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“The objection most commonly raised against the foregoing conception…” |
The objection most commonly raised against the foregoing conception
of religion is the assertion that the differences among the revealed
faiths are so fundamental that to present them as stages or aspects of
one unified system of truth does violence to the facts. Given the
confusion surrounding the nature of religion, the reaction is
understandable. Chiefly, however, such an objection offers
Bahá’ís an invitation to set the principles reviewed
here more explicitly in the evolutionary context provided in
Bahá’u’lláh’s writings.
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The differences referred to fall into the categories of either
practice or doctrine, both of them presented as the intent of the
relevant scriptures. In the case of religious customs governing
personal life, it is helpful to view the subject against the
background of comparable features of material life. It is most
unlikely that diversity in hygiene,
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dress, medicine, diet,
transportation, warfare, construction or economic activity, however
striking, would any longer be seriously advanced in support of a
theory that humanity does not in fact constitute one people, single
and unique. Until the opening of the twentieth century, such
simplistic arguments were commonplace, but historical and
anthropological research now provides a seamless panorama of the
process of cultural evolution by which these and countless other
expressions of human creativity came into existence, were transmitted
through successive generations, underwent gradual metamorphoses and
often spread to enrich the lives of peoples in far distant lands. That
present-day societies represent a wide spectrum of such phenomena,
therefore, does not in any way define a fixed and immutable identity
of the peoples concerned, but merely distinguishes the stage through
which given groups are—or at least until recently have
been—passing. Even so, all such cultural expressions are now in a
state of fluidity in consequence of the pressures of planetary
integration.
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A similar evolutionary process, Bahá’u’lláh
indicates, has characterized the religious life of humankind. The
defining difference lies in the fact that, rather than representing
simply the accidents of history’s ongoing method of trial and error,
such norms were explicitly prescribed in each case, as integral
features of one or another revelation of the Divine, embodied in
scripture, their integrity scrupulously maintained over a period of
centuries. While certain features of each code of conduct would
eventually fulfil their purpose and in time be overshadowed by
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concerns of a different nature brought on by the process of social
evolution, the code itself would lose none of its authority during the
long stage of human progress in which it played a vital role in
training behaviour and attitudes. “These principles and laws, these
firmly-established and mighty systems”, Bahá’u’lláh
asserts, “have proceeded from one Source, and are the rays of one
Light. That they differ one from another is to be attributed to the
varying requirements of the ages in which they were promulgated.”
1
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To argue, therefore, that differences of regulations, observances and
other practices constitute any significant objection to the idea of
revealed religion’s essential oneness is to miss the purpose that
these prescriptions served. More seriously, it misses the fundamental
distinction between the eternal and the transitory features of
religion’s function. The essential message of religion is
immutable. It is, in Bahá’u’lláh’s words, “the
changeless Faith of God, eternal in the past, eternal in the
future”.
2
Its role in opening the
way for the soul to enter into an evermore mature relationship with
its Creator—and in endowing it with an ever-greater measure of moral
autonomy in disciplining the animal impulses of human nature—is not
at all irreconcilable with its providing auxiliary guidance that
enhances the process of civilization building.
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The concept of progressive revelation places the ultimate emphasis on
recognition of the revelation of God at its appearance. The failure of
the generality of humankind in this respect has, time and again,
condemned entire populations to a ritualistic repetition of ordinances
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and practices long after these latter have fulfilled their purpose and
now merely stultify moral advance. Sadly, in the present day, a
related consequence of such failure has been to trivialize
religion. At precisely the point in its collective development where
humanity began to struggle with the challenges of modernity, the
spiritual resource on which it had principally depended for moral
courage and enlightenment was fast becoming a subject of mockery,
first at those levels where decisions were being made about the
direction society should take, and eventually in ever-widening circles
of the general population. There is little cause for surprise, then,
that this most devastating of the many betrayals of trust from which
human confidence has suffered should, in the course of time, undermine
the foundations of belief itself. So it is that
Bahá’u’lláh repeatedly urges His readers to think
deeply about the lesson taught by such repeated failures: “Ponder for
a moment, and reflect upon that which has been the cause of such
denial….”
3
“What could have
been the reason for such denial and avoidance…?”
4
“What could have caused such contention…?”
5
“Reflect, what could have been the
motive…?”
6
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More detrimental still to religious understanding has been theological
presumption. A persistent feature of religion’s sectarian past has
been the dominant role played by clergy. In the absence of scriptural
texts that established unarguable institutional authority, clerical
elites succeeded in arrogating to themselves exclusive control over
interpretation of the Divine intent. However diverse the motives, the
tragic effects have been to impede the
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current of inspiration,
discourage independent intellectual activity, focus attention on the
minutiae of rituals and too often engender hatred and prejudice
towards those following a different sectarian path from that of
self-appointed spiritual leaders. While nothing could prevent the
creative power of Divine intervention from continuing its work of
progressively raising consciousness, the scope of what could be
achieved, in any age, became increasingly limited by such artificially
contrived obstacles.
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Over time, theology succeeded in constructing in the heart of each one
of the great faiths an authority parallel with, and even inimical in
spirit to, the revealed teachings on which the tradition was
based. Jesus’ familiar parable of the landowner who sowed seed in his
field addresses both the issue and its implications for the present
time: “But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the
wheat, and went his way.”
7
When
his servants proposed to uproot them, the landowner replied, “Nay;
lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with
them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of
harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares,
and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my
barn.”
8
Throughout its pages, the
Qur’án reserves its severest condemnation for the
spiritual harm caused by this competing hegemony: “Say: The things
that my Lord hath indeed forbidden are: shameful deeds, whether open
or secret; sins and trespasses against truth or reason; assigning of
partners to God, for which he hath given no authority; and saying
things about God of which ye have no knowledge.”
9
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To the modern mind it is the greatest of ironies that generations of
theologians, whose impositions on religion embody precisely the
betrayal so strongly denounced in these texts, should seek to use the
warning itself as a weapon in suppressing protest against their
usurpation of Divine authority.
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In effect, each new stage in the progressively unfolding revelation of
spiritual truth was frozen in time and in an array of literalistic
images and interpretations, many of them borrowed from cultures which
were themselves morally exhausted. Whatever their value at earlier
stages in the evolution of consciousness, conceptions of physical
resurrection, a paradise of carnal delights, reincarnation,
pantheistic prodigies, and the like, today raise walls of separation
and conflict in an age when the earth has literally become one
homeland and human beings must learn to see themselves as its
citizens. In this context one can appreciate the reasons for the
vehemence of Bahá’u’lláh’s warnings about the
barriers that dogmatic theology creates in the path of those seeking
to understand the will of God: “O leaders of religion! Weigh not the
Book of God with such standards and sciences as are current amongst
you, for the Book itself is the unerring Balance established amongst
men.”
10
In His Tablet to Pope Pius
IX, He advises the pontiff that God has in this day “stored away
… in the vessels of justice” whatever is enduring in religion and
“cast into fire that which befitteth it”.
11
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1. | ibid., section CXXXII. [ Back To Reference] |
2. | Bahá’u’lláh, The Kitáb-i-Aqdas: The Most Holy Book (Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1993), paragraph 182. [ Back To Reference] |
3. | Bahá’u’lláh, The Kitáb-i-Íqán, paragraph 4. [ Back To Reference] |
4. | ibid., paragraph 8. [ Back To Reference] |
5. | ibid., paragraph 13. [ Back To Reference] |
6. | ibid., paragraph 14. [ Back To Reference] |
7. | St. Matthew 13.25, Authorized King James Version. [ Back To Reference] |
8. | ibid., 13.29–30. [ Back To Reference] |
9. | Qur’án, surih 7, verse 33, Abdullah Yusuf Ali translation, third edition, (n.p.: 1938). [ Back To Reference] |
10. | Bahá’u’lláh, The Kitáb-i-Aqdas, paragraph 99. [ Back To Reference] |
11. | The Summons of the Lord of Hosts: Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh (Haifa: Bahá’í World Centre, 2002), paragraph 126. [ Back To Reference] |