And I say, as I have said from the outset, that particular critique is flawed – it's sophistry.
The Archeology of the Kingdom of God: Diving a Bit Deeper into a Baha'i Approach to Metaphysics
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Ahanu
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And you and DBH aren't going to agree with ancient Christians on their view of a solid firmament either - even though that is what many of them thought, so it is not a question of what many ancient Christians believed or what even Genesis itself clearly says. Luke clearly builds upon the language in Genesis when he states "the heaven was opened" for the Holy Spirit to descend in the first place . . .
Question: Did early Christians believe the firmament separated the spiritual realm above and the material realm below? Did early Christians believe the Holy Spirit descended as some sort of movement from the spiritual realm (above the firmament) to the material realm (below the firmament)?
More to the point, we don't agree with your view ...
Yes. Just as, I'm sure, the Baha'i does, if the writings are anything to go by ...
(Your 'broken record' comment reflects the fact you keep asking the same question ... )
Question: Do Baha'i accept the use of 'figurative language' and analogy is discussing spiritual matters, or not?
Ahanu
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It's not just my view. You're both departing with the view of early Christians too - at least on the question of a solid firmament that was not interpreted in a mere figurative manner. Let's not pretend it was only interpreted in a figurative manner. Why should I expect Luke to differ on this point?
Which passages?
This question is more specific, however.
Yes. Sure.
No, we're disagreeing with your assumptions of what early Christians believed.
I think, and this is my final repetition of the point I've been insisting all along, is that the Ancients saw the world as much more permeable than we do. Above all they believed in their God or their Gods, and that everything descended hierarchically according to the Divine Will, whether by causation or emanation ... in the end it boils down to splitting cultural hairs.
But above all they saw some order of Supreme Being, who arranged the worlds around Themself accordingly. And so it's not so much of a literal belief in a series of shells enclosing the mundane world, but rather a spiritual vision that manifested itself all the way down ... they saw such things as physical entities and understood them according to a certain spiritual or supernatural paradigm.
In short, they saw it 'all in all' whereas modernity views it as two very separate things.
So when the dove descended, of course it was a real dove. Why not? What's to prevent God's Holy Spirit manifesting in the form of a dove? In the Sacred Scriptures the Spirit takes many forms. It's a reasonable, rational and logical assertion when you believe the world exists by virtue of the Divine Will. Why a real dove? Because a real dove is better and more real – in our world – than a phantasmagorical dove, and God is Good, and God is True, and so if God is true, and something of God appears as a dove, it is truly a dove.
Tell the Ancients that the laws of physics disallow the Divine to manifest Itself in any physical way, shape or form, and they'll laugh at you, or sympathise with your spiritual myopia.
So yes, their descriptions might appear naivé to us, but that naiveté is founded on a very real and holistic spiritual sense and understanding and belief in God as a Very Real Thing, here, there and everywhere, present in and to their own lives. All while simultaneously sitting enthroned on high ... as opposed to the modern view that renders the whole world as material, and places the spiritual domain somewhere 'over there', beyond our ken or reach.
So our current reading might very well be very, very urbane and sophisticated, but in actuality perhaps further from the truth, further from the reality of world as theophany, to such an increasing degree that our gods today are little more than projections of our own ideals, which is a subtle and blinding idolatry.
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We understand the surface so much better than they, they saw through the veil so much clearer than us.
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My question was:
Question: Do Baha'i accept the use of 'figurative language' and analogy is discussing spiritual matters, or not?
Then that's why I find SQA Q25.3 contradicts itself.
Tony Bristow-Stagg
One Planet One People Please
We both agree it is a lot deeper. The flesh is the temporal temple of the soul and should be treated according under God's laws. Chastity, cleanliness, mortality, purity, trustworthiness and truthfulness all help to maintain a way of life for the flesh.
Rejection of these spiritual virtues and the flesh is already dead, it has no life in the Spirit.
As such, I see a faith that includes the material flesh body as a necessary element of our spiritual journey, is faith built on sand, as the chruch was to be built on the statement made by Peter, the statement that Jesus was the Christ. (Annointed One) It is that annoinment of the Holy Spirit we are asked to be born into, born from the flesh into the Spirit, so death does not overtake us. We are not being asked to be born into the flesh of Jesus, we are created in the image of the Holy Spirit.
This is where science helps us and that we can understand that the stories had no other intent than a spiritual lesson, to bring us to God’s Word as spoken by Christ. The body will suffer decomposition, the elements dispersed, never to arise again in that form.
The virtues we have obtained in our journey of flesh, becomes the essence of our spiritual bodies.
Every word of God guven by Christ has a regenerative power,
"...Every single letter proceeding out of the mouth of God is indeed a mother letter, and every word uttered by Him Who is the Well-Spring of Divine Revelation is a mother word, and His Tablet a Mother Tablet. Well is it with them that apprehend this truth..."
The whole of God's Word has a Physical element, we exist in the Revelation of that Word, it is the letters B and E knit together.
"...Every single letter proceeding from Our mouth is endowed with such regenerative power as to enable it to bring into existence a new creation--a creation the magnitude of which is inscrutable to all save God..." Baha'u'llah
Regards Tony
Tony Bristow-Stagg
One Planet One People Please
Tony Bristow-Stagg
One Planet One People Please
Sophistry seems to be the accusation of desperation and its use may be a distraction from the valid points being presented.
Regards Tony
Tony Bristow-Stagg
One Planet One People Please
I see that is not God's purpose with such events.
This can be answered for a Baha'i, as we have the more recent and recorded experiences of both the Bab and Baha'u'llah and prior to them the Revelation of Muhammad.
With Baha'u'llah's Revelation and the vision of the Maiden, he was in a Dungeon with many other prisoners. It was Baha'u'llah that experienced this event, there was no physical appearance of the Maiden in the Dungeon, a place so loathsome that is is beyond descriptive appreciation.
"...Wrapped in its stygian gloom, breathing its fetid air, numbed by its humid and icy atmosphere, His feet in stocks, His neck weighed down by a mighty chain, surrounded by criminals and miscreants of the worst order, oppressed by the consciousness of the terrible blot that had stained the fair name of His beloved Faith, painfully aware of the dire distress that had overtaken its champions, and of the grave dangers that faced the remnant of its followers--at so critical an hour and under such appalling circumstances the "Most Great Spirit," as designated by Himself, and symbolized in the Zoroastrian, the Mosaic, the Christian, and Muhammadan Dispensations by the Sacred Fire, the Burning Bush, the Dove and the Angel Gabriel respectively, descended upon, and revealed itself, personated by a "Maiden," to the agonized soul of Bahá'u'lláh." -(Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, p. 101)
This appears to be God's given moment to Each Messenger of God. Those that are around in that moment see a change in the person of the Messenger, the true sovereignty and Kingship have become manifested for all to see.
Regards Tony
Tony Bristow-Stagg
One Planet One People Please
There would be no point, truth was relevant to their time and place. Their time is not our time, knowledge is progressing, both materially and spiritually.
We now know, using science also as a guide, that religious experiences unfold in a power that is beyond the senses. Things once seen as miraculous are found to have possibilities in science. Imagine how many people could have been saved with just CPR, imagine an ancient man in past laws giving CPR to another man, a miracle giving back life, or would it be a death sentence?
A Messenger has access to all knowledge, who knows what we will be able to do in the future. The most ancient Messenger knows the beginning and knows the end and knows everything in between and can act within that knowledge as God so wills.
Regards Tony
Again, no. My 'no' is not sophistry, it's a flat-out rebuttal. The comparison is between two unalike things, so no.
OK
OK. That fact that there was no physical appearance of the Maiden does not mean there was no physical appearance of the dove.
Knowledge of spiritual things is of a different order, as the spiritual transcends time and space.
Are you sure?
OK, but discuss that with a scientist and he would say that itself does not preclude the miraculous.
The same goes for anyone, anywhere and always ...
Tony Bristow-Stagg
One Planet One People Please
I do not agree with this. We are not Annointed, only the Messengers are and only they have innate God Annointed knowledge.
We have to be born again in faith to tap into our possibilities, even then we are limited in our ability by the veils of this material world.
Regards Tony
Tony Bristow-Stagg
One Planet One People Please
Life itself is miraculous. From the process of birth, to our growth to maturity. Millions of miraculous moments have transpired just so we can live and make rational choices.
God knows what part we will play before we are born, what we will do in life and spirit, God's great plan is inclusive of all miracles of faith and the destructive consequences of faiths rejection.
No person has a free ride in faith, as we one and all are all tested, and what better way to test a person of faith, than with their own faith.
Regards Tony
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OK, but now we're into various definitions of miracle.
Primary: An event that transcends natural law and is attributed to a divine agency – such as resurrection.
Secondary: A remarkable event or development that brings very welcome consequences – that's the kind of thing you're inferring above.
I have over-started, you are right in that regard, knowledge of the beginning and end and everything in between is vouched to those according to God's will, and necessity.
But that knowledge is not innate, it belongs to God alone, not to the individual. Nor is it necessary for the purposes of salvation and deification.
Human Messengers are anointed in the sense that they are in receipt of a message given to all, but their knowledge does not extend beyond that. The Patriarchs and prophets of Israel, did not know the beginning and end of things, and all stations in between ... they knew what they are told and what they were called to do.
Same with Muhammed (pbuh). His knowledge was not innate, it came to him as revelation, at times mediated by Gabriel.
They are only human, after all.
Indeed, hence the desire for Union with the Divine, and the 'peace that surpasses all undersatanding' (Philippians 4:7).
For us, union with God is the whole purpose of creation. That is the eternal rest and end that all human life is drawn towards, and all nature accordingly, because humans are natural beings, and spiritual beings, the two 'natures', body and soul, united in one corporate entity.
The Holy Spirit can rest in the soul of whomsoever the Holy Spirit chooses; the Holy Spirit activates faith in a sense beyond our own convictions, and the presence of the Holy Spirit in and to the individual is an anointing, but it may be private in the sense that the individual knows 'nothing' other than their faith is not in vain.
Julian of Norwich famously offered her book of 'shewings' detailing 16 visions, which gave her a view of the origin and end of all things, but not in forensic detail, rather simply that all things arise in God, and end there ...
Tony Bristow-Stagg
One Planet One People Please
I personally see our understanding of natural law is currently extremely limited, I see our understanding requires unity on mind before it can mature, with this, we must consider science as a God given capacity to assist us.
With the resurrection, we only have to listen to Jesus who clarifies true life. "My kingdom is not of this world". Logically, if we come One in Christ, our kingdom is also not of this world. Since we can born into that world prior to death, then the body is only a temporal form in this matrix, a vessel for growth of the Spirit.
John 18:36 Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place"
John 6:63 "The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life."
Why do we fight over this world? We least we should be doing, is serving each other, just as Jesus and the Messengers did.
John 15:12-15 gives us a hint, I see it is saying we should give our life for Love
12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.
Why do we not turn the cheek and become a friend of Jesus, rather than servants?
Baha'u'llah says, it is better to be killed than kill, when we Love, we will not kill for any reason.
Regards Tony
Tony Bristow-Stagg
One Planet One People Please
I can only offer that Baha'u'llah has explained this in much greater detail. The Kitab-i-iqan being the source of many of those answers.
In the station of the Annointed One, (Annointed of the Holy Spirit, they have access to all the knowledge as given to them by God, as a human, they are a man like us.
That is why many do not see Christ in all the Messengers, they embrace the person of the Messengers and do not look for the Essence that has Annointed them, One and All, The Word of God.
Regards Tony