(March 10, 2020 at 11:58 pm)Belacqua Wrote: Thank you. These quotes answer my question exactly.
These parts in particular:
Quote:all things, in their inmost reality, testify to the revelation of the names and attributes of God within them. Each according to its capacity, indicateth, and is expressive of, the knowledge of God. So potent and universal is this revelation, that it hath encompassed all things, visible and invisible.
This makes it clear that everything includes the names of God insofar as they are able. The standard explanation is that everything above pure inert matter contains some goodness, and so embodies God to some degree, and the quote above agrees with that.
The next part is about people in particular:
Quote:a light hath shone forth out of the Morn of eternity, and lo! its waves have penetrated the inmost reality of all men.” Man, the noblest and most perfect of all created things, excelleth them all in the intensity of this revelation, and is a fuller expression of its glory."
So whereas every snail and flower and grain of sand contains some expression of God's glory, people have it to the greatest degree.
The next part summarizes this:
Quote:whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth is a direct evidence of the revelation within it of the attributes and names of God, inasmuch as within every atom are enshrined the signs that bear eloquent testimony to the revelation of that most great Light. Methinks, but for the potency of that revelation, no being could ever exist. How resplendent the luminaries of knowledge that shine in an atom, and how vast the oceans of wisdom that surge within a drop! To a supreme degree is this true of man [...]
For in him are potentially revealed all the attributes and names of God to a degree that no other created being hath excelled or surpassed.
While everything that exists has within it the attributes and names of God, people do so to a "supreme degree."
So this is entirely in line with Neoplatonic Christianity. I don't know about other parts of the Bahai religion, and how they differ from the standard Neoplatonic view.
Of course there are differences of opinion on the subject, even among Neoplatonic Christians. Some thought that -- according to the principle of the Great Chain of Being -- there must be a complete gradation of greatness between inert matter and God. This would mean that from unformed matter to people there is a clear hierarchy of forms, with people at the top. But they also thought that the gap is so big between people and God that there must be many more forms in that gap, too. With the result that they speculated about aliens on other planets, or higher beings unknown to us, who lie in the hierarchy between us and God. This was generally not church teaching, but was widely discussed.
Erasmus Darwin looked at the new archeological discoveries of his day and analyzed them according to the Neoplatonic hierarchy, which allowed him to posit that species changed and evolved. He got right up to the brink of the theory of evolution, leaving the last piece of the puzzle -- natural selection -- for his grandson Charles to figure out.
The cool thing to me is that one of the criteria they used to rank the hierarchy is the capacity for enjoyment. Each creature in the chain can enjoy itself to the extent that its nature allows, but the higher you go on the chain the more things the creature is able to enjoy. So a snail can operate at 100% of snail-enjoyment-capacity, but people's capacity for enjoying different things is greater. We can enjoy books and music that a snail would be indifferent to. And since, according to this system, experiencing God equals the greatest possible enjoyment, people are said to be closer to God than snails are.
It's a fascination subject. Thank you for the quotes.
Your welcome.
