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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
Concealment and Reve lat ion
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