Concealment and Revelation

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Concealment and Reve lat ion

revealing verses as proof because otherwise they would have had to accept Bahá’u’lláh’s claim. Bahá’u’lláh, however, demonstrates that the Báb has made it clear in all his writings that the only evidence of the Báb’s station is his ability to reveal the verses of God, and that the same would constitute the sole evidence of the Promised One ( Kitáb-i-Badí‘ 347–50). We can now understand the reason why Bahá’u’lláh in the Book of the River refuses to accept the relevance or necessity of miracles, rejects the rumors of miracles about himself, and emphasizes instead the revelation of verses as the true divine standard. And yet, in the Book of the River, even while Bahá’u’lláh rejects the relevance of miracles for his authority, he implicitly identifies himself as the source of all miracles. He writes: “If anything else appeared from the mine of bounty and glory [Bahá], that was but a token of God’s grace.” Here again, the apparent “humility” at the beginning of the tablet is nothing less than the mysterious evidence of his exalted station. It is in a beautiful way the fulfillment of the Imám’s statement that “Servitude is a substance the essence of which is Divinity.” Bahá’u’lláh’s discussion of miracles has a parallel in the Báb’s insistence that he should not be judged in terms of the literary rules and conventions of scholars and grammarians because his own station is far superior to the makers of those rules and traditions. Bahá’u’lláh himself is surprisingly generous in accepting as true all the miracles attributed to any famous Bábí, even while he differentiates himself from all of them. He is so generous because he is really saying that miracle making is no extraordinary feat! His gracious affirmation of the miracles attributed to various Bábí Mirrors is most interesting. It suggests that Bahá’u’lláh did not wish to provide a pretext for disunity and conflict within the Bábí community by denying the miracles attributed to prominent Bábís, even while at the same time he affirms his superior authority over all of them. In addition to indicating that many can perform miracles but the revelation of divine verses is the unique ability of the Manifestations, he refers to Qur’ánic passages to the effect that all created beings are truly the miracles of God. Since a great number of Qur’ánic statements affirm the miraculous nature of all things, Bahá’u’lláh very likely does not intend reference to any one specific verse but indicates the general meaning of those numerous verses on this theme. Of all miracles, the greatest and most amazing is the creative act of God, Whose Word brings all reality into being—and this ability belongs only to the Primal Will. Here, Bahá’u’lláh implicitly equates himself with God’s creative act. His evidence and justification is the same as God’s supreme miracle: the creation of the world and the revelation of a new spiritual reality. To see more clearly this mysterious paradox of Bahá’u’lláh’s tablet, let us consider these five related points. 1. In his justification of his own station, Bahá’u’lláh asserts that the same thing that the Bábís accept as true with regard to the Báb’s Bayán applies to