|
The Resurrection of the Dead and Final Judgement in the Thought of Said Nursi |
|
By Thomas Michel
One of the questions that most clearly distinguishes the followers of those religions that trace their origins back to their common ancestor Abraham from those who do not accept any divine religion is their belief in the resurrection of the dead. In both Christianity and Islam, the resurrection of the dead, together with the Final Judgment, and the eternal reward or punishment granted on the basis of the individual’s faith and deeds, is an essential element, a “pillar” of that faith. The two religions might differ on details concerning the eschatological fate that awaits all humans, but on the key issues of the reality of resurrection, God’s judgment of all humankind on the Last Day, and reward and punishment, there is broad agreement in the theology of Islamic and Christian faiths. However, for a person thinking and operating in a positivistic frame of mind, the concept of resurrection is a religious myth that can be neither proven nor disproved, but must remain always a hypothesis whose validity depends on blind faith. Some of those who reject religious faith go farther to advance arguments that would attempt to disprove the possibility of resurrection, while for others the concept is simply an absurdity, “pie in the sky,” evidence of the fairy-tale wishful thinking of religious people. This is not a new experience for believers in the divine religions. In the Christian tradition, when St. Paul spoke at the Areopagus in Athens, the assembled scholars were interested until Paul began speaking about the resurrection, at which point they sneered and turned away (Acts of the Apostles 17: 32). For Paul, God’s raising Jesus from the dead is evidence of God’s promise to raise all those who believe, and thus the resurrection becomes a key element in Christian faith. As Paul says, “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith” (1 Corinthians 15: 13-14). Many centuries later, the experience of Muhammad with the Quraysh was similar. When Muhammad spoke to the pagan Arabs about God who causes death and resurrection, they answered, “What, will we and our fathers be raised up, once we have turned into dust? We have been promised this, we and our forefathers, but these are merely legends of earlier peoples” (Qur’an 27: 67-68; cf. also 23: 82-83). The earlier peoples whom the Quraysh accused of perpetuating fanciful myths were evidently the Jews and Christians conveying the teaching of Moses and Jesus. Just as the pagan Quraysh rejected the teaching of the earlier prophets about the resurrection, so also they were rejecting Muhammad bringing the same message. For Said Nursi, the resurrection and Final Judgment are central to the Qur’anic message. He goes so far as to say that a third of the Qur’an focuses on these eschatological elements with the intention of proving and demonstrating them to unbelievers. “All the miracles, truths, and proofs proving foremost the veracity of the Qur’an of miraculous exposition testify to and prove the realization and occurrence of resurrection. Almost a third of the Qur’an is about resurrection, and at the beginning of most of its short suras are powerful verses about it. It expresses the same truth explicitly and implicitly, and in thousands of its verses it proves and demonstrates it.”[1]
1. The resurrection and the demands of justice Similarly, one could say that almost one-third of the content of “The Words”, the first part of the Risale-i Nur, focuses on questions of the resurrection, intent on demonstrating the reality of these elements of faith for modern unbelievers. In the Tenth Word Nursi strives to give systematic order to his argumentation in favor of the resurrection, and hence this portion of the Risale-i Nur can serve as a suitable starting place for our analysis of his view of this pillar of Islamic faith. Nursi introduces the topic with a long allegory of two men journeying through an earthly Utopia. It is a well-ordered and prosperous place where no one locks their homes or shops, as there is no need to guard one’s possessions. One of the travelers heedlessly wants to take and steal as much as he can carry, but his companion undertakes to show him, in twelve reasoned arguments, that in such a place, there must be a supreme tribunal where everyone will be judged according to their deeds.[2] The underlying concept in these twelve arguments is that of justice. The manifest injustice of life on earth requires another world where wrongs will be corrected, victims will be avenged, and upright behavior will be rewarded. It is also in God’s character to be just, and therefore any conception of the universe which would lead to the denial of God’s justice and mercy is an attack on God’s very nature. His twelve arguments may be summarized as follows: 1) Even in the best-ordered earthly realm, there must be a mechanism for justice: for punishing misdeeds, defending the oppressed, and rewarding faithful service. Obviously, in the world in which we live, there is no manifest justice. The wrongdoers prosper, the innocent suffer, loyalty and honesty are not rewarded. The demands of cosmic justice require a resurrection, for there is no reward and punishment here. There must be a resurrection to a next life where judgment, reward and punishment will correct earthly wrongs. 2) God’s own just nature demands a resurrection. The One who so wisely ordered this universe could not fail, in his mercy, to provide justice for those who have remained upright and faithful. God’s generosity and compassion demands justice towards oppressed. But that justice is not found on this earth, so it must be found elsewhere. 3) God would not be compassionate and merciful if He did not hear and respond to the cries of the oppressed. But those who are victims of wrongdoing do not find satisfaction on this earth, and the unjust operate freely and successfully in this world. Therefore, if one believes that God is compassionate and merciful, there must be a resurrection to judgment where the oppressed can finally obtain the redress they deserve. 4) God’s abundant gifts show God to be generous and loving. But if these gifts are all perishable, and all that awaits people is death, separation, and extinction, then these apparent gifts would be nothing but a cruel joke. Moreover, God grants these gifts in order to be known and loved. But if there is no resurrection, those appreciating these gifts on earth would be only temporary admirers, and their appreciation would turn to resentment upon learning that the gifts were only fleeting hand-outs destined to be definitively snatched away in death. 5) All that God has granted humankind in this world is only meant to whet people’s appetite for the more permanent, exalted gifts that God has yet in store for them. God would be a cruel charlatan to give and promise so much and then abandon people to eternal extinction without fulfilling His promises. Thus, God’s integrity demands a resurrection and reward for faithful obedience. 6) This world is a constantly changing exhibition of God’s gifts, both the ever-changing gifts of nature as well as man-made technological achievements. However, the very transient, fleeting nature of this worldly display requires that there be some eternal, stable world where the reality that shows itself here in an ephemeral way will permanently reside. Otherwise, God would be reduced to acting like a stage magician who creates illusions with mirrors. 7) God’s omniscience demands resurrection. If God is truly cognizant of all that occurs on earth, then it follows that God knows, notes, and remembers every human deed, whether good or evil, and that the record of these deeds will be the basis for divine judgment. God would be a negligent caretaker and it would consequently be contrary to God’s dignity if misdeeds never went unpunished.8) In all the revealed Scriptures God has consistently promised to reward the good and punish evil. If God is truthful and the Scriptures can be believed, there must be a resurrection. Can it be imagined that God will not fulfill God’s promises? 9) All the prophets and holy men have testified to God’s promises and assure us that those promises will be fulfilled. Yet the prophets are unanimous in affirming the resurrection and final judgment. Are we ready to disregard such unanimous testimony on the part of those sent by God? 10) The setting of this argument is Anatolian spring. All the varied and constantly burgeoning life that can be seen in springtime points to a wise order in the universe and indicates that this ordered universe cannot be an end in itself. If it all ends in total extinction, the world is absurd and without rhyme or reason. If there is truly a wise purpose in the universe, it must point to something real and permanent in another world. Nursi will return repeatedly to this argument, with different emphases, again and again in the Risale-i Nur. 11) Denying the resurrection and judgment would mean not only denying the wise order of the universe, but it would mean denying God’s compassion, mercy, and justice. Nursi is saying that denying the resurrection is tantamount to denying the existence of God, as this God is known from the Scriptures. “We would also have to regard the One from whom all these wise measures proceed, all these generous acts, all these merciful gifts, as a vile gambler or treacherous tyrant (God forbid!). This would be to turn truth on its head.”[3] Moreover, denying the resurrection would mean not only denying God as God is known from Scriptural tradition, but it would also mean denying the evidence of our own senses. 12) Since the rewards for faithful service as well as punishments for evildoing are both deferred to the next life, denying the resurrection amounts to denying both reward and punishment. Good and evil become equivalent and have the same end. Thus, denying the resurrection reduces all religions, Scriptures, and claims to ultimate purpose to a relative value and condemns people to life in a pointless, superficial, ephemeral universe. In his final argument, Nursi takes up what is most deeply at stake in the question of the resurrection and judgment. If this is the only world and life that exists, if there is no “Day of Reckoning” when accounts will be definitively settled, then religion and morality become human creations which point to no permanent reality. People are condemned to a shallow existence of validating their lives through a constant search for new and exciting pleasures and the acquisition of an unending stream of perishable consumer goods. Nursi does not pretend that the twelve arguments which he produced for demonstrating the resurrection are exhaustive, or that no other proofs could be adduced.[4] In fact, the Risale-i Nur is replete with arguments in favor of the necessity of belief in the resurrection and Final Judgment. Nursi sees belief in God and the resurrection as a kind of double talisman which will protect and guide a person through the dangers of life. In another allegory, he describes the situation of a wounded soldier on a battlefield, surrounded by dangers on all sides. In his hopeless plight, a stranger, “shining with light like Khidr,”[5] comes to teach him the twin talismans of “I believe in God and the Last Day,” which will heal his wounds and protect him from the physical and spiritual dangers that surround him. In explaining the allegory, Nursi holds that the life of people in this world is like that soldier. The challenges and problems that beset us are greater than our strength or wisdom to bear. However, belief in God and the resurrection will enable a person to confront life’s challenges with courage and to persevere with patience in the face of adversity.
2. The miracle of springtime Skeptics reacted to Nursi’s teaching about the resurrection with the objection that it is scientifically impossible for dead bodies to come to life again. Irreversible processes of corruption, molecular changes, interruption of brain waves, and the permanent malfunctioning of organs commence immediately after death. After some time in the grave, the human corpse itself reverts by inexorable biochemical processes to the substances from which it was composed. Not even God could reverse these changes. Perhaps one could speak, as did some of the philosophers, of the resurrection of the soul, while the body lies decomposed for eternity in the grave. On the Last Day, if there should be a Last Day, there would be nothing left for God to raise, all the body’s elements and compounds, bones and tissues, having been dispersed and recycled elsewhere in nature. This objection, posed repeatedly in modern times, is in fact not a new one. The pagan Quraysh objected to Muhammad’s preaching about the resurrection on the same grounds of impossibility. Not even God can bring life out of death. In response to this objection, the Qur’an appeals to the sense experience of the Quraysh and says that just as God has the power to bring the earth to new life at the beginning of each spring, so God has the power to revive the dead. “Behold the marks of Allah’s mercy, how He revives the earth after it was dead. He indeed is the one who revives the dead and He has power over everything” (Qur’an 30: 50). One could say that Said Nursi’s defense of God’s ability to raise the dead is simply an elaboration or commentary on this Qur’anic verse. This is not a peripheral idea to his thought, as he uses the image of new life in the spring over fifty times in the Risale-i Nur as an illustration of God’s power to resurrect the dead. For God, the one is as easy as the other. There is no doubt that Nursi must have personally found spiritual enrichment in the miracle of Anatolian springtime, with its “more than 300,000 species of plant and animal life”[6] appearing almost miraculously, but predictably at its appointed time every year at the end of the long, cold, grey winter. I cannot hope to give all the references in the Risale-i Nur to this image, but a few citations must suffice to show Nursi’s use of the figure of spring as likeness of the resurrection. “In exactly the same way, [God] creates the universe as easily as a city, and raises to life the springtime as easily as a garden, and raises to life all the dead at the resurrection as easily as creating the leaves, flowers, and fruits of the garden’s trees in the spring.”[7] “The one who cannot create a spring cannot create a single apple either, for the apple is made at the same workbench. But the one who makes an apple can make the spring. Each apple is an example in miniature of a tree, even of a garden or a cosmos. The apple seed that carries within itself the life story of the huge tree is, from the point of view of artistry, such a miracle that the one who creates it is incapable of nothing. So too, the one that creates today is able also to create the day of resurrection, and it is only the One capable of creating the spring that is able to create resurrection.[8] “In spring, the dead trees, roots and animals come to life again exactly as they were, thus providing hundreds of thousands of examples, specimens and proofs of the supreme resurrection. In the place of others, plants and animals resembling them exactly are brought into being and life, thus publishing the pages of the beings of the preceding spring, together with their deeds and functions.[9] “The raising to life of all animate beings at the resurrection of the dead can be no more difficult for Divine Power than restoring to life a fly in the spring, heavy with the death-stained sleep of winter.”[10] “O you who deny resurrection! Look at the trees! One Who raises to life and makes green in spring numberless skeleton-like trees which have been dead throughout winter, and in every tree even demonstrates three examples of resurrection through the leaves, blossoms, and fruit - the power of such a One cannot be challenged through denial or by considering resurrection improbable.”[11] “The raising to life of all animate beings at the resurrection of the dead can be no more difficult for Divine Power than restoring to life a fly in the spring, heavy with the death-stained sleep of winter. For Eternal Power is essential. It does not change; impotence cannot penetrate it; obstacles cannot intervene in it; there can be no degrees in it; everything is the same in relation to it.”[12] “Now come back in the spring, the arena of the annual resurrection, and look! Note carefully the time in the spring when the Israfil-like angel of thunder calls out to the rain as though sounding his trumpet, giving the good news of the breath of life being breathed into the seeds buried beneath the ground. You will see that under the manifestation of the Divine Name of Preserver, those seeds that resemble each other and are all mixed up and confused, conform perfectly and without error to the creative commands proceeding from the All-Wise Creator.”[13] “The administration and sustaining of the whole universe in relation to the power from all eternity of that All-Glorious One is as easy as that of the spring, indeed, of a tree. And the creation of the resurrection of the dead, the realm of the hereafter, and Paradise and Hell, is as easy as the resurrection in spring of a tree which had died the previous autumn.”[14] Nursi’s point in this oft-repeated image is that it is no more difficult for God to raise the dead than it is for God to bring new life to the dead earth or to bring about a single tree or flower from a dry, frozen bush. In other words, the resurrection of the dead is a part of God’s creative power and energy. If God is able to create life once from nothingness or from dead matter, God is able to do that over and over.[15] One must not think that Nursi is living in a pre-scientific world in which he thinks that vegetable and animal life actually dies in the winter. He is well aware of the botanical dormant period that plants undergo, of the hidden life pulsating in a winter landscape of forests and fields. This scientific awareness, however, makes the springtime miracle of regeneration - the formation of blossoms, leaves, and fruits - no less amazing, no less remarkable as the sign of an all-powerful Creator. He states: “With what miraculous and elevated style [the Qur’an] describes the resurrection of the dead and the Great Gathering and points to the following convincing proof: one can observe that the seeds concealed as though dead in the darkness of the earth and drops of water hidden and dispersed, seemingly non-existent in the atmosphere are raised to life swiftly and with perfect order every spring, and they emerge into the field of trial and examination as perpetual examples of resurrection. At the supreme resurrection, beings will emerge with same ease. Since you observe the one here, you cannot deny the other.”[16] In fact, it is not only the miracle of spring that demonstrates the resurrection. An individual’s own sense perception gives evidence of resurrection over and over. Waking from sleep can be seen as a type of resurrection, as does the physical process of replacing all the molecules in the body. Nursi states: “There are many varieties of resurrection that a person experiences during his lifetime. Just as one sees the signs of the resurrection in a sort of dying every night and rebirth every morning, so it is agreed that he undergoes what resembles a resurrection every five or six years by changing all the particles in his body, and even undergoes a gradual resurrection twice a year.”[17] The phenomenon of springtime is not only a sign and symbol of the resurrection in demonstrating God’s power to bring new life out of the seemingly dead, but it is also a demonstration, for those who are able to perceive it, of the transitory nature of life in this world. The wildflowers and blossoms that flourish in all their glory for a week or ten days and then vanish for another year are reminders that this world and all that pertains to it are not permanent. In world-weariness reminiscent of the great Sufi masters, Nursi expresses the sorrow he experienced at witnessing the transient nature of springtime beauty. “One time when observing the season of spring, I saw that the successive caravans of beings, and especially living creatures and the small young ones, which followed on one after the other and in a flowing torrent displaying hundreds of thousands of samples of the resurrection of the dead and Great Gathering on the face of the earth, appeared only briefly then disappeared. The tableaux of death and transience amid that constant, awesome activity seemed to me excessively sad. I felt such pity it made me weep. The more I observed the deaths of those lovely small creatures, the more my heart ached. I cried at the pity of it and within me felt a deep spiritual turmoil. Life which met with such an end seemed to me to be torment worse than death.[18] Clearly, the transient splendor of nature that flourishes today and tomorrow is dry stubble reminds people of the passing away in human life of youth, beauty and vitality. Today’s beauty queen or Olympic athlete is tomorrow’s toothless wheel-chair patient. For those who believe in no other life than this, this awareness can produce misery and despair, but for those who see the power of God at work in the fragile and transitory nature of created things, the cycle of youth, aging, and death is always followed by rebirth. This is the promise Nursi holds out for those who are able to proceed from a contemplation of the patterns of nature to an awareness of God the Resurrector (Al-Qâ’im).
3. The Great Gathering Nursi’s usual term for God’s calling together all humankind from every stage of history in order to enact the final judgment according to their deeds is the Great Gathering. No doubt the figure is taken from the Qur’anic verse “(And remember) the Day when He will gather you on the Day of Gathering. That will be the Day of mutual loss and gain. And whosoever believes in God and performs righteous good deeds, He will remit from him his sins, and will admit him to Gardens under which rivers flow to dwell therein forever” (64:9). This imagery of calling all humankind together for judgment is common to both Islam and Christianity. In the Christian Bible, for example, the Epistle to the Hebrews sees “The Universal Gathering” as equivalent to “Mount Zion, the New Jerusalem” (Hebrews 12:23; cf. also 2 Thessalonians 2:1), an appointment to which all are called. The image depicts generations of dead arising from their graves all over the earth and brought together for the final Day of Judgment. Can God actually bring together every individual in the history of the human race to be judged each according to one’s deeds? Surely this must be some fanciful imagery that is not meant to be taken literally? Nursi responds by citing again God’s creative power in nature to affirm that such is well within God’s abilities. Nursi addresses the Creator as follows: “Through Your activity in the atmosphere, Your power, which continuously displays examples of the resurrection of the dead and Great Gathering and transforms the summer into winter and winter into summer and similar acts, gives the sign that it will transform this world into the hereafter and there display its everlasting acts.”[19] The Great Gathering may be seen as the final act and the wise climax of God’s creation.[20] Nursi’s point is that God accomplishes much greater things in the continuous exercise of his creative activity. The difficulty of producing the Gathering pales by comparison with the intricacy of the creative act and yet the ease of its execution. “That He will bring about a resurrection and Gathering is far easier for Him than the thousands of miraculous gatherings that occur every spring, each more wondrous than the Supreme Gathering.”[21] Nursi explains: “The One Who performs these matters with infinitely fine art and perfect order and changes with infinite wisdom, bounty, and perfection of power and art the traveling worlds which follow on one after the other and are attached to the string of time, is certainly All-Powerful and All-Wise… in relation to His power the resurrection and Great Gathering are most easy and free of trouble. Since His creational command comprises power and will, and all things are entirely subjugated and obedient to His command, and He creates with no difficulty or hindrance.[22] One might object that the Gathering staggers the mind. It seems preposterous to suppose the whole human race, from Adam onward, all summoned to the same place at the same moment. Moreover, how can one imagine God keeping track of every good action and misdeed over the course of millennia? Nursi agrees that the Gathering is not something that can ordinarily be known by human reason. “Just as a man of the night who has never seen the sun and has only seen its shadow in the mirror of the Moon, cannot squeeze into his mind the resplendent light and awesome gravity particular to the Sun, but submits to those who have seen it and imitates them; similarly, one who cannot attain to the maximum degrees of Names like All-Powerful and Giver of Life through the legacy of Muhammad (PBUH), must accept the resurrection of the dead and Great Gathering imitatively, and declare that it is not a matter which can be known by reason.”[23] Nursi is not claiming that the Gathering is irrational or even that it is beyond reason in all cases. He does state, however, that for most people, the Gathering is beyond their powers of reasoning. They must accept the Gathering “imitatively,” that is, they should accept the word of those who have been given to know about this, that is, the prophets and the message they bear from God. This, however, is not an invitation to blind fideism, for even if the concept of the Gathering is too hard for most people to imagine, nevertheless there are many arguments in Scripture and indications in the natural world that point to the Gathering as a coming reality. “The Day of Judgment’ (Yawm al-Din) alludes to a vast and powerful proof of the resurrection of the dead…for various parts of the Risale-i Nur have proved with hundreds of powerful arguments that the morning and spring of the resurrection of the dead and Great Gathering will occur as certainly as day follows night and spring follows winter.”[24] One need not be a genius or philosopher in order to recognize and acknowledge these signs. They are evident to any sincere seeker of ordinary abilities, and the person who denies the evidence of his own common sense is either willfully blinded or deranged. “You can, moreover, behold with your own eyes, the numerous designs made by God as signs, similes and indications of resurrection, designs placed by Him in every age and epoch of the world, in the alternation of day and night, even in the appearance and disappearance of clouds in the sky. If you imagine yourself to have been living a thousand years ago and then compare with each other the two wings of time that are the past and the future, you will behold similes of the Gathering and indications of resurrection as numerous as the centuries and days. If, then, after witnessing so many similes and indications, you still regard corporeal resurrection as improbable and rationally unacceptable, know your behavior to be pure lunacy.”[25] What will the command be like? Nursi prudently refrains from engaging in fanciful descriptive speculation, and instead relies on what can be known from sound Qur’anic revelation. The Qur’an teaches that the Gathering will be instantaneous, a concept very difficult to grasp. Thus, people are permitted to indulge in the imagery of the graves being opened, the corpses rising up and being transported immediately to the site of the Judgment. As Nursi states: “‘The command of the Hour will be like the glance of the eye’ (Qur’an 16:77) shows that the resurrection of the dead and the Great Gathering will occur instantaneously, in a flash. But man’s narrow reason requires some tangible example so that it can conceive of this wondrous, extraordinary and unparalleled event and accept it.”[26] In other words, people should focus on the essence of this teaching, that is, the reality of God’s judgment, and the actuality of human responsibility for one’s deeds on earth, rather than getting distracted by the images that are intended to help human reason to approach conceptually and visualize what is meant by the Gathering.
4. The Final Judgment and God’s wise purpose in creation It is not only the possibility of the resurrection and Gathering that is difficult to understand, but also the Judgment that follows. “At the resurrection, all the deeds of everyone will be produced, written on pages. Being very strange on its own, the mind cannot grasp this matter. But as the Sura indicates, the same way as in the resurrection of the spring, the things similar to this laying open of the pages are quite clear. For all fruit-bearing trees or flowering plants perform deeds, acts, and duties, and in whatever way they display the Divine Names and glorify God, they perform worship. All these deeds are written in their seeds together with their life histories, and emerge in another spring in another place. Just as they mention most eloquently the deeds of their mothers and stock through the tongues of the shapes and forms they display, so they publish the pages of their deeds through their branches, leaves, flowers, and fruits.”[27] As he does on other occasions, Nursi looks to the natural world for his argument. Just as plant life bears within itself the hidden seeds of its own resurrection, so also humans bear within themselves the hidden seeds of their own eternal destiny, either the good deeds and faith that will bring them eternal reward, or the evil actions and faithlessness that will earn them eternal punishment. Even though in this world these seeds of destiny are hidden from view, like the latent promise of life secretly present within seeds, nevertheless to the same God who brings new life in fields and orchards, men and women are already determining their eternal fate by their good or evil deeds. Judgment Day will simply reveal what humans have already prepared for themselves. Nursi insists so strongly on the resurrection of the dead and the Day of Judgment because for him these are neither marginal elements of Islamic faith nor mythological representations of eschatological hope. They are expressions of Divine wisdom which validate the whole intention of God’s creation. For if God has not created the world “in jest” or “purposelessly,” as the Qur’an states (Qur’an 38:27; 23:115), but with a serious purpose in mind, then divine wisdom must guide the whole of human history towards a climatic moment when God’s justice, power and mercy, reward and punishment, promise and judgment will all become manifest. The wisdom that is seen in the created world parallels that which guides human destiny. For Nursi, if creation were not governed, in matters small and great, by God’s wisdom, human existence would be futile and absurd. The guarantee of this sovereign wisdom of God, who orders all things wisely, is the resurrection of the dead and the Great Gathering for the Final Judgment. I leave the final words to Nursi himself: In just the same way, the All-Wise Maker attaches hundreds of instances of wisdom to each of the beings in the palace of the universe and equips them to perform hundreds of duties. To all trees He bestows instances of wisdom to the number of its fruits and gives duties to the number of its flowers. For Him not to bring about the resurrection of the dead and the Great Gathering, and for all those incalculable numbers of purposes and instances of wisdom and infinite duties to be meaningless, futile, pointless, and without purpose or benefit, would impute impotence to that Absolutely Powerful One’s perfect power, just as it would impute futility and purposelessness to that Absolutely Wise One’s perfect wisdom, and utter ugliness to the beauty of that Absolutely Compassionate One’s mercy, and boundless tyranny to that Absolutely Just One’s perfect justice. It would be quite simply to deny the wisdom, mercy, and justice in the universe.[28]
FOOTNOTES [1] Said Nursi, The Ninth Ray, p. 205. Cf. also, The Fifteenth Ray – The Shining Proof – First Station, p. 578. [2] Nursi later explains that the heedless companion indicates greedy, selfish human instinct, whereas the responsible friend corresponds to the human heart or conscience. At another level, the self-justifying rationalist indicates the student of human philosophy, while his upright companion is the student of the Qur’an; finally, the misguided individual stands for unbelievers, while the wise, thoughtful companion represents the community of faith. The Tenth Word, p. 70. [3] The Tenth Word, p. 67. [4] The Tenth Word, Tenth Truth, p. 102. [5] The Seventh Word, p. 41. [6] The Tenth Word, Fifth Part of the Addendum, p. 131. [7] The Fifteenth Ray, The Shining Proof, Second Station, p. 627. [8] The Tenth Word, Seventh Truth, p. 90. [9] The Rays, The Supreme Sign, First Chapter, p. 164; cf. also The Twenty-sixth Flash, For the Elderly, p. 291. [10] The Damascus Sermon, The Seeds of Reality, p. 97. [11] The Twenty-fifth Word, First Light, Second Ray, p. 412. [12] The Letters, Seeds of Reality, p. 542. [13] The Flashes, Seventeenth Flash, Fifteenth Note, p. 187. [14] Twentieth Letter, Second Station, p. 297. [15] The Fifteenth Ray, The Shining Proof, Second Station, p. 629. [16] The Letters, Twenty-ninth Letter, First Section, p. 459; cf. also, The Rays, The Supreme Sign, First Chapter, p. 164. [17] The Words, Twenty-ninth Word, Second Aim, p. 539. [18] The Rays, The Second Ray, First Station, p. 21. [19] The Rays, The Third Ray, p. 56. [20] The Words, Twenty-ninth Word, Second Aim, p. 543. [21] The Rays, The Supreme Sign, First Chapter, p. 193. [22] The Words, The Sixteenth Word, pp. 212-213. [23] The Words, The Twenty-fourth Word, Second Branch, pp. 349-350. [24] The Rays, The Fifteenth Ray, “The Shining Proof,” First Station, p. 584.
[25] The Words, Tenth Word, Ninth Truth, p. 94. Cf. also, The Words, Twenty-fifth Word, Second Light, Second Beam, p. 438. |