in which such actions take
place. He knows that somehow the bark which is to take him to
the shore beyond, after that fleeting journey which comprises
his earthly life, is constructed by what he does and how he lives
while he is in the human state.
*****
The image of man as depicted in various traditions
has not been identical. Some have emphasized the human state more
than others, and they have envisaged eschatological realities
differently. But there is no doubt that all traditions are based
on the central and dominant images of the Origin and the Center
and see the final end of man in the state or reality which is
other than this terrestrial life with which forgetful or fallen
man identifies himself once he is cut off from a revelation or
religion that constantly hearkens man back to the Origin and the
Center.
That primordial
and plenary nature of man which Islam calls the "Universal or
Perfect Man" (al-insan al-kamil) and to which the sapiential
doctrines of Graeco-Alexandrian antiquity also allude in nearly
the same terms (except for the Abrahamic and specifically Islamic
aspects of the doctrines absent from the Neoplatonic and Hermetic
sources) reveals human reality to possess three fundamental aspects.
The Universal Man, whose reality is realized only by the prophets
and great seers since only they are human in the full sense of
the word, is first of all the archetypal reality of the universe;
second, it is the instrument or means whereby revelation descends
into the world; and third, it is the perfect model for the spiritual
life and the ultimate dispenser of esoteric knowledge. By virtue
of the reality of the Universal Man, terrestrial man is able to
gain access to revelation and tradition, hence to the sacred.
Finally, through this reality which is none other than man's own
reality actualized, man is able to follow that path of perfection
which will allow him to gain knowledge of the sacred and to become
fully himself. The saying of the Delphic oracle, "Know thyself,"
or that of the Prophet of Islam, "He who knoweth himself knoweth
his Lord," is true not because man as an earthly creature
is the measure of all things but because man is himself the reflection
of that archetypal reality which is the measure of all things.
That is why in traditional sciences of man the knowledge of the
cosmos and the metacosmic reality are usually not expounded in
terms of the reality of terrestrial man. Rather, the knowledge
of man is expounded through and in reference to the macrocosm
and metacosm, since they reflect in a blinding fashion and in
an objective mode what man is if only he were to become what he
really is. The traditional doctrine of Primordial or Universal
Man with all its variations — Adam Kadmon, Jen, Purusa,
al-insan al-Kamil, and the like — embraces at once the metaphysical,
cosmogonic, revelatory, and initiatic functions of that reality
which constitutes the totality of the human state and which places
before man both the grandeur of what he can be and the pettiness
and wretchedness of what he is in most cases, in comparison with
the ideal which he always carries within himself. Terrestrial
man is nothing more than the externalization, coagulation, and
often inversion and perversion of this idea and ideal of the Universal
Man cast in the direction of the periphery. He is a being caught
in the field of the centrifugal forces that characterize terrestrial
existence as such, but he is also constantly attracted by the
Centre where the inner man is always present.
It must
be remembered that man, as first created, was fully endowed with
intellectual intuition; in him the Fall had not yet obstructed
the flow of remembrance from symbol to Archetype. There is consequently
no fundamental difference between the Qur'anic doctrine that God
taught Adam the names of things[58] and the verse of Genesis
which tells us that God brought His creatures to Adam to see what
he would name them.[59]
The two scriptures differ
simply inasmuch as Genesis is here the more fully informative
in telling us that language came to Adam not by any outward revelation
through the intermediary of an Archangel but through a no less Providential
inward intellection. Both scriptures affirm, for Adam, a God-vouchsafed
authority to give each thing its name, which amounts to saying
that these names, far from being arbitrary, were the phonations
that exactly corresponded to what they expressed, echoes or symbols
of the verbal archetypes that are the means of celestial converse.
*****
Turning now to the downward
journey of mankind we can observe that the image of man has undergone
a drastic change, first in the West and then, through its all-pervasive
influence, encroaching on the worldviews of other traditions.
In the recent decades many attempts have been made to trace the
stages of the "disfiguration of the image of man in the West"
beginning with the first stages of the promethean revolt in the
Renaissance, some of whose causes are to be seen already in the
late Middle Ages, and terminating with the infra-human condition
into which modern man is being forced through a supposedly humanistic
civilization. In the history of the West, the decomposition and
disfiguration of the image of man as being himself imago Dei
came into the open with that worldly humanism which characterizes
the Renaissance and which is most directly reflected in its worldly art.
But there are certain elements of earlier origin which also contributed
to this sudden fall, usually interpreted as the age of the discovery
of man at the moment when the hold of the Christian tradition
upon Western man was beginning to weaken.[60]
The other elements
which brought about the destruction of the image of pontifical
man and helped the birth of that Promethean rebel with whom modern
man usually identifies himself were mostly associated with the
phenomena of the Renaissance itself and its aftermath or had their
root in the late medieval period. These factors include the destruction
of the unity and hierarchy of knowledge which resulted from the eclipse of the sapiential
dimension of tradition in the West. From this event there resulted
in turn the emptying of the sciences of nature of their esoteric
content and their quantification, the rise of skepticism and agnosticism
combined with a hatred of wisdom in its Christian form, and the
loss of knowledge based upon certitude, which was itself the result
of reducing Being to a mental concept and a denial of its unifying
and sanctifying rays.
At the
Renaissance man began to analyse mental reflections and psychic
reactions and thus to be interested in the "subject" pole to the
detriment of the "object" pole of knowledge; in becoming "subjective"
in this sense, he ceased to be symbolist and became rationalist
since reason is the thinking ego. The transition from objectivism
to subjectivism reflects and repeats in its own way the fall of
Adam and the loss of Paradise; in losing a symbolist and contemplative
perspective, founded both on an impersonal intelligence and on the
metaphysical transparency of things, man has gained the fallacious
riches of the ego; the world of divine images has become
a world of words. In all cases of this kind, heaven — or a heaven — is shut off from above us without
our noticing the fact and we discover in compensation an earth
long un-appreciated, or so it seems to us, a homeland which opens
its arms to welcome its children and wants to make us forget all
lost Paradises. It is the embrace of Maya, the sirens'
song; Maya, instead of guiding us, imprisons us. The Renaissance
thought that it had discovered man, whose pathetic convulsions
it admired; from the point of view of laicism in all its forms,
man as such had become to all intents and purposes good, and the
earth too had become good and looked immensely rich and unexplored;
instead of living only "by halves" one could at last live fully,
be fully man and fully on earth; one was no longer a kind of half-angel,
fallen and exiled; one had become a whole being, but by the downward
path. The Reformation, whatever certain of its tendencies may
have been, had as an overall result the relegation of God to Heaven —
to a Heaven henceforth distant and more and more neutralized —
on the pretext that God keeps close to us "through Christ" in
a sort of biblical atmosphere, and that He resembles us as we
resemble Him. All this brought with it an apparently miraculous
enrichment of the aspect of things as "subject" and "earth", but
a prodigious impoverishment in their aspect as "object" and "Heaven".
At the time of the Revolution of the late eighteenth century,
the earth had become definitely and exclusively the goal of man;
the "Supreme Being" was merely a "consolation" and as such a target
for ridicule; the seemingly infinite multitude of things on earth
called for an infinity of activities, which furnished a pretext
for rejecting contemplation and with it repose in "being" and
in the profound nature of things; man was at last free to busy
himself, on the hither side of all transcendence, with the discovery
of the terrestrial world and the exploitation of its riches. He
was at last rid of symbols, rid of metaphysical transparency;
there was no longer anything but the agreeable or the disagreeable,
the useful or the useless, whence the anarchic and irresponsible
development of the experimental sciences. The flowering of a dazzling
"culture" which took place in or immediately after these epochs,
thanks to the appearance of many men of genius, seems clearly
to confirm the impression, deceptive though it be, of a liberation
and a progress, indeed of a "great period"; whereas in reality
this development represents no more than a compensation on a lower
plane such as cannot fail to occur when a higher plane was abandoned.
Once Heaven
was closed and man was in effect installed in God's place, the
objective measurements of things were virtually or actually lost.
They were replaced by subjective measurements, purely human and
conjectural pseudo-values, and thus man became involved in a movement
of a kind that cannot be halted, since, in the absence of celestial
and stable values, there is no longer any reason for calling a
halt, so that in the end a stage is reached at which human values
are replaced by infra-human values, up to a point at which the
very idea of truth is abolished.[61]
*****
All the great religious traditions have been attempts to cultivate the
human soul. Our materialist civilization has concerned itself
with the well-being of the naked apes, with food and shelter and
the learning of the skills necessary to the survival of the body;
but any attempt to bring order to the inner worlds, to nourish
the specifically human, has gone by default. Not altogether so,
of course, for the past is still powerful and two thousand years
of Christendom and all the wisdom of the Greek and the Hebrew
traditions before that are still there; or at least with the educated
sections of society, who are less at the mercy of current ideologies.
Pythagoras continues to impose upon the soul the order of the
diatonic scale through such music as is still composed according
to its laws.[62]
Let me remind you that we are still considering the question 'What is man?'
Man is, in truth, not a mortal worm but a spiritual being, immaterial,
immeasurable, who is never born and never dies, because spirit
is not bounded or contained within the categories of the material
world of time and space, of duration and extension. In this sense,
we are immortal, eternal, boundless within our own universe. Yet
of the kingdom that is truly ours, specifically human, we have
realized very little.
Our definition of homo sapiens being deiformity– which makes of
him a total being, hence a theophany – it is only logical and
legitimate that, from the point of view of Islam, the final word
on anthropology is conformity to celestial norms and movement
towards God; or in other words, our perfection in the likeness
of concentric circles and centripetal radii; both of which are
disposed in view of the divine Center.
Our materialist secular society altogether fails to help educate the human
soul, the invisible humanity, to flourish in its deformity. It has
all to be remade; reconstructed piece by piece. This re-discovery,
re-learning, is a long, hard task — a lifelong task for those
who undertake it; yet it is the most rewarding of all tasks since
it is a work of self-discovery which is at the same time a universal
knowledge, 'knowledge absolute' as the Vedas claim.
On earth the divine Sun is now veiled; as a result the measures of things
become relative, and man can take himself for what he is not,
and things can appear to be what they are not. Once the veil is
torn, at the time of that birth that we call death, the divine
Sun appears; measures become absolute; beings and things become
what they are and follow the ways of their true nature!
"You were heedless of this — therefore We have removed
from you your covering, and your sight today is piercing" [63]
ENDNOTES
[1] The Biblical expression says "in the image
of God". In the Islamic tradition it appears in the following
Hadith report "khalaq Allahu 'l-adama 'ala suratihi".
See Bukhari, Al-Sahih, "Istidhan", 1; Muslim, Al-Sahih,
"Birr", 115, "Jannah", 28; Ahmad bin Hanbal, Musnad,
Vol. II, 244, 251, 315, 323. Also see Ibn 'Arabi, Al-Futuhat
al Makkiyyah, Dar Sadir, Beirut,
n.d., Vol. II, p. 124, p. 490. For an illuminating exposition
of the the implications of the statement in terms of the Divine
Attributes see Murata and Chittick, The Vision of Islam,
Suhail Academy, Lahore, 2000, p. 120.
[2] See Martin Lings, "Intellect and Reason"
in Ancient Beliefs and Modern Superstitions, rpt. (Lahore:
Suhail Academy, 1988), 57-68; F. Schuon, Gnosis Divine Wisdom
London: J. Murray,
1978), 93-99; S. H. Nasr, "Knowledge and its Desacralization"
in Knowledge and the Sacred (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 1981), 1-64; Huston Smith, Forgotten Truth (San
Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1992), 60-95. Also see his
Beyond the Post-Modern Mind, (Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing
House, 1989).
[3] See René Guenon, "Individualism" in Crisis
of the Modern World, (Lahore: Suhail Academy, 1981), 51-65.
Also see Social Chaos" in the same document.
[4] Commenting upon the situation, Huston
Smith remarked, "the deepest reason for the crisis in philosophy
is its realization that autonomous reason — reason without infusions that both power and vector
it — is
helpless. By itself, reason can deliver nothing apodictic. Working,
as it necessarily must, with variables, variables are all it
can come up with. The Enlightenment's "natural light of reason"
turns out to have been a myth. Reason is not itself a light.
It is more than a conductor, for it does more than transmit.
It seems to resemble an adapter which makes useful translations
but on condition that it is powered by a generator." (Huston
Smith, "Crisis in Modern Philosophy", in Beyond the Post-Modern
Mind, (Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing House, 1990), 137.)
The nature and direction of these "infusions" is still being debated.
For
a few more representative writings that indicate this situation,
see "Scientism, Pragmatism and the Fate of Philosophy, Inquiry,
No. 29, p. 278, cf. Huston Smith, Beyond the Post-Modern
Mind, loc. cit. p. 142; Hilary Putnam, "After Empiricism"
in Behaviorism, 16:1 (Spring 1988); Alasdair MacIntrye,
"Philosophy: Past Conflict and Future Direction," Proceedings
and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association,
Supplement to 16/1, (September 1987); also see Proceedings
of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 59 (1986),
and Kenneth Baynes et al., Philosophy: End or Transformation?
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987).
[5] Take, for example, the issue of
free will and predestination, a central bone of contention
among the schools of Kalam. This debate, which has also been
important in Christian civilization, lives on in modern secular
society, though it is no longer posed in terms of God. For example,
many contemporary scholars — biologists, psychologists, sociologists,
philosophers, political scientists — are actively involved in
the discussion of nature versus nurture. The basic question
is simple: Does nature determine human development, or can
people change themselves substantially by means of training
and education? Free will and predestination, like nature and
nurture, is merely a convenient way to refer to one of the most
basic puzzles of human existence.
[6] "Basic assumptions" are used here in a broader
sense than regulating concepts. For a description and telling
critique of the assumptions of the contemporary world, see Tage
Lindbom, Tares and the Good Grain (Lahore: Suhail Academy,1988).
On another level these assumptions are challenged by S. H. Nasr's
Knowledge and the Sacred,
op. cit.
[7] Lord Northbourne, Looking Back on Progress
(Lahore: Suhail Academy, 1983), 47.
[8] On the traditional conception of man, see
G. Eaton, King of the Castle, Islamic Texts Society,
1993; "Man" in Islamic Spirituality, ed. S. H. Nasr,
vol. I (New York: Crossroad, 1987),
358-377; Kathleen Raine, What is Man? (England:
Golgonoza Press, 1980); S. H. Nasr, "Who is Man...", in The
Sword of Gnosis, ed. Needleman (England:
Penguin, n.d.), 203-217; S. H. Nasr (ed.) The Essential Writings
of Frithjof Schuon (New York: Amity House, 1986),
385-403.
[9] S. H. Nasr, Knowledge and the Sacred,
op. cit., 161-162.
[10] We have conciously avoided comment on evolutionism
and evolutionists' positions though all these debates have a
direct relevance to the disfiguration of the image of man. It
could have taken us too far from our subject. A separate review
may be in order on an other occasion.
[11] Called by the Hindus the Self, by the Buddhists
the Buddha-nature, by the Jews Adam Kadmon, by the Christians
Jesus the Christ, by Blake the 'Divine Humanity' etc.
[12] This is a specifically Islamic image, since
Islam sees the cardinal sin of man in his forgetfullness (ghaflah)
of who he is although he still carries his primordial nature
(al-fitrah) within himself, the man as such to which infact
the Islamic message addresses itself. See
F. Schuon, Understanding Islam, pp. 13-15.
[13]
The whole course of European art, with it increasingly accelerated
phases of action and reaction, is mainly a dialogue between
man and his image. Islam banished all this ambiguous play of
psychological mirrors at an early stage, thus preserving the
primordial dignity of man himself.
[14]
Of special importance in this regard
is René Guenon's Man and his Becoming According to the Vedanta
(Delhi: 1990), which presents the concept of
man in Hindu terminology, which, nevertheless, is shared by
the other traditions as well. Also see his The Great Triad,
(Quinta Essentia, 1991), pp. 65-81 for an exposition of the
concept of man from the point of view of the Far Eastern traditions.
For a representative sampling of the Hindu view of the human self see the following
extract:
The Hindu doctrine of the
human self postulates that the human self is a layered entity….
First and most obviously, we have bodies. Next comes the conscious
layer of our minds. Underlying these two is a third region,
the realm of the individual subconscious. This has been built
up through our individual histories. Most of our past experiences
have been lost to our conscious memory, but those experiences
continue to shape our lives in ways that contemporary psychoanalysis
tries to understand. With these three parts of the self, the
West is in full agreement. What is distinctive in the Hindu
hypothesis is its postulation of a fourth component. Underlying
the other three, less perceived by the conscious mind than even
its private subconscious (though related to it fully as much),
stands Being Itself, infinite, unthwarted, eternal. "I am smaller
than the minutest atom, likewise greater than the greatest.
I am the whole, the diversified-multicolored-lovely strange
universe. I am the Ancient One. I am Man, the Lord. I am the
Being-of-Gold. I am the very state of divine beatitude."…if
only we could dredge up portions of our individual unconscious-the
third layer of our being-we would experience a remarkable expansion
of our powers, a vivid freshening of life. But if we could uncover
something forgotten not only by ourselves but by humanity as
a whole, something that provides clues not simply to our individual
personalities and quirks but to all life and all existence,
what then? Would this not be momentous? (Huston Smith, The
World Religions, pp. 42-43).
[15] Psalm 103:14.
[16] Job 4:19.
[17] Psalm 90:6.
[18] Psalm 90:9.
[19] Psalm 8:4.
[20] Ecclesiastes 3:18-19. Considering the freedom
of Israel's
thought and her refusal to repress doubts when she felt them,
it is not surprising to find that there were moments such as
this.
[21] Psalm 8:5.
[22] The number of the Hebrew word 'elohim,
is indeterminate.
[23] Job 25:6.
[24] Psalm 8:6.
[25] Psalm 51:5. It is totally false to claim this verse
for the defense of either the doctrine of total human depravity
or the notion that sex is evil. These are both imported notions
that have nothing to do with Judaism.
[26] The word sin comes from a root meaning "to
miss the mark," and this people (despite their high origin)
manage continually to do.
[27] Yet never in these "missings" is the misstep required. Jews have
never questioned human freedom. The first recorded human act
involved free choice. In eating Eden's forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve were, it is true, seduced by the
snake, but they could have resisted. The snake merely tempted
them; it is clearly a story of a human lapse. Inanimate objects
cannot be other than they are; they do what nature and circumstance
decree.
[28] Isaiah 1:16-17
[29] Deuteronomy 30:19
[30]
It
was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
I took them up in my arms;
I led them with cords of human kindness,
with bands of love.
I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks.
How can I give you up, Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, 0 Israel?
My heart recoils within me,
my compassion grows warm and tender (Hosea 11:3-4,8).
[31]
S. H. Nasr, "Man, Pontifical and Promethean",
in Knowledge and the Sacred, pp. 160-188; G. Durand,
On the Disfiguration of the Image of Man in the West,
(Ipswich, U.K., 1976).
[32] Job 7:17.
[33] St. Paul
quotes this psalm in his Epistle to the Hebrews, in order to
present to the Jews, familiar with the scriptures, the new concept
of Jesus as the divine humanity incarnate.
[34] Genesis 1:27.
[35] Qur'an, 2:31.
[36] Genesis also tells us that God brought His
creatures to Adam to see what he would name them (II:19).
[37] Bees can tell their hive-mates exactly
where to find the best honey, but they don't know much about
vinegar. Monarch butterflies know the precise location of their
valley in Mexico, but they cannot be trusted to take
you to New York City.
[38] Qur'an 24:55.
[39] Al-Futuhat al-Makkiyah, I, p. 263.
[40] Qur'an 7:172.
[41] Al-Futuhat al-Makkiyah, I, pp. 362,
367.
[42] Al-Futuhat al-Makkiyah, II, p. 562.
[43] For a detailed exposition of Ibn 'Arabi's
views see W. C. Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowlwdge; Self-Disclosure
of God.
[44] One can point out parallels in other
religions. For traditional Jews, the Torah, in its widest sense,
plays the same sort of role; and for traditional Christians,
it is Jesus, the Word made flesh, who is the all-pervasive
reality of the tradition.
[45] Our infancy has passed, and our old age has
not yet arrived. It is difficult to imagine that the infant
and the decrepit old man are the same in any real sense, but
they are — in some way that is difficult to formulate.
But where, you might wonder, in the midst of this (hopefully)
long lifetime is the real you? In fact, an embodiment of the
real you is found at every point on the trajectory of life,
but the real you itself remains a mystery that correlates with
the divine spirit, about which the Qur'an
says:
They will ask you
about the Spirit. Say., 'The spirit is at the command of my
Lord, and of knowledge you are given but little." (17.85)
[46] Qur'an 6:125
[47] To understand the Islamic view of Muhammad,
we have to begin by looking at him in the light of incomparability
(tanzih) the fact that God is real and everything other
than God is unreal. From this perspective, all good belongs
to God. Muhammad is other than God and hence, like all other
created things, he is nothing compared to God. In human terms,
Muhammad is a mortal like everyone else.
But there is still a major difference
between the Prophet and other people. First, the Prophet is
God's perfect servant. Everything in the universe is God's servant,
but human beings, having carried the Trust, have to choose freely
to be God's servant in order to live up to their potential.
This free submission of self to God is the outstanding quality
of Muhammad's character. Hence the Qur'an
refers to him as "God's servant" and the Muslim
consciousness pays this title the highest respect.
But this is not the whole story of
Muhammad. As God's perfect servant, he is also God's perfect
vicegerent. Having fully actualized tanzih, he also embodies
tashbih. The Qur'an illustrates
these two sides of Muhammad's humanity in the verse, "Say:
'I am but a mortal like you; it has been revealed to me that
your God is one God'" (18:110, 41:6). Many commentators
in modern times have paid attention only to the first half of
this verse and ignored the implications of the second half.
[48] "Verily," concludes the verse of the
Trust, the human being is "very ignorant, a great wrongdoer"
(33:72).
[49] He has done so — with God's guidance,
of course — such that God has chosen him to be a mercy for
the whole world: "We have not sent thee save as a mercy to all
the world's inhabitants" (21:107). The second half of the previous
verse "It has been revealed to me that your God is one God"-
is all important, because it shows that Muhammad is the recipient
of revelation. If there was any thought that he is just as imperfect
as the rest of us, this thought is removed by the statement
that he alone was chosen to receive the Qur'an .
[50] For an excellent narrative of the account
of Adam's creation and fall with all Qur'anic refrences see
Murata and Chittick, The Vision of Islam, (Suhail Academy,
Lahore, 2000), p. 92-3, 120-21, 134-44.
[51] A good deal of evidence could be cited from
the Qur'an and the Hadith
to prove human superiority. The prostration of the angels before
Adam is a point at hand. The Prophet is reported to have said,
"On the day of resurrection, no one will be greater than
the children of Adam." The people wondered at this and someone
asked, "O Messenger of God! Not even the angels?" He replied,
"Not even the angels. They are compelled like the sun and
the moon." The angels have no freedom of action. They could
not disobey God if they wanted to. Hence, they can be only what
they are. But human beings can overcome their own limitations
and move from distance (tanzih) to nearness (tashbih),
from servanthood to vicegerency. Another hadith makes a similar
point: "God created the angels from intelligence, the beasts
from appetite, and human beings from both intelligence and appetite.
When a person's intelligence overcomes his appetite, he is higher
than the angels, but when his appetite overcomes his intelligence,
he is lower than the beasts."
[52] On the four significations of the word islam
see Murata and Chittick, The Vision of Islam, p. 4-7.
[53] Qur'an, 7:172.
[54] It needs to be stressed that this intuitive
knowledge of all human beings is the knowledge of tawhid,
not the knowledge of the shari'ah, "right way and open
road" that is specific to the prophetic teachings of Islam.
In other words, it pertains to the domain of the first Shahadah,
not to that of the second Shahadah, which embraces specific
instructions brought by the prophets. The first Shahadah
is known by everyone, although they usually have to be reminded
about it. In contrast, the truths embraced by the domain of
the second Shahadah have to be learned through a divine
message.
[55] Qur'an, 7:173.
[56] the al-fana and al-baqa of
Sufism.
[57] Likewise, the Quran speaks of man's pre eternal
(azali) covenant with God when he answered God's call,"
Am I not your Lord?" with the affirmative, "Yea," the "Am I
not your Lord?" (alastu birabbikum) symbolizing the relation
between God and man before creation and so becoming a constantly
repeated refrain for all those sages in Islam who have hearkened
man to his eternal reality in divines by reminding him of the
asrar-i alast or the mysteries of this pre-eternal covenant.
This reminding or unveiling, moreover, has always involved the
doctrine of the elaboration of man through various states of
being.
The
genesis of man and his prenatal existence in various higher
states of existence is expounded in great detail in Jewish esoterism
too. See L. Schaya, "La genese de I'homme" Etude Traditionnelles,
no 456-57 (Avril-Septembre 1977): 94-131, where he discusses
the birth, descent, loss of original purity, and the regaining
of man's original state according to Jewish sources concluding
that, "Né de Dieu, l'être humain est destiné, après see multiples
naissances et morts, à renaître en Lui, en tant que Lui" (p.
131); and idem, The Universal Meaning of the Kabbalah,
pp. 116ff. see also F. Warrain, La Teodicée de la Kabbale,
Paris, 1949, pp. 73ff.; and G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish
Mysticism, Jerusalem, 1941, lectures 6 and 7.
[58] Qur'an, 2: 31.
[59] Genesis, II:19
[60] One of the element is the excessive
seperation between man as the seat of consciousness or the I
and the cosmos as the "non-I" or a domain of the reality from
which man is alienated. This attitude was not unrelated to the
excessive seperation of the spirit from the flesh in the official
Christian theology even if this chasm was filled by the Heremetic
tradition, especially its alchemical aspect, and affected even
the daily life of the medieval community through the craft guilds.
The "angelism" of medieval theology, althrough containing a
profound truth, considered only one aspect of the traditional
anthropos, allowing the rebellion against such a view
by those who thought that in order to discover the spiritual
significance of nature and the positive significance of the
body, they had to deny the medieval concept of man. The Renaissance
cult of the body, even if by some freak of history it had manifested
itself in India, could not have been opposed to Hinduism
in the way that it was opposed to Christianity in the West.
[61] The mitigating circumstances in such
cases — for they are always present, at any rate
for every new fall, the order then existing shows a maximum
of abuse and corruption, so that the temptation to prefer an
apparently clean error to an outwardly soiled truth is particularly
strong.
[62] Christian art continues to remind of the
celestial hierarchies of angels, of the lives of saints lived
in accordance with the laws not of nature but of the spirit;
of the Christian myth of the birth of the divine principle into
the world of generation.
[63] Qur'an 50:22.
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