Question:
Is one ever really capable of knowing God?
Answer: This is one of
those paradoxical yes and no answers. The Bahá’í Faith, like its
sister, older Abrahamic religions, is strictly monotheistic. Monotheism
means not only the traditional, uncompromising belief in one God only,
but it stresses, to a greater degree perhaps than does Judaism,
Christianity and Islam, the absolute oneness, transcendence and
unknowability of the Creator-God. In this absolute sense, God is known
only by Himself. All attempts to understand the essence of God fail,
and must fail. We cannot understand the essence of God, any more than
the plants that we care for understand human consciousness, or the
painting understands the painter, or the music the composer.
Even the Prophets, called “Divine Manifestations” in Bahá’í parlance,
have an incomplete understanding of the Divinity: “Ten thousand
Prophets, each a Moses, are thunderstruck upon the Sinai of their
search at His forbidding voice, ‘Thou shalt never behold Me!’; whilst a
myriad Messengers, each as great as Jesus, stand dismayed upon their
heavenly thrones by the interdiction, ‘Mine Essence thou shalt never
apprehend!’(Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings, p. 62).
Yet, as a token of loving-kindness, grace and salvation, scripture
tells us that Providence desires to make His love, will and divine plan
known to humanity. His purpose is both the spiritual perfection of the
individual and the nations, and also the creation of “an ever-advancing
civilization.” The intermediaries who bring the two opposite poles of
God (Creator) and humanity (created) into relationship are the
Prophets, who appear sequentially in history. The Prophets are
empowered to make known to us the Will of God because they have a dual
divine-human nature.
While in the strictest sense they are not God, they make known unto us
the “names and attributes” of God, rather than His divine essence. In
other words, the Prophets reveal as much of God as we can know. To know
them is to know God. This does not preclude mystical experience, but
the Prophets are the great highways to the knowledge of God. The great
Divine Manifestations appear about once every 500 or 1000 years.
Bahá’u’lláh (1817-1892) is the latest but not the last of these Divine
Messengers. His mission is the unity of humanity. -
Jack
McLean
