Abdu'l-Baha and the Question of Infallibility
Alethinos (alethinos@aol.com)
Sat, Mar 25 1995 15:34:46 GMT
There seems to be a bit of confusion on the question of whether
Abdu'l-Baha was *infallible* or was He always correct. This is a complex
question, if only because it involves considerably more knowledge than
simply a few verses in the Book of the Covenant.
First the hair-splitting about Abdul-Baha's *name* not appearing in the
Book is a waste of time. It was well known, and is recorded, for instance
in Taherzadeh's books, that Abdu'l-Baha was recognized as The Most Mighty
Branch, by even his unfaithful half-brother, who is the Greater Branch
ref. to in the Kitab-i-Ahd - this title being a point of contention for
the Covenant-breakers. I'm not going to waste time dragging out the page
numbers, they are there though, so go look them up.
Second. The term infallible means primarily, if you check the dictionary,
exactly what is attributed of Abdu'l-Baha by the Guardian. That is that He
was absolutely trustworthy and sure, He was unfailing in effectivieness
and operation, exempt from liability to error. This last can be confusing.
The term does not mean *perfect* in the Western (Christian) sense of the
word - as in an end-state of perfection.
In the passage in Promulgation, p. 323-324 Abdu'l-Baha is clearly refering
to a number of Tablets. The Master was not dictating this - it was being
recorded, and we know that there are errors in the records - there were
mistakes made in Some Answered Questions too - where He was simply talking
and answering questions. Consequently we can't be sure that the quote
marks around that particular phrase are accurate to what He really said.
The critical point was that the Covenant would be preserved through
*turning* with all questions, to Abdu'l-Baha.
Despite all this we need to remember something else here. In the records
that we do have from those major religions where there were reliable
written accounts, esp. Christianity and Islam, there has always been a
contention by the enemies of the Prophets that They had made errors. The
Quran is supposedly perfect, and yet it is known to have a good number of
grammatical errors. Christ was constantly challenged by the pharisees for
supposed mistakes. And yet we look on the Prophets and hold them to be
*Perfect Beings*.
Perfection and infallibility does not mean a reductio ad absurdum because
Abdu'l-Baha stubbed His toe. The Muslims were embarassed by the fact that
Muhammad had made the statement that suggested that the earth revolved
around the sun. This flew in the face of Ptolemaic astronomy - which
suggested the opposite. It took approx. eight hundred years for Muhammad
to be proven right by Copernicus.
The real error that we make, is our assumption that we can understand the
true measure of such a thing as infallibility, and phrases like *freed
from error*. When we get out our yardstick, as finite beings, we begin to
discover that we can't *hang our hat* on anything - as quantum physics as
shown too well in the past fifty years. Even our material world, upon
which we used to be able to stomp our foot and proclaim "Well, at least I
know this is real, it's _here_!" is slipping away, with new knowledge
coming to light about not only what we used to *think* constituted *real*
but also our ability to even certain of our perception of it.
This causes a great deal of confusion, and you see this in the sciences,
but also in the humanities, where debates rage about what we can *know* of
an author's original intnent, etc, etc.
But maybe it is, as I have suggested, _our_ conception of what constitutes
certainty that is faulty - based on faulty assumptions and a long string
of errors, some great, some small, that have been made in our Western
culture over the past two thousand years or so?
anyway, these are just some quick thoughts tossed out here to see if any
help.
Sincerely,
Jim Harrison
Jim Harrison, Alethinos@aol.com