Law and Principle

On the Interaction of Law and Principle

Series on Investigation of Reality


By John Taylor; 4 July, 2004



Let me propose a hypothesis, a generalization about the nature of principle that may be proven wrong as I look closer but which is still useful early on, flimsy as it is. The proposition is this: Baha'u'llah laid principle's foundation in His Law but that there is a "lote tree beyond which there is no passing," in either direction, from us to Him, from Him to us. The mission of `Abdu'l-Baha, therefore, was to extend law into a realm that religion had left untouched until now, that of principle. Thus Baha'u'llah laid down the backbone of principle, the inflexible part that principle relies upon in the form of laws which, as He says here, are the very heart of what is right and just.


"Know verily that the essence of justice and the source thereof are both embodied in the ordinances prescribed by Him Who is the Manifestation of the Self of God amongst men, if ye be of them that recognize this truth." (Baha'u'llah, Gleanings, 175)


The high station of the Manifestation by its very nature holds Him back from the push and pull, the compromise, the flexibility of principle. The embodiment of the Word is inflexible, perfect, unchanging now and in eternity. Only His Son could embody service, utter submission to the law, and only in His (`Abdu'l-Baha's) Mind could religious principle as a consistent system find, in the above phrasing, its source and essence. Only here, in the son who is the "secret essence of the father" is the right combination of authority and independent, logical thinking to be found and derived. Only the Master, that is, could tell us this about the first principle, search for truth:


"He must not rely implicitly upon the opinion of any man without investigation; nay, each soul must seek intelligently and independently, arriving at a real conclusion and bound only by that reality." (Abdu'l-Baha, Promulgation, 291)


If Baha'u'llah had said that, it would be a command from on high. We obey a law without necessarily understanding it, agreeing with it, or ever choosing to opt out. You obey even if logic and circumstances rule it out; for example, an honest person obeys the commandment "thou shalt not steal" even if it is easy, practical, convenient, to take something, even when taking it can be done with utter impunity, indeed, when the loss could actually benefit the victim. But to command: "search truth voluntarily out of your free will" is to make it an obligatory law. And it is, but as we saw yesterday, as such it is an oxymoron, like my giving you an order to love me, and like it.

But the Master said this, and that makes all the difference. Now it is something entirely different, more in the nature of an instantiation coming from another human being whose life is proof that it is possible, practical, not a dream or mere theory. He offers a free permission to us, saying, "Here is my core, your core, the inner sanctum where everything you make is yours and yours alone. Grow here; you and you alone are responsible for all that comes out of it, so make it yours as I have made it mine in me." In the Guardian's image, the warp has been laid over the woof, the horizontal thread of principle is laid over and under the vertical threads of law resulting in a single fabric that warms and protects both individual and society.

So in this sense the Master was the first person in history truly qualified to set forth search for truth -- sorry, I mean investigation of reality -- as a base principle of faith. Before that it was a law only, the law of love. As a law it was sublime, an inspiration to the heart, but undeniably it was an inherently self-contradictory notion. Divorced from principle it failed to fire the imagination of the best minds, most of whom sank in futile, materialist ideology. Now that ideology has failed, all that is left outside principle is cynicism and Realpolitik.

But aren't Baha'is supposed to "implicitly rely" upon the Master's example? No, not without investigation, which means a history lesson, a familiarity with the art of biography. And this is best given in childhood, when the imagination is ready to catch flame. The Master had lived a life of complete service to His Father, He fainted when He saw Baha'u'llah emerge from the depths of the Siyyih Chal, then fell to the ground as soon as He saw what His Father had seen deep down there. He accompanied Him throughout the exile and imprisonment. He read and memorized the Writings of the Bab in youth but when called upon to defend His Father's Faith, He did so using His own independent reasoning, not just by citing authorities. He expects the same of us, hence the priority of this principle of investigating reality.

Another aspect of the Master's role in establishing principle was His close friendship with the academic, Mirza Abu'l-Fazl. The Master did not just promote His own views and Writings, He recommended careful study Abu'l-Fazl's insights as well, particularly his apology, The Brilliant Proof. In this book Abu'l-Fazl offers a list of several new aspects of Baha'u'llah's revelation. When the Master in New York addressed this question, he laid out, as we know, the dozen or so Baha'i principles, along with that of Covenant. Abu'l-Fazl did not contradict these, of course, but in his independent analysis of what is new in the law of Baha'u'llah he offered an interesting parallel in the Law of Baha'u'llah.

The first unique aspect of the law of Baha'u'llah, he says, is "abstaining from crediting verbal traditions." A dispute over how much to credit the traditions of the Talmud split Judaism into Rabbinites and Karaites and similar disagreements over and among different authorities split both Christianity and Islam.


"But Baha'u'llah closed to the people of the world this door which is the greatest means for sedition; for He has clearly announced that "in the religion of God all recorded matters are referable to the Book and all unrecorded matters are dependent upon the decision of the House of Justice." Thus all narrations, relations and verbal traditions have been discredited among the Baha'i people and the door of dissension, which is the greatest among the doors of hell, has been closed and locked." (Mirza Abu'l-Fadl, The Brilliant Proof, p. 24)


The second unique aspect of Baha'i law that Abu'l-Fazl points to is its restrictions on interpreting scripture. The practice of holding to contradictory, personal interpretations has "darkened the horizon of faith" by making religion a cause of dispute. Abu'l-Fazl points out that, aside from disunity, the failure of our best minds to agree among each other has split intellectuals from the rest of society, the elites standing off in their ivory towers, and the laity sunk in anti-clericism and anti-intellectualism. He points out that a great point of division has been understanding the nature of the Manifestation.

The Council of Nicea, for example, was one of a long string of failed attempts by leaders of religious thought to come to an agreement upon abstruse but important metaphysical points. Under the law of Baha'u'llah nobody dares persist in his or her opinion at the expense of harmony, "for fear of falling." Fazl paraphrases the tablet of Baha'u'llah that, he says, ends forever this whole destructive genre of squabbling,


"Since men differ in their degree of knowledge, if two persons should be found to possess different viewpoints as regards the degree and station of the Manifestation of God, both are acceptable before God, for in accord with the blessed verse: "Verily, we have created souls different in degrees;" God has created men different in understanding and diverse in manners. But if those having two points of view engage in conflict and strife while expressing their views, both of them are rejected. For, by knowing the Manifestation of God it is intended to unify the hearts, cultivate souls and to teach the truth of God, whereas conflict and strife of two persons with two different points of view would do harm to the Cause of God. Consequently both of them are referred to the fire." (Id.)


I think these are two points where the thread of investigation as a principle passes over the opposing thread of law, and you witness a mutual interdependency forming. Here the single fabric holds and pulls one thread on another. Before this, search could not be treated as a universal principle simply because it was too dangerous. If the best minds themselves were in a stranglehold of contention among themselves, what hope was there for the participation of all? Why, it would be like a Western movie with its obligatory barroom brawl, everybody fighting with everybody else. Chaos would have ensued, and the only answer ever worked out was suppression, obscurantism, concentration of power. Mirza Abu'l-Fazl was the first intellectual to learn from the Master the real basis of both seeking mind and the open society: holy Law.