Dialogue on the Resurrected Body, part 7

Marty said...

Very good response Mariano. You bring up some excellent points. First I want to quote another saying of Baha'u'llah:

"The fundamental purpose animating the Faith of God and His Religion is to safeguard the interests and promote the unity of the human race, and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men. Suffer it not to become a source of dissension and discord, of hate and enmity. This is the straight Path, the fixed and immovable foundation. Whatsoever is raised on this foundation, the changes and chances of the world can never impair its strength, nor will the revolution of countless centuries undermine its structure. Our hope is that the world's religious leaders and the rulers thereof will unitedly arise for the reformation of this age and the rehabilitation of its fortunes. Let them, after meditating on its needs, take counsel together and, through anxious and full deliberation, administer to a diseased and sorely-afflicted world the remedy it requireth..." (Baha'u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah, p. 215)

This is at the core of Baha'u'llah's teaching for this time. Everything that any Baha'i says must be judged with reference to this standard. So we have to reread the quotes you quoted in light of this quote because it is the standard. Note that in the above quote Baha'u'llah says "safeguard the interests and promote the unity of the human race". The Baha'i Faith is thus not concerned to create some seperate space for itself and work for the salvation of its own members but rather is focused on the salvation of all mankind. This is a fundamental change from previous religions. I'm currently reading a facinating book called 'The Gospel of Paul' by Joong Suk Suh who is the Dean and Professor of New Testament at Yonsei University College of Theology, Seoul Korea. He has a chapter in the book on the Lord's Supper. Here is a quote:

"The Lord's supper is the ritual which seperates its participants from the outer world which does not have the same symbolic world as the 'new covenant'. By maintaining the boundaries between the participants and th non-participants, the Lord's supper sustains and strengthens the inner solidarity.
In this effort Paul faces an awkward dilemma. It was Paul who has criticized the jewish boundaries and hte consciousness of their national privilege separating them from the pagan world. And now he is himself establishing the base for the Christian demarcation that separate him and his congregation of the Lord's supper which the Christians alone practice.
I believe that Paul was awaree of this contradiction, but does not openly discuss it. He had come to and understanding that the presence of demarcation was an inevitable factor of a religion or a sect."

It's a long quote but makes a critical point. All religions before the Baha'i faith had rituals that separate them from those not of their faith. The Baha'i Faith has no rituals and no clergy. Baha'u'llah did not want to create unnecessary barriers between believers and unbelievers.

I've said enough for this post and will analyse your quotes above in light of what I've said above next Monday.

Here is his next response:

Ok I'll start with the following quote:

He continues by noting, in metaphorical terminology, that the chance for obtaining “everlasting life” will be passing away,

“Make haste…while there is yet time…the breeze of life…cannot last…must needs be stilled…cannot for ever remain open…will have winged its flight away…its melody be heard no more…cease to shine. Seize the time…hath spent itself…ceased to warble…”

This quotation come from the Book of Certitude in which Baha'u'llah unlocks the seals of the Scriptures of the past and explains the concept of the Divine Springtime and the need for religion to be periodically be renewed with the appearance of a Manifestation of God. The 'ceased to warble' is explained in the following verse:

"The day will surely come when the Nightingale of Paradise will have winged its flight away from its earthly abode unto its heavenly nest. Then will its melody be heard no more, and the beauty of the rose cease to shine."

This refers to the passing from this world of the Manifestation when mankind will be bereft of the beauty of the rose as embodied by Him. So in this verse Baha'u'llah is not addressing any individual but mankind as a whole and that mankind must make the best of its advantage in having such a Presence in its midst. It thus can have nothing to do with the individuals chance for eternal life since obviously only a tiny percentage of humans can actually live during the time of a Manifestation.

In the interest of keeping each post to a managable length I will stop here and continue with the next response. But feel free to respond to this.

Here is his next one:

Next I'll respond to the following quotes you mentioned in your previous response:

“the rewards of the other world are the eternal life which is clearly mentioned in all the Holy Books…In the same way the punishments of the other world, that is to say, the torments of the other world, consist in being deprived of the special divine blessings and the absolute bounties, and falling into the lowest degrees of existence. He who is deprived of these divine factors, although he continues after death, is considered as dead by the people of truth…”

He also wrote,

“Whoso hath been re-born in this Day, shall never die; whoso remaineth dead, shall never live.”
[ibid., p. 213]

He also stated,

“The purpose of God in creating man hath been, and will be, to enable him to know his Creator and to attain His Presence…Whose hath failed to recognize Him will have condemned himself to the misery of remoteness, a remoteness which is naught but utter nothingness and the essence of the nethermost fire.”
[ibid., pp. 70-71]

There is that “nethermost fire” again.

First I don't see anything in any of these quotes that say you have to convert to the Baha'i Faith to know God, which is the sole prerequisite for attainment to a blissful eternal life. The 'misery of remoteness' is a remoteness from God. Here is a quotation that shows that a person can be considered a Baha'i even though he/she may not have converted to the Faith:

"Blessed is he who prefereth his brother before himself. Verily such a man is reckened, by virtue of the will of God, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise, with the people of Baha who dwell in the Crimson Ark." Word of Paradise by Baha'u'llah

So a person who prefers his brother before himself is considered an honorary Baha'i. Consider also the condition of Muslims in the Middle East. Many would be executed if they were to publicly convert to the Baha'i Faith. There are many conditions that prevent people even in this country from becoming Bahais.
They may be good people but sincerely attached to some form of Christianity. So long as they don't actively attack people of other faiths and have a genuine relationship with God there is no reason they should not experience an appropriate level of bliss in the next life. It is the relationship with God and one's fellow man that is the criteria for judging how we will experience the next life. And this judgment is in God's hands. In my next response I want to deal more at length with the Baha'i concept of salvation.

Well, he, and Baha'u'llah, disagree with the official Baha'i website for the USA.
He continued thusly in his next response:

I said I was going to deal at more length with the Baha'i concept of salvation but after doing a search of the word salvation in the writings of Baha'u'llah and Abdul Baha I couldn't find any specific Baha'i meaning for the word. Salvation is obtained by the Word of God as embodied in His Manifestations in each age. But the usage is generic in the writings and is applied to the whole of mankind rather than to the individual. Baha'u'llah does say 'Seize ye the chalice of salvation' but here as in many places he is addressing all men rather than the individual man.

Finally I think I can address the point you made as follows:

“…The only salvation in any age, Baha'is believe, is to turn again towards God, to accept his Manifestation for that day, and to follow his teachings.”
You will note that according to the official Baha'i website for the USA the only salvation is to accept his Manifestation “for that day, and to follow his teachings.”
Note that it is not “accept whichever Manifestation throughout history you choose” but it is very specific: accept Baha'u'llah (for this day) and follow his teachings.

Salvation here is being used to apply to mankind as a whole. The meaning of religion is God's guidance of man. Without that guidance man would not have survived because man has gifts that are lethal without God's guidance.

Finally I'd like to quote from Luke 10:

25 And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" 26 He said to him, "What is written in the law? How do you read?" 27 And he answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." 28 And he said to him, "You have answered right; do this, and you will live."

This is the same thing Baha'u'llah is saying. There is no qualification about believing in a specific prophet of God. So this is how an individual is saved and is based solely on that individuals relationship with God and his neighbor.

Well, make of these responses what you will; I think that the quotes that I provided speak for themselves.
Sadly, from here the dialogue came to an end as I had to work on a project and Marty and I never got back on topic:

Mariano said...

Thank you so much for all of the feedback.

I wanted to take a moment to let you know that I will not be able to get back to you until next week.

I am reading a book about Nazism that was sent to me so that I am write a review, it comes out on April 20th (Hitler’s birthday) and I have to focus on getting it read and the review written by them.

This review was posted as Adolf Hitler's Birthday Present - Joe Keysor, "Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible".
Marty said...

Sounds interesting. I'm myself am studying Freudian psychoanalysis. They were both in Vienna about the same time and may have passed each other on the street.
Freud a well-to-do Jew and Hitler a down-and-out artist.
Of course when Hitler returned in 1938 the tables were turned. Freud was dying of jaw cancer and Hitler was approaching a pinnacle of power. I'm trying to understand what really happened then. Good reading.

That was it then.
I hope that this dialogue has been instructive in various levels.