Justice and the Oneness of God, II
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Let us review our main principle, the Oneness of God. What, exactly, is this principle all about? What do we mean when we say that God is one, or when we capitalize it and say the same words, that He is One?
On Sunday morning at the ARE conference I found that I was on the program, slated an hour later to give a talk about the Baha'i Faith in Esperanto. I had never done that before. I translated and listed the principles in the order I have memorized, which places Power of the Holy Spirit and Oneness of God as numbers ten and eleven in a list of twelve. I found myself drawing a line around them, separating these two principles from the others, not only because they are purely spiritual principles but because unlike the other principles which are new and unique among world religions, these two are shared with the older faiths. In fact if a movement qualifies as a faith rather than a science or philosophy, it must say something about these two. It must discuss God's ability to act, the power of the Holy Spirit, and His primal quality, the Oneness of God.
The Oneness of God especially seems to act as a sort of litmus test for the purity of a religious creed. The more a teaching allows God a voice in defining Himself, the closer it is to a divine gift, rather than a set of human opinions. This is the essential that we not say Who He is, that God does. That is the one in oneness. God Himself attests his uniqueness, articulates his singularity and explains how that differs from multiplicity. Baha'u'llah states the kernel of this mother of all principles succinctly in a prayer:
"God testifieth to the unity of His Godhood and to the singleness of His own Being. On the throne of eternity, from the inaccessible heights of His station, His tongue proclaimeth that there is none other God but Him." (Baha'u'llah, Prayers and Meditations, 86-87)
Okay, God has said it. So what? By stating His primacy the implication is that His word is not just any word, it is law. Here is where justice comes in. The very idea of justice arises from the concept of one God, and one God only. Consider the first of the Ten Commandments.
"I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the
The law of God comes with a promise and a warning. The promise is freedom, not only liberation from slavery, as had already happened when the Law was revealed on Sinai, but survival in the wilderness of separation, and attainment eventually of the inheritance of divine law, the promised land. The warning is never to become attached to anything but God. Detachment is the only way to freedom, long term.
In this sense, justice is law applied over generations, it is history, manifest destiny, it is our place in a huge, unfolding, "How the West Was Won" spectacular. Justice is the plan of God, and it has a place for each and all. The justice of an individual is his or her ability to connect with this big story and do his or her part to carry it along, to hand everything back to God, including money and power, for "the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us." (II Cor 4:7) Without One God, there would not be one plan, there would be many, and confusion and chaos would result.
"Consider this comparison. There are two men: the one has many masters who are ever at odds among themselves; the other has one master, to whom he is devoted. Are these two to be held alike? Allah forbid! But most of them have no knowledge." (Q39:30)
Justice is unified knowledge of this special genre. It sifts out those groups and nations who succeed in addressing our first duty, seeing, hearing and obeying the One ruling over the many. Thus Oneness forms justice for us, if only we can live up to it by constantly referring back to the all-merciful divine nature, rather than the arbitrary, brutal laws of physical reality. Montesquieu expresses the problem before us very nicely in his Spirit of the Laws,
"Man, as a physical being, is like other bodies governed by invariable laws. As an intelligent being, he incessantly transgresses the laws established by God, and changes those of his own instituting. He is left to his private direction, though a limited being, and subject, like all finite intelligences, to ignorance and error: even his imperfect knowledge he loses; and as a sensible creature, he is hurried away by a thousand impetuous passions. Such a being might every instant forget his Creator; God has therefore reminded him of his duty by the laws of religion. Such a being is liable every moment to forget himself; philosophy has provided against this by the laws of morality. Formed to live in society, he might forget his fellow-creatures; legislators have therefore by political and civil laws confined him to his duty."
I learned lately that ethicists do not categorize the three or four beginning commandments of the Decalogue as ethical dicta. They consider only the latter commandments to be ethical, those against murder, stealing, adultery, and so forth, but not those devoted to the Oneness and Power of God. These I suppose they consider to be matters of opinion or conviction.
This I think is to miss the whole point of monotheism.
It is true that it would be impossible to do perfect, absolute justice to these spiritual commandments. "...how can man be just with God?" (Job 9:2) But it is also true that those who can come to terms with these super-ethical laws of Oneness -- those who, like the former slaves in the wilderness of Paran, find their way out of bondage through relationship with God and His Middleman, build a history with the One, they can say that He and I go way back. This apparent diversion from the letter of ethics is the only way to make rules and laws into ways that lead to peace, as the following citations from scripture attest.
"A just weight and balance are the Lord's: all the weights of the bag are his work." (Prov 16:11, KJV)
"Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee: because he trusteth in Thee." (Isa 26:3, KJV)
"Hear the word of the Lord, ye children of
"Or let him take hold of my strength, that he may make peace with me; and he shall make peace with me." (Isa 27:5)
"...guide our feet into the way of peace." (Luke 1:79)
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"Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord." (II Peter 1:2, KJV)
"To those who believe in God and His apostles and make no distinction between any of the apostles, we shall soon give their (due) rewards: for God is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful." (Qur'an 4:152, Yusuf Ali)
"There is no peace for thee save by renouncing thyself and turning unto Me; for it behooveth thee to glory in My name, not in thine own; to put thy trust in Me and not in thyself, since I desire to be loved alone and above all that is." (AHW #8)
"Let us pray for eyes to see and ears to hear, and for hearts that long for peace." (
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