Shafaqna English- A selection from the translated Nahjul-Balaghah with commentary by Martyr Ayatollah Murtaza Mutahhari and edited by Yasin T. Al-Jibouri.
One of the basic issues dealt with in Nahjul-Balaghah relates to theological and metaphysical problems. All in all, there are about forty places where the sermons, letters, and aphorisms discuss these issues. Some of these pertain to the aphorisms, but more often the discussion is longer, covering sometimes several pages.
The passages on Tawhid (Divine Unity) in Nahjul-Balaghah can perhaps be considered to be the most wonderful discussions of the book. Without any exaggeration, when we take into account the conditions in which they were delivered, they can almost be said to be miraculous.
The discussions of this theme in Nahjul-Balaghah are of a varied nature. Some of them constitute studies of the scheme of creation bearing witness to Divine Creativity and Wisdom. Here, Imam Ali (AS) speaks about the whole system of the heavens and the earth, or occasionally discusses the wonderful features of some specific creature like the bat, the peacock or the ant, and the role of the Divine design and purpose in their creation.
To give an example of this kind of discussion, we may quote a passage regarding the ant: Have you observed the tiny creatures that God has created? How God has made them strong and perfected their constitution and shaped their organs of hearing and sight, and how God has styled their bones and skin? Observe the ant with its tiny body and delicate form. It is so small that its features can hardly be discerned by the eye and so insignificant that it does not enter our thoughts.
See how it roams about upon the ground and arduously collects its livelihood. It carries the grain to its hole and deposits it in its store. It collects during the summer for the winter and, when winter arrives, it foresees the time to reemerge. Its livelihood is guaranteed and designed according to its built. The Benefactor and the Provider does not forget or forsake it.
God does not deprive it, even though it should be in hard and dry stones and rocks. You will be amazed at the delicate intricacy of its wonderful constitution if you investigate the structure of its alimentary canals, its belly, and its eyes and ears which are in its head. (Sermon 185)
However, most of the discussions about Tawhid in Nahjul-Balaghah are rational and philosophical. The rare sublimity of Nahjul-Balaghah becomes manifest in these discourses. In these philosophical and rational discourses of Nahjul-Balaghah on Tawhid, what constitutes the focus of all arguments is the infinite, absolute and self-sufficing nature of the Divine Essence. In these passages, Imam Ali (AS) attains the heights of eloquence, and none, neither before him nor after him, has come close to him in this aspect.
Another issue dealt with is that of the absolute simplicity (Albasatat Al-mutlaqah) of the Divine Essence and negation of every kind of multiplicity, divisibility in the Godhead and refutation of separability of the Divine Attributes from the Divine Essence. This theme occurs repeatedly in Nahjul-Balaghah.
Also discussed is a series of other profound problems which had never been touched before him. They are: “Allah (SWT) being the First while also being the Last; God being simultaneously the Manifest and the Hidden; God’s precedence over time and number, i.e. God’s pre-eternity is not temporal and God’s Unity is not numerical; God’s Supremacy, Authority, and Self-sufficiency; God’s Creativeness; that attendance to one affair does not prevent Him from attending to other affairs; the identity of Divine Word and Act, the limited capacity of human reason to comprehend Gods reality, that gnosis (Ma’rifa) is a kind of manifestation (Tajalli) of God upon the intellects, which is different from mental conception or cognition’
The negation of such categories and qualities such as corporeality, motion, rest, change, place, time, similitude, antithesis, partnership, possession of organs or parts, limitation and number, and a series of other issues which we shall, by the will of Allah (SWT), mention later and give examples of everyone of them. Even a thinker who is well-versed in the beliefs and views of ancient and modern philosophers would be struck with wonder upon seeing the wide range and scope of the problems propounded in this wonderful book.
An elaborate discussion of the issues raised and dealt with in Nahjul-Balaghah would itself require a voluminous book and cannot be covered in one or two articles. Unavoidably, we shall be brief; but before we commence our brief survey, we are compelled to mention certain points as an introduction to our discussion.
Part of a series: Nahjul-Balaghah with Commentary by Martyr Ayatollah Murtaza Mutahhari
Nahjul-Balaghah and Western Philosophic Thought