Concealment and Revelation

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Concealment and Reve lat ion

Bahá’u’lláh about rumors of miracles that had been attributed to him and to other prominent Bábís. From Bahá’u’lláh’s response in his tablet, it becomes clear that Javád considers miracles extremely important as justification of Bahá’u’lláh’s spiritual authority and even feels miracles to be a necessary demonstration of divine power—to force the powerful and learned leaders of humanity to recognize and submit to the Cause of God. He has trouble understanding how divine dominion can be present when no miracles have occurred. The Book of the River In the Book of the River, Bahá’u’lláh concisely and sublimely explains a universe of complex spiritual truth. After rejecting the rumors about specific miracles that had been attributed to him, he discusses the question of miracles in a multidimensional way. First he emphasizes the fact that in the sacred scriptures, particularly in the Bayán, the supreme proof and testimony of the Manifestation of God is the revelation of verses. Consequently, the only relevant question concerning the truth of Bahá’u’lláh’s claim involves the revelation of verses and not the production of miracles. However, Bahá’u’lláh immediately rejects the rationalist position on miracles as well. The rationalists take human reason as the supreme standard of judgment and reject the possibility of miracles by the Prophets in the past because miracles are contradictory to reason. At this point, Bahá’u’lláh engages in a complex metaphysical and epistemological analysis. He argues that the rationalistic denial of the possibility of miracles is false because “human reason is not a sufficient standard” for understanding any natural phenomenon within the complex reality that is God’s creation. It is not only strange, unnatural displays of power by the Prophets which are miraculous. In fact, he states, “all phenomena, as things endowed with power, are also miracles of God.” The miraculous nature of all reality transcends the limits of human reason. Human reason is incapable of comprehending any phenomenon independent of experience and observation. If it were not for that actual experience and observation, human reason would not believe in the existence of any phenomenon. If the rationalist argument for the rejection of miracles attributed to the former Prophets were true, then the reality of all natural phenomena must be rejected as well. The rationalists’ materialistic deductions are based on their forgetting the miraculous nature of all reality. After actual observation and experience, reason takes for granted all the wonders of natural phenomena and reduces them to necessary rational truths capable of deduction through rational analysis. In this mechanistic methodology, the rationalists contrast the “irrationality” of miracles, the existence of God, and the possibility of revelation to the “rational” character of “ordinary” natural events. Bahá’u’lláh affirms the necessity of