Philosophical Psychology and Eschatology

 By:Gabriel Said Reynolds

Affiliation: Notre Dame University (USA)

 

 

Abstract: The Eschaton and Justice in the Thought of Mulla Sadra

 

          When pious Shi‘i Muslim authors mention the name of the twelfth and final Imam, the Hidden Imam, they add the phrase, ‘ajjal Allahu farajahu, “May God hasten his emergence!”  This phrase expresses the intense anticipation surrounding the return of the Imam.  What is it, though, that lies behind this collective anticipation?  It cannot be the personality of the Imam; after all, he disappeared into occultation (ghayba) as an infant in 260/874.  Despite the reports of his communication with the leaders of the Shi‘i community during the period of the minor occultation, despite the claims of many to have met the Imam during the Ḥajj since then, little is known of his personality.  So the day of the Imam’s emergence is longed for not because of who the Imam is.  Instead, it is longed for because of what he will do.  For the Hidden Imam, when he returns, will establish divine justice.[1]  He will bring to an end the long dark reign of oppression, which began on the day of Saqifat b. Sa’ida, when Abū Bakr was unjustly chosen to succeed the prophet MuSammad.  Through the Imam the light of divine mercy will shine upon God’s chosen community.

          The details of how he will do this are worked out by classical Shi‘i theologians, including Kulayni (d. 329/940-1), Nu‘mani (d. 359/970-1), Ibn Babawayh (d. 381/991-2), ash-Shaykh al-Mufid (d. 431/1022) and MuSammad b. al-Ḥasan aṭ-Ṭūṣi (d. 459/1067).  They describe how the Imam, upon his emergence, will exact revenge for the wrongs which the al al-bayt have suffered.  In carrying out this revenge the Imam will also be settling a personal score, for the he himself was a victim of one such wrong.  Threatened with murder, the fate which met his eleven predecessors, the twelfth Imam was forced to enter ghayba.  As a tradition attributed to Ja‘far al-Sadiq (d. 148/765) relates, “There is no choice for [him] but ghayba…he will be afraid for himself.”[2]  When the Imam leaves ghayba, however, he will not be afraid.  He will return as the ṣaSib az-zaman “master of time” and al-qa’im bi-‘s-sayf “the one who rises with the sword,” exacting revenge on the enemies of his people.  As Ṭūṣi puts it, quoting a prophetic Sadith, “God will destroy falsehood and the time of the dogs will end.  Through Him the humiliation of slavery will be removed from your necks.”[3]

The Imam, having emerged as the Qa’im, will attack the unbelievers of the Quraysh, whose ancestor Mu‘awiya b. Abi Sufyan opposed ‘Ali at Siffin.[4] He will also take control of Kūfa, the site of ‘Ali’s murder, killing the hypocrites and the doubters of the city.[5]  Thus Nu‘mani refers to the parousia of the Qa'im as the ‘adhab, the chastisement, for the suffering that the enemies of the Shi‘a will receive.  Elsewhere, Nu‘mani comments on Qur'an 30.19 (“He revives the earth after its death”), concluding, “Indeed God revives it by the justice of the Qa'im upon his parousia.”[6]  It is this point which must be insisted upon.  For these Shi‘i thinkers the eschaton is not ultimately about bloodshed, nor is it about revenge against the Sunnis.  The eschaton is about divine justice.  Following from the principle that God wills the best (al-aṣlaS) for His creation, the eschaton is a fundamental element of their theological construction.  Without it, the whole building falls.  For a just God must punish the evil and reward the good.

In this system the eschaton is about punishing those who have disobeyed God throughout human history.  This punishment will be begun by the Qa'im in this world.  It will be completed by God Himself in the next.  After the final, peaceful era in human history comes to a close, the dead, awakened by the great horn blast of the angel Israfil, will be gathered with the living on the Day of Judgment, to meet punishment or reward for a second time.  In this fashion the events of the eschaton, as-Sa‘a, and the events of the apocalypse, yawm al-din, are inextricably connected. 

Scholars of apocalypticism might describe the development of this eschatological drama in sociological terms.[7]  According to the phenomenon of relative deprivation, groups who see themselves deprived, in relation to other groups, compensate for that deprivation by imagining a distant yet inevitable reversal of affairs.  Yet Kulayni, Nu‘mani, Ibn Babawayh, al-Shaykh al-Mufid and Ṭūṣi are not sociologists, but theologians.  The issue that foremost in their mind is not the status of a social group, but rather the nature of God.  Above all they insist that God is perfectly one and perfectly just.  In order to explain the latter quality, they were compelled to explain why God would let His chosen people, al al-bayt, suffer so terribly at the hands of the unjust.  The eschatological drama, then, is most fundamentally an historical theodicy.

What, then, are we to make of the eschatological doctrine of Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi (d. 1050/1640)?  Although Sadra wrote almost six centuries after the last of the above theologians, he has the same basic theological concerns.  He, too, seeks to prove that God wills the best for His creation.  Yet Sadra’s vision of the eschaton is fundamentally different from that described above, for his understanding of history is fundamentally different. 

According to Sadra the human soul is not created but originated.  It has a pre-existence, as part of the universal soul, before becoming individuated in this world.  When the body dies, the soul enters into a third phase of its existence, in which it is separate from both the body and the universal soul.[8]  Through all of this the soul is in substantial motion, al-Saraka al-jawhariyya, or, better, substantial development, towards God.  The task of the soul in this development is to achieve a complete understanding of that which is true, i.e. existence (which is none other than the divine existence), and that which is not, i.e. physical, material or imaginative phenomena.  In this way, the soul is actualized, as Faẓlur RaSman puts it;[9] that is, the soul recognizes both pure existence and its participation therein.  Very few souls, however, will manage to actualize themselves during this lifetime, and so they will continue this struggle after the death of the body; the legend of a torture of the grave ‘adhab al-qabr, during which the angels Munkir and Nakir will question the deceased, is in fact nothing other than a reference to this very struggle.[10]

In this way the events of history are overwhelmed by the trans-historical drama of the soul.  What, then, of divine justice in the eschatological system of Sadra?  Like his Shi‘i predecessors, Sadra insists on defending the justice of God, and refuses to say, as the Ash‘ariyya do, that categories of just and unjust or good and evil, cannot be imputed to God; that is, God is not only just, but He is just in a way that is comprehensible to humans.  How, then, does Sadra comprehend the justice of God in light of his eschatological doctrine?  This is the question at stake here, and I will address it in two parts.  First, I will present Sadra’s theology of God in greater depth by comparing it with that of aṭ-Ṭūṣi, not MuSammad b. al-Ḥasan aṭ-Ṭūṣi but Naṣir ad-Din aṭ-Ṭūṣi (d. 672/1274).  Second, I will analyze Sadra’s eschatological doctrine as expressed in his Risalat al-Sashr.

Ṭūṣi concludes that evil is an inevitable product of the divine decree, even if it is not willed by God.  This he explains by arguing that God’s knowledge of things comes from his creation of them through the First Intellect.  In this way God creates, and therefore knows, things in an absolute fashion.  That is, His knowledge is not bound by spatial or temporal context; He does not know things in respect to “here” or “there,” nor in respect to “was,” “is” or “will be.”  Ṭūṣi compares this knowledge to that of a person who knows a book well.  Such a person does not know the book in the sequence of its words, but rather its absolute nature.[11]  This, one might rightly object, is a rather scholastic response to the dilemma presented by the exigencies of religious orthodoxy, i.e. that God must know particulars, and philosophical principles, that there must be mediation between the One and the many.

Be that as it may, this theological construction also allows Ṭūṣi to resolve the dilemma presented by God’s omnipotence and benevolence and the presence of evil in the world.  For God’s knowledge of things is absolute, yet they come into existence in a particular fashion, or, as F. RaSman puts it, in a causal chain; e.g. lakes come from rain, children from intercourse, buildings from construction, etc.  This causal chain makes for the best of all possible worlds, yet evil is a necessary by-product thereof.  Since specific events come into being through accidents, evil is a necessary possibility.  Thus evil is in its essence particular, accidental and secondary.  Among other things, it is the product of decisions taken by humans in this causal chain, including the selection of Abū Bakr at Saqifat b. Sa’ida, the rebellion against ‘Ali at the Battle of the Camel, the opposition to ‘Ali at Siffin and the murder of Ḥusayn at Karbala'. 

Thus the particulars of human history, including its evils, are a product of the causal chain, yet the overall story of human history (to return to the analogy of the book) is known by God through His creation, a creation crafted in the best interests of humanity.  God has created in such a way that whatever evils might enter into human history will ultimately be resolved within human history.  History will have a happy ending.

Like Ṭūṣi, Sadra approaches this problem from the perspective of metaphysics.  Yet his approach begins and ends with the principle of waSdat al-wujūd, and this produces a fundamental difference.  The question to Sadra is not what God knows or how God creates, but rather how God is.  Sadra argues that God is nothing other than pure existence.  He is, therefore, present in and with all existents, including humans, while at once transcending them as the only being of pure existence.  (Hence the principle of waSda fi ‘l-kathra and kathra fi ‘l-waSda).  Thus the whole problem changes.  God is no longer an outside figure controlling human history.  For human history is only one manifestation of divine existence.  It is as though a movie camera has panned back and revealed a much grander vision, so that the original scene of human history is shown to be incomplete.  The impact of this grander vision on Sadra’s eschatological thought will become clear by a brief examination of his treatise on the Resurrection, Risalat al-Sashr (Letter on the Gathering).[12]

          The first thing to note is that this treatise does not deal exclusively with the resurrection of humans.  Most treatises on the apocalypse, like those by the authors mentioned above, are collections of Sadith that describe the trials which humans will undergo before entering heaven or hell.  Some of these Sadith are developed through the historicization of Qur'anic references, to the divine throne (Q2:255), to the heavenly scale (Q7.80) or to the ṣiraṭ (Q1.6 etc.).  Sadra breaks definitively from this tradition in Risalat al-Sashr, as he addresses the Resurrection not only of all living things, but of all existing things.  He begins therein with the resurrection of those beings that have actualized themselves, becoming pure intelligences (al-‘uqūl al-khaliṣa).  He proceeds by treating, in downwards steps, the resurrection of existents further away from actualization: reasonable beings (al-nufūs al-naṭiqa), animal beings (al-nufūs al-Sayawaniyya), vegetative force (quwwat al-nabat) and inorganic elements (al-jamad wa-l-‘anaṣir).  Thus from the very structure of this treatise it is clear that for Sadra the Resurrection is not primarily about the punishment or rewarding of this or that religious group, but rather about the progression of all existing things, or as Sadra puts it, “all that which is in the Earth and the heavens,”[13] to the source of their existence.  In the introduction Sadra explains why this is so:

God Most High does not create anything without a telos (ghaya).  Therefore, all present things must have an activity and a telos.  These beings are compound elements with four causes: those two [activity and telos] along with matter and form, although a simple [being] has no causes other than activity and telos, for its form is itself its essence and has no matter.  It has been confirmed through proof that the final telos of His (Most High) activity is His essence.  His essence is the telos of all teloi as it is the base of all bases.  Doubtless the telos of a thing is to arrive at and finish at its essence, unless something delays it.  That which cannot arrive at its essence cannot be imagined in any way, even metaphorically, to have a telos.[14]

 

Thus Sadra maintains that all existing things have a telos, and that this telos is nothing else than a participation in the divine essence itself.  Yet does theodicy fit into this picture?  Does Sadra abandon the concerns of divine justice that are so important to his Shi‘i predecessors?

          In a word, no.  Yet Sadra himself is aware that his model is an innovation which is preceded only by the thought of Aristotle:

Understand that the format which we have demonstrated, the affirmation of the return of all things and their arriving at God Most High and the final realm, is a noble science, a lofty pursuit, a precious quest, a prize of the prizes of faith, a treasure house of the treasure houses of the Merciful, the jewel of which is not found in the store-house of any of the famous sages, those who followed the peripatetics or others, except for the first teacher [Aristotle].[15]

 

Elsewhere Sadra concludes,

My brother and friend, understand that I have set down for you in this treatise principles and rules which the writings of earlier and later authors do not touch.  The minds of most sages, be they peripatetics, Stoics or Muslims, were stupefied by it.[16]

 

Thus Sadra’s eschatology, by his own evaluation, surpasses in wisdom both that of the philosophers and that of his Muslim predecessors.  Yet while he might be accused of lacking humility, Sadra cannot be accused of lacking an understanding of the central concept of Shi‘i eschatology: divine mercy.  The difference is that his eschatological system is trans-historical.  The life of the soul during its earthly existence, during its attachment to the earthly body, al-jism ad-dunyawwi, is only one chapter in the longer saga of its progression from and to God.  Therefore the ultimate manifestation of God’s mercy in the end times will not be the coming out of the Hidden Imam or the coming down of Jesus, but rather the elevation of existents towards the divine intellect, and thence towards God Himself.  The eschaton, in fact, is nothing other than an act of divine mercy; it as though God reaches His hand down to earth, where most souls are confused and helpless, and lifts those souls up to a higher level where they might have a better view of reality.  In Sadra’s words:

Certainly He will destroy this world and turn all that is in the Earth and the heavens into nothingness, oblivion.  Nature will return into the world of the soul.  The soul will return into the world of the intelligence.  The intelligence will return into the One, the Almighty.  As He (Most High) says: “He will blow the Horn and those in the heavens and Earth, excepting those whom God wills, will be struck down.  He will blow it again and they will rise up, seeing.”

 

Thus if things return to their original place, after leaving the world of motion, of transformations, evils, pains, of the sadness of death, treachery, terror and of being struck down, the divine mercy will show compassion on them another time with a life that has no death, a perdurance that will not be not cut off.[17]

 

          In this passage, Sadra quotes Qur'an az-Zumar (39) verse 48, a verse which is traditionally understood as a description of the death and resurrection of humans.  Yet Sadra applies this verse to all existing things; they will all be transformed into a new and elevated state, a heavenly Jerusalem, to borrow the biblical phrase.     

          Finally, it should be noted that Sadra’s vision of the eschaton is based on his conception of the intellect.  That is, Sadra understands the return to God as an odyssey of intellects as they struggle to comprehend true existence.  Thus it is in the intellectual arena where the moral contest will be played out, as God aids humans in their efforts to comprehend Him, all the while refusing to compel that comprehension.  In this way Sadra at once preserves the justice and compassion of God as well as human responsibility. 

This emphasis on the intellectual, however, leads Sadra to an arresting arrogance, a belief that through his own intellectual superiority he has progressed to an advanced stage in this odyssey.  Accordingly, Sadra concludes the Risalat al-Sashr by congratulating himself for his intellectual advancement and encouraging the reader to follow his path, declaring:

If you contemplate and apply that which we described to you in this treatise regarding the refined secrets and noble lights, it will be possible for you to become in your spirit an exalted angel, in your soul a straight way and in your intellect a light guiding towards your eternal Lord.[18]

 

I cannot but find Sadra’s confidence here troubling.  As he sees it, the intellectual wisdom laid out in his Risalat al-Sashr is something like the wisdom given by God at the eschaton.  As God will reach His hand down to pull up the lost and helpless souls in the eschaton, so Sadra reaches his hand down to the reader in this treatise. 

          And yet certainly there is much to commend in Sadra’s eschatological system as described in Risalat al-Sashr.  Without betraying the fundamental elements of Shi‘i eschatology, Sadra contemplates the question of the soul’s destiny on a level that is above any particular religious community.  Indeed, the struggle of the human soul to understand existence, the belief that this struggle is of fundamental importance to the soul’s destiny and the experience of divine grace in the course of that struggle are all elements shared by many different religious communities.  In this way, then, Sadra’s eschatology makes a noteworthy contribution to the Dialogue of Civilizations.

 

    

 

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