ASMA Theism™
Deconstructing Marian C. Lippitt's Map of the Worlds of God into a Categorical Framework
H. Emogene Hoagg was an erudite Bahá'í who had studied under Mirza Abu'l-Fadl Gulpaygani and other prominent Persian Bahá'í scholars both in the Middle East and in the United States. During 1900, 1913, 1914, and 1920, Hoagg lived and served, sometimes for months at a time, in the household of ` Abdu'l-Bahá. Following `Abdu'l-Bahá's passing in 1921, she returned to Haifa to assist the new Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith, Shoghi Effendi.
In the later years of her life, Hoagg produced an outline, containing but a modicum of personal commentary, in which she organized citations of the Bahá'í literature within three existential categories:
Know that the conditions of existence are limited to the conditions of
servitude, of prophethood and of Deity, but the divine and the
contingent perfections are unlimited.
-- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Some Answered
Questions, page 230
Hoagg published her outline in 1937 as Three Worlds, revised it the following year as Conditions of Existence: Servitude, Prophethood, Deity, and, over those same two years, conducted classes on it in various venues, including the Green Acre Bahá'í School in Eliot, Maine, and the Louhelen Bahá'í School in Davison, Michigan. Then, in 1943, spanning an approximately five-month period, she personally instructed Marian C. Lippitt1 on her conditions of existence outline.
Lippitt subsequently, in the course of her decades long indexing project of Bahá'í sources, and her other work, developed Hoagg's model into an original ontology, ontotheology, and systematic theology, namely, The Science of Reality. As will be addressed in this portion of the paper, the objective of ASMA Theism is, by deconstructing Lippitt's theology, to reorient the work initiated by Hoagg in a new, more nominalist, direction.
Lippitt has described, to her own understanding, various language games found in the Bahá'í texts. Since many of her assumptions were grounded in essentialism, Aristotelian realism, or Platonic idealism, one of the principal engagements of ASMA Theism, as a nominalist perspective, is with a radical deconstruction and relativization of the Platonic and Aristotelian foundationalisms in Lippitt's understandings of Bahá'í wisdom teachings.
There is, in other words, no attempt at being faithful to Lippitt's schema which, rather than approached as a fixed ontology (reality framework) or kosmology (Ken Wilber's term), is treated here as a language game, as a set of rubrics, and as categories. Likewise, created reality is considered a name for God's volitionally relative constructions or lifeworlds, not a perennial hierarchy of existence or an idealized ordering of timeless first principles.
Now, formation is of three kinds and of three kinds only:
accidental, necessary and voluntary. The coming together of the
various constituent elements of beings cannot be accidental, for
unto every effect there must be a cause. It cannot be compulsory,
for then the formation must be an inherent property of the
constituent parts and the inherent property of a thing can in no wise
be dissociated from it, such as light that is the revealer of things,
heat that causeth the expansion of elements and the solar rays which
are the essential property of the sun. Thus under such circumstances
the decomposition of any formation is impossible, for the inherent
properties of a thing cannot be separated from it. The third
formation remaineth and that is the voluntary one, that is, an unseen
force described as the Ancient Power, causeth these elements to come
together, every formation giving rise to a distinct being.
--`Abdu'l-Bahá, Tablet to
August Forel, pages 16-17
Regrettably, it has been common for certain of Lippitt's proponents to argue that the indexing system she developed, which she later implemented with her coworkers, was simply the Writings and not the product of individual deepening and personal interpretation:
A clear distinction is made in our Faith between authoritative
interpretation and the interpretation or understanding that each
individual arrives at for himself from his study of its teachings.
While the former is confined to the Guardian, the latter, according
to the guidance given to us by the Guardian himself, should by no
means be suppressed. In fact such individual interpretation is
considered the fruit of man's rational power and conducive to a
better understanding of the teachings, provided that no disputes or
arguments arise among the friends and the individual himself
understands and makes it clear that his views are merely his own.
Individual interpretations continually change as one grows in
comprehension of the teachings.
-- From a letter of the Universal House of Justice to an individual
Bahá'í, May 27, 1966, and cited: Lights of Guidance, pages 312-313
Fortunately, there is an appreciation, among most academic religious scholars and theologians, for the considerable hierographological, or textual, problems associated with utilizing translated materials as the basis for a scriptural indexing system, especially one lacking sufficient regard for issues of social and historical contextualization. Unfortunately, however, Lippitt's literalist hermeneutic and methodology, a species of linguistic realism in which she instructed her volunteers, required that Bahá'í and other writings should be indexed, word by word, following their verbatim English-language renderings.
Lippitt's model consolidates, in part, a three-tiered Reality Chart, illustrating the three physical dimensions of outward appearances, a fourth dimension of rationality and time, and a fifth dimension of purposeful power or spirit underlying outward appearances; a Neo-Platonic reification of the teachings of the Prophets; and a propositional Science of Reality. These metanarratives detract from her otherwise substantial and pioneering constructions of the worlds of God and her general insights into personal development.
Additionally, some of Lippitt's ideas were incorporated by her close friend, the late Professor Daniel C. Jordan of the University of Massachusetts, and his colleagues into the Anisa educational project. Lying squarely within the human potential movement of the 1960s and 1970s and formulated, primarily, around Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy and, secondarily, around Carl Rogers' and Abraham H. Maslow's humanistic psychologies and Charles Sanders Peirce's realist pragmatism2, Anisa integrated Lippitt's proposition of purpose or potentiality as a universally manifested ontological essence.
In contrast, as framed here, human spirits, as names for the God-given capacities associated with particular individuals, may permit one to conform to God's multiple Purposes for man, but those Purposes refer to God's Will or Intentionality. They do not constitute, as presumed by Lippitt and Jordan, an innately coactive essence of all human spirits. Moreover, since the purpose of man, distinguished from the divine Will and Purpose, is no more than a nominal universal of the free wills of persons, these spirits are powers only, not powers concatenated with God's Purposes for man.
Having created the world and all that liveth and moveth therein, He,
through the direct operation of His unconstrained and sovereign Will,
chose to confer upon man the unique distinction and capacity to know
Him and to love Him -- a capacity that must needs be regarded as the
generating impulse and the primary purpose underlying the whole of
creation.
-- Bahá'u'lláh, Gleanings from the Writings of
Bahá'u'lláh, page 65
Although this passage is sometimes cited by those arguing for ontological realism or essentialism, no such concept is mentioned. Rather, each human soul has a particularized, or individualized, capacity to know and to love its Creator; and, in the great workshop of spiritual development and immortal preparation which characterizes this world, God has fashioned and empowered all things for His primary, His most important, purpose of facilitating this dual human capacity.
Therefore, the worlds of God, considered apart from the presuppositional matrix Lippitt incorporated into her indexing system, might be delineated as existential classifications, as constructions, or as names for beings and entities with similar attributes, not as eternal essences or ideal forms.
The nominal relativity of these worlds may be implied in the following passage:
"Although the divine worlds be never ending, yet some refer to them
as four: The world of time (zamán), which is the one that hath
both a beginning and an end; the world of duration (dahr), which hath
a beginning, but whose end is not revealed; the world of perpetuity
(sarmad), whose beginning is not to be seen but which is known to
have an end; and the world of eternity (azal), neither a beginning
nor an end of which is visible. Although there are many differing
statements as to these points, to recount them in detail would result
in weariness. Thus, some have said that the world of perpetuity hath
neither beginning nor end, and have named the world of eternity as
the invisible, impregnable Empyrean. Others have called these the
worlds of the Heavenly Court (Lahút), of the Empyrean Heaven
(Jabarút), of the Kingdom of the Angels (Malakút), and
of the mortal world (Nasút).
-- Bahá'u'lláh, The
Seven Valleys and the Four Valleys, page 25
In this connection, Lippitt's Map of the Worlds of God has, over several decades, been reformulated by this writer as the categorical framework of ASMA Theism™. Whereas Lippitt and Jordan premised their models on certain holistic principles, ASMA Theism3 takes a reductionist approach. It constitutes a construction, not a science, of reality.
From one standpoint, Neo-Platonic ideal forms, essences, or realities are, in the Bahá'í scriptures, analogous to John Locke's nominal essences, frequently revisioned as relative and contingent linguistic categories or names, as divine constructions of reality, as literary narratives, and as typological and comparative classification schemes founded on the observed attributes of single entities:
The essence of Bahá'u'lláh's Teaching is all-embracing
love, for love includeth every excellence of humankind. It causeth
every soul to go forward. It bestoweth on each one, for a heritage,
immortal life. Erelong shalt thou bear witness that His celestial
Teachings, the very glory of reality itself, shall light up the skies
of the world.
Among these teachings was the independent investigation of reality
so that the world of humanity may be saved from the darkness of
imitation and attain to the truth; may tear off and cast away this
ragged and outgrown garment of a thousand years ago and may put on
the robe woven in the utmost purity and holiness in the loom of
reality. As reality is one and cannot admit of multiplicity,
therefore different opinions must ultimately become fused into one.
... men of faith behold the reality of religion manifestly revealed
in these heavenly teachings, and clearly and conclusively prove
them to be the real and true remedy for the ills and infirmities of
all mankind.
The essence of faith is fewness of words and abundance of deeds; he
whose words exceed his deeds, know verily his death is better than
his life. In other contexts, ideal forms, essences, or realities are, reminiscent of Locke's real essences, the unknowable quiddities of spiritual and material particulars:
The rain itself hath no geometry, no limits, no form, but it taketh
on one form or another, according to the restrictions of its vessel.
In the same way, the Holy Essence of the Lord God is boundless,
immeasurable, but His graces and splendours become finite in the
creatures, because of their limitations, wherefore the prayers of
given persons will receive favourable answers in certain cases.
When, however, thou dost contemplate the innermost essence of all
things, and the individuality of each, thou wilt behold the signs of
thy Lord's mercy in every created thing, and see the spreading rays
of His Names and Attributes throughout all the realm of being, with
evidences which none will deny save the froward and the unaware.
Then wilt thou observe that the universe is a scroll that discloseth
His hidden secrets, which are preserved in the well-guarded Tablet.
Physical bodies are transferred past one barrier after another, from
one life to another, and all things are subject to transformation
and change, save only the essence of existence itself -- since it is
constant and immutable, and upon it is founded the life of every
species and kind, of every contingent reality throughout the whole
of creation.
It may be said, for instance, that this lamplight is last night's
come back again, or that last year's rose hath returned to the
garden this year. Here the reference is not to the individual
reality, the fixed identity, the specialized being of that other
rose, rather doth it mean that the qualities, the distinctive
characteristics of that other light, that other flower, are present
now, in these. Briefly, therefore, the objective idealism in Lippitt's Science of Reality, reflecting a perfunctory approach to the (deconstructed) Neoplatonic concepts found in certain Bahá'í texts, is, in ASMA Theism, reconceptualized in nominalist terms. Lippitt's idealism is superseded by a particularist voluntarism (to coin a term, a post-neoplatonism). Neoplatonism, including the views of Plato and Aristotle, is the literary framework, the vehicle, of Baha'i mysticism. Indeed, it might be said that superficially, at least, Bahá'u'lláh and `Abdu'l-Bahá were presenting a Neoplatonic religious model. However, an analogy might be found in Jean-François Lyotard, who took Ludwig Wittgenstein's concept of language games and used it to deconstruct metanarratives or totalizing schemes. Here, the metanarrative is Neoplatonism. Before all else, divine reality or truth (haqíqat) is God, the Real or True One (al-haqq). It may then be construed, though secondarily and dependently, as encompassing all that which the divine Essence wills to construct and create. ASMA Theism, a single attempt at understanding certain of those divine constructions and creations, is not presumed to depict the only, or even the most accurate, model of existence. ASMA Theism is a weak theism. That is to say, while it establishes God's Will as sovereign, it also separates the sciences and humanities from religious authority. As such, it agrees with William of Ockham that secular, academic pursuits should not be governed by religious scripture. 1The criticisms directed against certain of the assumptions made by Marian Lippitt are entirely didactic and heuristic and should not be seen to detract from the enormous respect I have for her as an individual and for her personal researches. Useful historical context can be obtained by reading this selection from some of Lippitt's written materials:
3Here is a simplified version:
Or, for non-Bahá'í audiences:
|
|
|