Abstract

 

The following article serves as an analytic introduction to a provisional translation of Bahá’u’lláh’s Tablet on the Simple Reality (Lawḥ-i-Basíṭu’l-Ḥaqíqih), seeking to engage constructively with the work of Dr. Vahid Ra‘fati and Dr. Moojan Momen. It delineates Bahá’u’lláh’s charitable exegesis of a statement by Mullá Ṣadrá, an eminent 17th-century Persian philosopher, a dictum with pantheistic implications and roots in Neoplatonism: “The Simple Reality is all things.” The article proposes that Bahá’u’lláh interprets the dictum in a manner that carefully precludes pantheism and monism through one core exegesis and three auxiliary interpretations that logically cohere with the first. To this end, the article discusses the history of the doctrine of divine simplicity in philosophical theology—the notion that God is wholly without parts and an absolute unity—and outlines the relevant ideas of Avicenna (c.980-1037) that form the intellectual background of Mullá Ṣadrá’s distinctive ontology and theology. The introduction concludes that insofar as Bahá’u’lláh interprets the dictum of Mullá Ṣadrá according to what He conceives to be the correct articulation of the God-world relationship, the Tablet provides further insights into specifically Bahá’í metaphysical theology as a definite and coherent body of principles and teachings.