Chapter 3

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."(25) 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."(26) Throughout its pages, the Qur'an 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."(27) 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.

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 Baha'u'llah'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."(28) 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".(29)

"Freed from the thickets with which theology has hedged religious..."

Freed from the thickets with which theology has hedged religious understanding about, the mind is able to explore familiar scriptural passages through the eyes of Baha'u'llah. "Peerless is this Day," He asserts, "for it is as the eye to past ages and centuries, and as a light unto the darkness of the times."(30) The most striking observation that results from taking advantage of this perspective is the unity of purpose and principle running throughout the Hebrew scriptures, the Gospel and the Qur'an, particularly, although echoes can readily be discerned in the scriptures of others among the world's religions. Repeatedly, the same organizing themes emerge from the matrix of precept, exhortation, narrative, symbolism and interpretation in which they are set. Of these foundational truths, by far the most distinctive is the progressive articulation and emphatic assertion of the oneness of God, Creator of all existence whether of the phenomenal world or of those realms that transcend it. "I am the Lord," the Bible declares, "and there is none else, there is no God beside me",(31) and the same conception underpins the later teachings of Christ and Muhammad.

Humanity--focal point, inheritor and trustee of the world--exists to know its Creator and to serve His purpose. In its highest expression, the innate human impulse to respond takes the form of worship, a condition entailing wholehearted submission to a power that is recognized as deserving of such homage. "Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever."(32) Inseparable from the spirit of reverence itself is its expression in service to the Divine purpose for humankind. "Say: All bounties are in the hand of God: He granteth them to whom He pleaseth: and God careth for all, and He knoweth all things."(33) Illumined by this understanding, the responsibilities of humanity are clear: "It is not righteousness that ye turn your faces towards East or West", the Qur'an states, "but it is righteousness--to believe in God ... to spend of your substance, out of love for Him, for your kin, for orphans, for the needy, for the wayfarer, for those who ask...."(34) "Ye are the salt of the earth",(35) Christ impresses on those who respond to His call. "Ye are the light of the world."(36) Summarizing a theme that recurs time and again throughout the Hebrew scriptures and will subsequently reappear in the Gospel and the Qur'an, the prophet Micah asks, "...what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"(37)

There is equal agreement in these texts that the soul's ability to attain to an understanding of its Creator's purpose is the product not merely of its own effort, but of interventions of the Divine that open the way. The point was made with memorable clarity by Jesus: "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."(38) If one is not to see in this assertion merely a dogmatic challenge to other stages of the one ongoing process of Divine guidance, it is obviously the expression of the central truth of revealed religion: that access to the unknowable Reality that creates and sustains existence is possible only through awakening to the illumination shed from that Realm. One of the most cherished of the Qur'an's surihs takes up the metaphor: "God is the Light of the heavens and the earth.... Light upon Light! God doth guide whom He will to His Light."(39) In the case of the Hebrew prophets, the Divine intermediary that was later to appear in Christianity in the person of the Son of Man and in Islam as the Book of God assumed the form of a binding Covenant established by the Creator with Abraham, Patriarch and Prophet: "And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee."(40)

The succession of revelations of the Divine also appears as an implicit--and usually explicit--feature of all the major faiths. One of its earliest and clearest expressions occurs in the Bhagavad-Gita: "I come, and go, and come. When Righteousness declines, O Bharata! When Wickedness is strong, I rise, from age to age, and take visible shape, and move a man with men, succouring the good, thrusting the evil back, and setting Virtue on her seat again."(41) This ongoing drama constitutes the basic structure of the Bible, whose sequence of books recounts the missions not only of Abraham and of Moses--"whom the Lord knew face to face"(42)--but of the line of lesser prophets who developed and consolidated the work that these primary Authors of the process had set in motion. Similarly, no amount of contentious and fantastical speculation about the precise nature of Jesus could succeed in separating His mission from the transformative influence exerted on the course of civilization by the work of Abraham and Moses. He Himself warns that it is not He Who will condemn those who reject the message He bears, but Moses "in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?"(43) With the revelation of the Qur'an, the theme of the succession of the Messengers of God becomes central: "We believe in God, and the revelation given to us, and to Abraham, Isma'il, Isaac, Jacob ... and that given to Moses and Jesus, and that given to (all) Prophets from their Lord...."(44)

For a sympathetic and objective reader of such passages what emerges is a recognition of the essential oneness of religion. So it is that the term "Islam" (literally "submission" to God) designates not merely the particular dispensation of Providence inaugurated by Muhammad but, as the words of the Qur'an make unmistakably clear, religion itself. While it is true to speak of the unity of all religions, understanding of the context is vital. At the deepest level, as Baha'u'llah emphasizes, there is but one religion. Religion is religion, as science is science. The one discerns and articulates the values unfolding progressively through Divine revelation; the other is the instrumentality through which the human mind explores and is able to exert its influence ever more precisely over the phenomenal world. The one defines goals that serve the evolutionary process; the other assists in their attainment. Together, they constitute the dual knowledge system impelling the advance of civilization. Each is hailed by the Master as an "effulgence of the Sun of Truth".(45)

It is, therefore, an inadequate recognition of the unique station of Moses, Buddha, Zoroaster, Jesus, Muhammad--or of the succession of Avatars who inspired the Hindu scriptures--to depict their work as the founding of distinct religions. Rather are they appreciated when acknowledged as the spiritual Educators of history, as the animating forces in the rise of the civilizations through which consciousness has flowered: "He was in the world," the Gospel declares, "and the world was made by him...."(46) That their persons have been held in a reverence infinitely above those of any other historical figures reflects the attempt to articulate otherwise inexpressible feelings aroused in the hearts of unnumbered millions of people by the blessings their work has conferred. In loving them humanity has progressively learned what it means to love God. There is, realistically, no other way to do so. They are not honoured by fumbling efforts to capture the essential mystery of their nature in dogmas invented by human imagination; what honours them is the soul's unconditioned surrender of its will to the transformative influence they mediate.

"Confusion about the role of religion in cultivating moral..."

Confusion about the role of religion in cultivating moral consciousness is equally apparent in popular understanding of its contribution to the shaping of society. Perhaps the most obvious example is the inferior social status most sacred texts assign to women. While the resulting benefits enjoyed by men were no doubt a major factor in consolidating such a conception, moral justification was unquestionably supplied by people's understanding of the intent of the scriptures themselves. With few exceptions, these texts address themselves to men, assigning to women a supportive and subordinate role in the life of both religion and society. Sadly, such understanding made it deplorably easy to attach primary blame to women for failure in the disciplining of the sexual impulse, a vital feature of moral advancement. In a modern frame of reference, attitudes of this kind are readily recognized as prejudiced and unjust. At the stages of social development at which all of the major faiths came into existence, scriptural guidance sought primarily to civilize, to the extent possible, relationships resulting from intractable historical circumstances. It needs little insight to appreciate that clinging to primitive norms in the present day would defeat the very purpose of religion's patient cultivation of moral sense.

Comparable considerations have pertained in relations between societies. The long and arduous preparation of the Hebrew people for the mission required of them is an illustration of the complexity and stubborn character of the moral challenges involved. In order that the spiritual capacities appealed to by the prophets might awaken and flourish, the inducements offered by neighbouring idolatrous cultures had, at all costs, to be resisted. Scriptural accounts of the condign punishments that befell both rulers and subjects who violated the principle illustrated the importance attached to it by the Divine purpose. A somewhat comparable issue arose in the struggle of the newborn community founded by Muhammad to survive attempts by pagan Arab tribes to extinguish it--and in the barbaric cruelty and relentless spirit of vendetta animating the attackers. No one familiar with the historical details will have difficulty in understanding the severity of the Qur'an's injunctions on the subject. While the monotheistic beliefs of Jews and Christians were to be accorded respect, no compromise with idolatry was permitted. In a relatively brief space of time, this draconian rule had succeeded in unifying the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula and launching the newly forged community on well over five centuries of moral, intellectual, cultural and economic achievement, unmatched before or since in the speed and scope of its expansion. History tends to be a stern judge. Ultimately, in its uncompromising perspective, the consequences to those who would have blindly strangled such enterprises in the cradle will always be set off against the benefits accruing to the world as a whole from the triumph of the Bible's vision of human possibilities and the advances made possible by the genius of Islamic civilization.

Among the most contentious of such issues in understanding society's evolution towards spiritual maturity has been that of crime and punishment. While different in detail and degree, the penalties prescribed by most sacred texts for acts of violence against either the commonweal or the rights of other individuals tended to be harsh. Moreover, they frequently extended to permitting retaliation against the offenders by the injured parties or by members of their families. In the perspective of history, however, one may reasonably ask what practical alternatives existed. In the absence not merely of present-day programmes of behavioural modification, but even of recourse to such coercive options as prisons and policing agencies, religion's concern was to impress indelibly on general consciousness the moral unacceptability--and practical costs--of conduct whose effect would otherwise have been to demoralize efforts at social progress. The whole of civilization has since been the beneficiary, and it would be less than honest not to acknowledge the fact.

So it has been throughout all of the religious dispensations whose origins have survived in written records. Mendicancy, slavery, autocracy, conquest, ethnic prejudices and other undesirable features of social interaction have gone unchallenged--or been explicitly indulged--as religion sought to achieve reformations of behaviour that were considered more immediately essential at given stages in the advance of civilization. To condemn religion because any one of its successive dispensations failed to address the whole range of social wrongs would be to ignore everything that has been learned about the nature of human development. Inevitably, anachronistic thinking of this kind must also create severe psychological handicaps in appreciating and facing the requirements of one's own time.

The issue is not the past, but the implications for the present. Problems arise where followers of one of the world's faiths prove unable to distinguish between its eternal and transitory features, and attempt to impose on society rules of behaviour that have long since accomplished their purpose. The principle is fundamental to an understanding of religion's social role: "The remedy the world needeth in its present-day afflictions can never be the same as that which a subsequent age may require", Baha'u'llah points out. "Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and centre your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements."(47)

"The exigencies of the new age of human experience to which..."

The exigencies of the new age of human experience to which Baha'u'llah summoned the political and religious rulers of the nineteenth century world have now been largely adopted, at least as ideals, by their successors and by progressive minds everywhere. By the time the twentieth century had drawn to a close, principles that had, only short decades earlier, been patronized as visionary and hopelessly unrealistic had become central to global discourse. Buttressed by the findings of scientific research and the conclusions of influential commissions--often lavishly funded--they direct the work of powerful agencies at international, national and local levels. A vast body of scholarly literature in many languages is devoted to exploring practical means for their implementation, and those programmes can count on media attention on five continents.

Most of these principles are, alas, also widely flouted, not only among recognized enemies of social peace, but in circles professedly committed to them. What is lacking is not convincing testimony as to their relevance, but the power of moral conviction that can implement them, a power whose only demonstrably reliable source throughout history has been religious faith. As late as the inception of Baha'u'llah's own mission, religious authority still exercised a significant degree of social influence. When the Christian world was moved to break with millennia of unquestioning conviction and address at last the evil of slavery, it was to Biblical ideals that the early British reformers sought to appeal. Subsequently, in the defining address he gave regarding the central role played by the issue in the great conflict in America, the president of the United States warned that if "every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether'."(48) That era, however, was swiftly drawing to a close. In the upheavals that followed the Second World War, even so influential a figure as Mohandas Gandhi proved unable to mobilize the spiritual power of Hinduism in support of his efforts to extinguish sectarian violence on the Indian subcontinent. Nor were leaders of the Islamic community any more effective in this respect. As prefigured in the Qur'an's metaphorical vision of "The Day that We roll up the heavens like a scroll",(49) the once unchallengeable authority of the traditional religions had ceased to direct humanity's social relations.

It is in this context that one begins to appreciate Baha'u'llah's choice of imagery about the will of God for a new age: "Think not that We have revealed unto you a mere code of laws. Nay, rather, We have unsealed the choice Wine with the fingers of might and power."(50) Through His revelation, the principles required for the collective coming of age of the human race have been invested with the one power capable of penetrating to the roots of human motivation and of altering behaviour. For those who have recognized Him, equality of men and women is not a sociological postulate, but revealed truth about human nature, with implications for every aspect of human relations. The same is true of His teaching of the principle of racial oneness. Universal education, freedom of thought, the protection of human rights, recognition of the earth's vast resources as a trust for the whole of humankind, society's responsibility for the well-being of its citizenry, the promotion of scientific research, even so practical a principle as an international auxiliary language that will advance integration of the earth's peoples--for all who respond to Baha'u'llah's revelation, these and similar precepts carry the same compelling authority as do the injunctions of scripture against idolatry, theft and false witness. While intimations of some can be perceived in earlier sacred writings, their definition and prescription had necessarily to wait until the planet's heterogeneous populations could set out together on the discovery of their nature as a single human race. Through spiritual empowerment brought by Baha'u'llah's revelation the Divine standards can be appreciated, not as isolated principles and laws, but as facets of a single, all-embracing vision of humanity's future, revolutionary in purpose, intoxicating in the possibilities it opens.

Integral to these teachings are principles that address the administration of humanity's collective affairs. A widely quoted passage in Baha'u'llah's Tablet to Queen Victoria expresses emphatic praise of the principle of democratic and constitutional government, but is also an admonition about the context of global responsibility in which that principle must operate if it is to realize its purpose in this age: "O ye the elected representatives of the people in every land! Take ye counsel together, and let your concern be only for that which profiteth mankind and bettereth the condition thereof, if ye be of them that scan heedfully. Regard the world as the human body which, though at its creation whole and perfect, hath been afflicted, through various causes, with grave disorders and maladies. Not for one day did it gain ease, nay its sickness waxed more severe, as it fell under the treatment of ignorant physicians, who gave full rein to their personal desires and have erred grievously. And if, at one time, through the care of an able physician, a member of that body was healed, the rest remained afflicted as before."(51) In other passages, Baha'u'llah spells out some of the practical implications. The governments of the world are called upon to convene an international consultative body as the foundation, in the words of the Guardian, of "a world federal system"(52) empowered to safeguard the autonomy and territory of its state members, resolve national and regional disputes and coordinate programmes of global development for the good of the entire human race. Significantly, Baha'u'llah attributes to this system, once established, the right to suppress by force acts of aggression by one state against another. Addressing the rulers of His day, He asserts the clear moral authority of such action: "Should any one among you take up arms against another, rise ye all against him, for this is naught but manifest justice."(53)

"The power through which these goals will be progressively realized is..."