God and the Absence: Theological Excursions
Central to Shi'i thought is the doctrine of the ghayba. Often, this is translated into English as the occultation, making it some sort of mystical, magical, act of witchcraft or something, but I prefer to de-Orientalize from some exotic world of harems and flying carpets and use the more straightforward term "Absence" because that is the more precise definition of the Arabic term. The notion is that there is a Hidden Imam, a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, the Mahdi, living among us but absent, incommunicado, and has been so for over a millenium.
But really to understand the ghayba, one has to understand what it is that the Imam does, and central to his function, and his power, is his ability to understand what is known as the ta'wil of the Qur'an, or its Concealed Meaning. Consider the following Quranic verse:
It is God who has sent to you the Book, and in it
are the established verses, and they are the foundation
of the Book, and in it are the allegories. And those in whose
hearts is perversity follow the allegories, searching for discord
and searching for concealed meanings. But none know the concealed
meaning except God and Those of Firm Understanding. People say
"we believe in all of it sent from our Lord, but none comprehend it
except the People of Knowledge.
(I will say that the Sunni translation of the verse would be quite different, by moving periods around, which don't exist in the Arabic so you have to guess where the natural pause is supposed to be, that interpretation suggests that nobody comprehends the hidden meaning except God. I am working the Shi'a version here, without prejudice to and with no intention to demean or diminish other interpretations.)
The Imam, under Shi'i doctrine, is the Person of Firm Understanding, the Person of Knowledge, who can understand the hidden meaning, and therefore who can uniquely ensure God's Sovereignty on Earth. He, and only he, is capable of it, because only he can implement the Qur'an properly and entirely.
But of course we have the Absence, meaning that such guidance is impossible while the Imam remains in hiding as he has throughout modernity, and considerably before. Of course, the verse suggests that there are "established verses" to the Qur'an. Conservatives might argue from this that this means that there is plenty to do in the meantime, but the flip side of that argument, the liberal one, is that the sin from the verse above isn't ignoring the established meanings, it's following the allegorical ones, and seeking the hidden meaning, without the Imam's guidance. And so what one "knows" from the established verses must be approached with some healthy degree of caution and skepticism as it will lead to discord.
Another central Shi'i report of the Prophet, related precisely to this point, suggests there are two bases on which the believer must rely following the Prophet's passing, and they are the Book, and the People of the House, meaning the Imams. Not one, or the other, but both, because one cannot be properly understood without the other. (Again, Sunnis have a different report, and the point here is not a polemical one, but rather to examine exclusively the Shi'a frame of reference).
Yet in the Absence, one base is gone, and we are unmoored. We are left only with a text, and, to approach that next, we have only humanity, with all of its foibles, its social, political and economic interests, its narrow conceptions of place and time, its ignorance, in essence, of the Concealed Meaning. To even try to understand the Concealed Meaning is a sin, and in any event impossible. And so we grope in the darkness, entirely incapable of truly reaching the Divine out of words alone, because words alone provide too little by way of guidance, and too much by way of human interest and human association interferes. Nothing is certain, all is subject to attack as narrow and flawed, indeed everything is narrow and flawed, until Divinity, through its chosen Imam, chooses to reveal itself. As for what that will look like, it's as useless an exercise for me to speculate as it is to try to understand the Concealed Meaning. Dr. Johnson is right, all knowledge is comparative, and I have nothing in my own limited human experience to compare to something like this. I can't describe what a female orgasm feels like, I can't tell you what a Concealed Meaning looks like or how it provides certainty to text, I'm just a mortal man, I only know what I know during the Absence. The rest is faith.
I suppose the point is that to cast doubt on the inevitability of prevailing interpretations of the Qur'an, to suggest alternative motives to the reaching of interpretive results deemed authoritative, to point to alternative bases of decision making and to be generally cynical in humanity's attempt to reach the Divine, as I do throughout the blog and my scholarship, is not to doubt God, or even the Divine origins of the Quran. All it really amounts to is belief in the Absence.
HAH
But really to understand the ghayba, one has to understand what it is that the Imam does, and central to his function, and his power, is his ability to understand what is known as the ta'wil of the Qur'an, or its Concealed Meaning. Consider the following Quranic verse:
It is God who has sent to you the Book, and in it
are the established verses, and they are the foundation
of the Book, and in it are the allegories. And those in whose
hearts is perversity follow the allegories, searching for discord
and searching for concealed meanings. But none know the concealed
meaning except God and Those of Firm Understanding. People say
"we believe in all of it sent from our Lord, but none comprehend it
except the People of Knowledge.
(I will say that the Sunni translation of the verse would be quite different, by moving periods around, which don't exist in the Arabic so you have to guess where the natural pause is supposed to be, that interpretation suggests that nobody comprehends the hidden meaning except God. I am working the Shi'a version here, without prejudice to and with no intention to demean or diminish other interpretations.)
The Imam, under Shi'i doctrine, is the Person of Firm Understanding, the Person of Knowledge, who can understand the hidden meaning, and therefore who can uniquely ensure God's Sovereignty on Earth. He, and only he, is capable of it, because only he can implement the Qur'an properly and entirely.
But of course we have the Absence, meaning that such guidance is impossible while the Imam remains in hiding as he has throughout modernity, and considerably before. Of course, the verse suggests that there are "established verses" to the Qur'an. Conservatives might argue from this that this means that there is plenty to do in the meantime, but the flip side of that argument, the liberal one, is that the sin from the verse above isn't ignoring the established meanings, it's following the allegorical ones, and seeking the hidden meaning, without the Imam's guidance. And so what one "knows" from the established verses must be approached with some healthy degree of caution and skepticism as it will lead to discord.
Another central Shi'i report of the Prophet, related precisely to this point, suggests there are two bases on which the believer must rely following the Prophet's passing, and they are the Book, and the People of the House, meaning the Imams. Not one, or the other, but both, because one cannot be properly understood without the other. (Again, Sunnis have a different report, and the point here is not a polemical one, but rather to examine exclusively the Shi'a frame of reference).
Yet in the Absence, one base is gone, and we are unmoored. We are left only with a text, and, to approach that next, we have only humanity, with all of its foibles, its social, political and economic interests, its narrow conceptions of place and time, its ignorance, in essence, of the Concealed Meaning. To even try to understand the Concealed Meaning is a sin, and in any event impossible. And so we grope in the darkness, entirely incapable of truly reaching the Divine out of words alone, because words alone provide too little by way of guidance, and too much by way of human interest and human association interferes. Nothing is certain, all is subject to attack as narrow and flawed, indeed everything is narrow and flawed, until Divinity, through its chosen Imam, chooses to reveal itself. As for what that will look like, it's as useless an exercise for me to speculate as it is to try to understand the Concealed Meaning. Dr. Johnson is right, all knowledge is comparative, and I have nothing in my own limited human experience to compare to something like this. I can't describe what a female orgasm feels like, I can't tell you what a Concealed Meaning looks like or how it provides certainty to text, I'm just a mortal man, I only know what I know during the Absence. The rest is faith.
I suppose the point is that to cast doubt on the inevitability of prevailing interpretations of the Qur'an, to suggest alternative motives to the reaching of interpretive results deemed authoritative, to point to alternative bases of decision making and to be generally cynical in humanity's attempt to reach the Divine, as I do throughout the blog and my scholarship, is not to doubt God, or even the Divine origins of the Quran. All it really amounts to is belief in the Absence.
HAH
What if the Hidden Imam arrives, knows who he is, knows he is divinely guided, but doesn't fit the image (the thousands of legends that have been recorded over the centuries)? What if he is not a "reborn imam", nor does he emerge from a well in Qom, nor does he match the physical description or have the pedigree of what is expected (as far as he knows), do you think he will be rejected?
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Personally I don't go for all the detailed "proofs" of the reemergence, or I should say they don't concern me much. When you talk about the end of the ghayba, you talk about something so far removed from modern human experience, that the point isn't the proofs, did this happen or did that, but a reconnection to the Divine, and I figure that the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth will ensure its success.
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You are correct. There were many so-called Mahdis who were said to have arrived during different periods of Islamic history, but they all failed to fulfill the expectations about him in their lifetime. Prophets and Imams do not return to life on this earth to try again. Prophets leave a wealth of knowledge behind for their followers, and those who take that knowledge and comprehend it, continue the work of the prophets. The religious leaders are supposed to guide their people in truth, not hearsay. The folly of the bene Isra'il is that they believed their prophets would return to guide them, sometimes in a "hidden" manner, or reborn in some other person, or in disguise. Their religious leaders were responsible for leading their own people astray. For instance, there are many Muslims who believe that the Messiah 'Isa will return as a sign of the Hour. They have misinterpreted the passage in the Quran that refers to the Messiah being a "sign". The passage does not refer to any kind of "return". In fact, Muslims have failed to comprehend the significance of a large number of Surahs in the Quran. If they had spent their time reading "from the cradle to the grave", as their Prophet had urged them to do, they would have figured out long ago that God gave them all the evidence they need to prove who they are and to prove that the Quran is the Word of God.
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