“The Gates” by Cristo in New York’s Central Park
Baha’ullah, like many religious leaders claimed to be infallible. What he meant by this is subject to debate but most people believe it means he could not make mistakes. Sen McGill, noted Baha’i scholar, wrote this about infallibility in an email to me:
“When a man has new ideas, you have to follow him when he defines his own terms. What did “evolution” mean before Darwin got hold of it?”
I told him that I struggle to understand what is new in Baha’i re: infallibility. The Christ of the gospels said something similar — “I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the father save through me” or words to that effect. And of course the Catholic church has had infallible Popes guiding their religion for centuries.
Darwin spent his life collecting, synthesizing, and explaining evolution which is based on evidence. Baha’ullah’s concept of infallibility uses a well known word to express something which Sen claims is quite different from the accepted definition. The notion of infallibility has been used for centuries to control people. If Bahai has a new concept of infallibility it once again got lost in translation.
In the same email discussion, Sen wrote this:
“Prophecy, in the biblical and Baha’i sense, is not about predicting
the future, but about pronouncing the will and judgment of God. A
really successful prophet is a failure at forecasting, because he
warns people where they are heading and gets them to change their
ways, in time.”
I wrote:
Sorry but I disagree. Prophecy is about many things. Predicting when the return will occur, when the next manifestation will show up, when the Most Great Peace will happen. Sometimes its a warning as in the old testament, sometimes its about predicting the future. The calamity that Bahaullah predicted is certainly of the kind you refer to. But this has given the Faith a cult like ethos when Bahaullah intended no such thing.
In the Iqan (The Book of Certitude) Baha’ullah writes at length about the return of the prophet and the return of the people who renounce him. He tells us to ponder why this keeps occurring. I have done so and have concluded that the religions of the Abraham and his successors while an important part of our history are inherently flawed. The once a millennium appearance of a messenger from God who speaks in metaphor and congers up beings that don’t exist and miracles that never happened leaves us to fend for ourselves while trying to find answers in scripture when we should be working out solutions for ourselves.
Scripture is no more true than poetry and poetry is often quite true. But with poetry we need to pick out the good and true from the bad and false. With scripture we are told its all true and then we spend our energies trying to see how that can possibly be.
Religion is often calcified truth. What we need now (and always needed I think) is the ability to draw on all available sources of inspiration, love and power to help us solve problems in the here and now.
Religion is one of those sources but heaven help you if its your only one!
5 comments
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November 10, 2007 at 12:40 pm
parallelsidewalk
Interesting couple of articles. I don’t believe in the infallibility of prophets (however, I’m a Muslim, not Ba’hai). The Qu’ran specifically reproves Muhammed a couple of times, and states that there are knowledge and attributes that belong only to the divine. However, I do not believe it’s “just poetry” either. I believe one can and should learn from many sources, but I also believe that this needs to be grounded in some criterion of higher knowledge, which the Qu’ran (among other scriptures) provides. I couldn’t do this with, say, the works of Lord Byron. Just my two cents.
November 10, 2007 at 1:00 pm
Peg
I do believe that when Jesus said “I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father save through me” he was speaking the truth. I wouldn’t say the same for any other prophet, pope, or preacher of any faith.
November 10, 2007 at 2:18 pm
ltfiggs
Darwin may have spent his life “collecting, synthesizing, & explaining” bits of Evolution-evidence but he himself said more than once that his theory was just that …a theory, with MANY missing links in his “evolutionary chain”. Jesus is the Messiah; the great I AM. When you’re out on your journey “searching for yourself” the emptiness & yearning you feel is the void that’s meant to be filled by God quite simply because you were created in HIS image and created to be in daily fellowship with Him. Christianity is NOT religion; it’s a relationship begun by Choice.
November 11, 2007 at 9:50 pm
Roya
http://yhvhathome.multiply.com/
November 12, 2007 at 8:35 pm
frankwinters
Thanks for the comments, links, thoughts.
Dear PSW — I’m glad to hear from you and to see that we agree at least in part. As to my reference to poetry I didn’t say scripture was just poetry — I wrote that they are both true. And I do think that they come from the same source. the poets speak of their muse, the prophets of the Holy Spirit.
The difference is in the filter of history. Prophets tend to be sanctified by their followers, poets have their work filtered by time. What endures is often inspirational and uplifting. Our religions tell us that scripture is as well. But we are often disappointed so over time we or our religious leaders pick out passages that are uplifting for us to focus on.
Peg — I respect your belief. Can you tell me what it is based on? Faith? Experience? Tradition? Or something else? I am genuinely interested in knowing.
Hello Itfiggs. Are you a scientist or a lay person interested in science? I am interested in knowing about the missing links in a theory that is accepted by most scientists today (I accept that the evidence is incomplete). Its one of the most powerful theories science has ever developed and new proofs are discovered regularly. But I am interested in hearing about what is missing for you and why you apparently don’t accept it.
As to a void I feel — I don’t. My journey is the one all of us undertake in life. I don’t feel empty I feel full of the joy of living and loving people, Nature and the source of all of it. Of course I believe that the source is unknown so that’s where we might disagree.
Every culture has its Messiah(s) who seem to answer all of life’s question. Yet the questions remain. I am thankful that they do because life with no questions is death to me. I agree with the Buddhists who say “If you meet the Buddha on the trail, kill Him” because I want to travel my own journey without being led by the hand. But as the blog poster once said –“that’s just me!”
BTW I like what Count Tolstoy wrote in his book “The Kingdom of God is Within You.” He said that what Christ meant when he told the apostles that “The Kingdom of God is Within You (Luke 17:21)” was that you must live the life, He, Christ taught if you are truly following Him. But Tolystoy wrote, people don’t live the life because they choose to follow the dictates of society and the dictates of their role in it; and this leads to disaster. This must be true or we would not have had any wars fought by Christian nations. I think one reason for this situation is because people believe things they don’t understand.
Do you disagree?
Cheers,
Frank