Oneness of Humanity 3

Oneness of Humanity (3)

More On Christianity, and the Qu'ranic Corrective


By John Taylor; 4 August, 2004



Paul's Points on the Areopagus


Last time I gave short shrift to the contribution that Christianity made
to the principle of oneness of humanity. I will try to rectify that
before continuing on to Islam.

St. Paul gave an important talk that nicely outlines the all-important
spiritual principle of the oneness of God, and how the social principle
of oneness of humanity is inherent to it. This address, as summarized in
the 17th book of the Acts of the Apostles, in my opinion is identical
with the Baha'i understanding in every important respect.

Some curious Athenians had asked Paul to speak before the Athenian high
court, called the Areopagus. He started by recalling his tour of the
idols in Athens where he had noticed a shrine dedicated "To an unknown
God." His remarks then set out to explain an apparent paradox, how an
unknowable God can be known. In effect Paul draws a distinction between
an agnostic, one who embraces his own ignorance or makes ignorance his
operating principle, and a believer in a God Who, though strictly
unknown in the absolute sense, created everything and is the highest
essence of knowledge and wisdom. This God unknowable because He is the
universal giver of life and works life and is life; the ignorance is
ours, not His.

Paul starts off by saying that God is not restricted to time and place.
The maker does not dwell in any particular shrine made by men. He makes;
He is not made. He does not need us, our service, or our worship. His
Life stands behind life, as it were. He is knowable from His Merit not
ours. His unlimited abilities make Him more than capable of instructing
our minds using the same consummate mastery that He created the stars
and our bodies. God, Paul says, has,

"... made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face
of the earth... that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel
after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us. For
in him we live and move, and have our being." (Acts 17:26-8)

The oneness of God is reflected in our oneness. All humans are one
flesh. The fact that we are all so similar in body and thought allows us
to understand His oneness. Paul cites the Greek poet Aratus, who had
written, "We are also His offspring." As a son or daughter of this
Highest Being, it would be absurd to think that we make Him "in gold or
silver or stone." Not even the most ignorant fool imagines that he
created his father and mother, yet this is the common religious belief
in these times of ignorance.

No, Paul says, God chooses the highest shrine as the focal point of
faith, not one of base materials like stone or minerals but the human
body. This Individual judges the world. We are all sons of God, and only
a meta-Son is worthy "material" in which to send down the teachings of
our Father. Paul then goes on to the proof of this. How do we know that
this Person is of God? We know because God raises him from the dead.
Here the Athenians balk at this and end the discussion, assuming what
Paul was denying, that he meant a physical rather than a spiritual
resurrection. A few, however, were attracted and later become
Christians.

What I want to dwell upon here is the close link that Paul draws between
human and divine oneness. We are created in God's image and our oneness
is a reflection of, a direct offspring of His Oneness. Without oneness
in mankind there would be no one God, and without one God there could be
no one humanity. If we do not accept or are unaware of how close we are
to one another and that there are important universals in the human
condition, we cannot understand the first thing about religion, for this
is the first and last thing about the nature of God. The first and last
dwell in an Oversoul, an operating Spirit, who mediates the oneness in
both God and man; He cleaves the worldly and the other worldly.


"So also it is written, "The first man, Adam, became a living soul"; the
last Adam became a life-giving Spirit ... The first man is out of the
earth, earthy; the second man is out of heaven." (1 Cor 15:45, 47)


Only the spiritual Adam, whose mind is enlightened by the sun of
Oneness, can perceive all this. Idolatry, be it atheist or agnostic in
origin, begins and ends with materialist assumptions that rob faith of
its purifying benefit, its call to repentance. Such was Paul's teaching
on the Areopagus.


The Corrective of the Qu'ran


The Qu'ran offers several corrections to Paul's teachings. For example,
it objects to the idea that God can have a Son, an idea that it rightly
calls blasphemous. Yet it does not deny the assertions on the Areopagus
that humanity is in a sense an "offspring" of God, and that we will be
judged by a high Being, chosen from among us. Indeed I think that it is
extremely important to bear in mind that the Qu'ran confirms every
central idea that Paul set forth here. Both framed their entire teaching
as an outcome of the oneness of God.


"This is a clear message for mankind in order that they may be warned
thereby, and that they may know that He is only One God, and that men of
understanding may take heed." (Quran 14:52, Pickthall, tr.)


The most notable consequence of this One above all is that the many
respond to the one. This is Paul's belief, universally emphasized in the
early Church, that Christ would come in the end to judge the world.


"The earth will shine with the light of her Lord, and the Book will be
laid open. The prophets and witnesses shall be brought in and all shall
be judged with fairness: none shall be wronged. Every soul shall be paid
back according to its deeds, for Allah knows of all their actions."
(Q39:68)


In both we find the similarity of men and women as the base assumption.
One God, one humanity. The Qu'ran goes further though, explaining
exactly why the fundamental similarities among us do not have greater
effect.


"Mankind were but one community; then they differed; and had it not been
for a word that had already gone forth from thy Lord it had been judged
between them in respect of that wherein they differ." (Quran 10:19,
Pickthall tr.)


These other considerations, the Qu'ran says, are the result of a
suspension of judgment. In Jesus's terms, the darnell is not being
sifted from the wheat. It is our own fault that humanity cannot yet
follow through on the full implications of our unity.


"And if thy Lord had willed, He verily would have made mankind one
nation, yet they cease not differing, save him on whom thy Lord hath
mercy; and for that He did create them. And the Word of thy Lord hath
been fulfilled: Verily I shall fill hell with the jinn and mankind
together." (Qur'an 11:118-9, Pickthall, tr.)


The diagnosis of the conflict is the same for both: idolatry. While Paul
admired the Athenians' assiduous attention to religion and the serious
discussions that they willingly entered into with him, he saw that the
benefits of these virtues were ruined by the idolatry. This, he
perceived, is self-contradictory belief system, for it tantamount to
denial of religious truth. How can religion be a creative force for good
if it does not look higher than our products and technologies? No, God
creates; idols are made. So to be judged by something or someone
inferior would be an absurd injustice, which Paul and the Qu'ran deny
could ever be.


"Lo! Allah wrongeth not mankind in aught; but mankind wrong themselves."
(Quran 10:44, Pickthall tr)


On the Areopagus, Paul singled out idolatry alone to confront though
obviously there was a very diverse spectrum of beliefs in that center
and birthplace of philosophy. Paul contrasted his Christian,
monotheistic convictions with the idols that he found in the shrines of
Athens. Ditto the Qu'ran,


"Say: O mankind! If ye are in doubt of my religion, then (know that) I
worship not those whom ye worship instead of Allah, but I worship Allah
Who causeth you to die, and I have been commanded to be of the
believers." (Quran 104:10, Pickthall tr)


The universal accountability of all men as one species to One God is the
most important but not the only commonality Paul had with Qu'ranic
teaching. Even some their terminology is similar. At one point in his
talk Paul says, "As for the times of ignorance, God has overlooked
them..." (Acts 17:30) This same term, Jahiliyyih, time of ignorance,
Islamic scholars later used to refer to Araby in its pre-Islamic idol
worship.

The closest thing to a good insight that Paul found in the religions of
Athens was a rare admission that God is an unknown quantity. But unknown
does not necessarily mean unknowing, and one must know to judge. That
hints at why repentance and judgment are so important for both Paul and
the Qu'ran. If humans are not judged together based upon right criteria
we will not have common values upon which to unify ourselves. That
judgment is the real basis of both investigation of truth and the
oneness of humanity.


John Taylor
helpmatejet@yahoo.com
 
Blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/
 
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