The Way of God

The bāb opens with a plain sentence, but two of its words are such that overlooking them ruins the whole discussion:

The first qualification - بعض. It is not said that all God's acts follow upon these forces. Some. The rule is being affirmed without making God's act a prisoner of the rule. (Recall bāb 1's four modes - القبض and الإحالة fit precisely there.)

The second qualification - بوجهٍ من وجوهِ الترتُّب. "By one of the modes of following." This is the same caution taken in bāb 3 about the highest council: أسباباً … بوجهٍ من وجوهِ السببية. Saying "cause" does not entail that the manner of causation has been settled. Two places, one idiom - this is his habit, not a coincidence.

And this footnote is decisive. In explaining the second qualification Palanpuri brings exactly the sentence he used in bāb 1 on صفات مترتبة: "we do not know how they follow, but we are certain that they do." So بوجهٍ من وجوهِ الترتُّب is not vague - it is deliberate suspension: affirm the following, keep silent on its manner. One idiom, in two bābs.

From transmission: he begins with the hadith in which Adam was created from a handful taken from the whole earth - so the children of Adam came out accordingly: red, white, black, and between; soft and hard; foul and wholesome. And also the hadith of the question whether a child takes after the father or the mother.

Notice that these are not merely curious reports - a rule is being stated in them: diversity of offspring from diversity of material, and resemblance determined by which precedes the other. The forms differ; the principle is one.

And from reason: here he turns to the everyday, and the strength of the argument is in its plainness. No one doubts that death comes from a sword's blow or from swallowing poison; that the forming of a child in the womb follows the seed; that grain and trees grow after sowing, planting and watering.

Now he lists what the "deposited forces" are. The list runs to six, and as you read you will recognise the earlier bābs:

1. خواصُّ العناصرِ وطبائعُها - the properties of the elements and their natures. This is bāb 1's خواص.
2. الأحكامُ التي أوْدَعَها اللهُ في كلِّ صورةٍ نوعيةٍ - the rulings God deposited in every specific form. That is, a species' own regularity.
3. أحوالُ عالمِ المثالِ والوجودُ المَقْضِيُّ به هنالك قبلَ الوجودِ الأرضيِّ - the states of the world of images, and the existence decreed there before earthly existence. That is the whole of bāb 2, in one line.
4. أدعيةُ الملأِ الأعلى بجُهْدِ هِمَمِهم - the prayers of the highest council with the full exertion of their resolve: for whoever disciplines his soul or works at reforming people, and against whoever does the contrary. This is bāb 3's first point.
5. الشرائعُ المكتوبةُ على بني آدمَ وتحقُّقُ الإيجابِ والتحريمِ - the laws prescribed upon the children of Adam, and the realisation of obligation and prohibition - فإنها سببُ ثوابِ المُطيعِ وعقابِ العاصي.
6. The order of entailment - that God decrees a thing, and then that thing draws another after it, because in God's way the one entails the other.

These four footnotes open the list up. The first: طبائع simply means خاصّة - "as burning is the nature of fire", so bāb 1's properties and this first kind are one and the same. The second: the states of the world of images are a cause of the states of the world of bodies - an explicit gloss on the third kind. The third: همّة is firm resolve and complete attention, جَهد is capacity and strength - so "with the full exertion of their resolve" is no formal prayer.

And the fourth is the most important: reward and punishment are themselves among God's acts, and they follow upon the revealed laws. So the law's being a "cause" is no figure of speech - recompense follows upon it as the crop follows upon the seed.

And with the sixth kind comes a fine principle and a most beautiful hadith:

خَرْمُ نظامِ اللزوم غيرُ مرضيّ - "tearing the order of entailment is not approved." God does not work by breaking the rule but by making a way from inside it. And the hadith is its finest picture: when it is decreed that a servant should die in a certain land, God puts into him a need for that land. The man goes about his business, by his own will, following his own need - and arrives; and the decree is fulfilled without any rule being broken.

Remember bāb 3's fish? وهي لا تعلم لِمَ تفعل ذلك - it does not know why it does what it does. Here the same, applied to a man: you know your need, not its cause.

Now the question that arises in any regular system: if everything runs on causes, what happens when two causes demand contrary things? Both cannot be satisfied.

So in a conflict the work of wisdom is to regard whatever stands nearest to the absolute good. And here he does something elegant: he ties this operation to two names, one from the Qur'an and one from hadith.

"The balance" - a scale, which raises one pan and lowers the other. And "the affair" - every day He is at some new work. Both words name one thing: continuous weighing. The order is not static, settled once and left to run; at every moment a preference is being made.

And on what basis? The text gives three grounds: sometimes from the state of the causes (which is stronger), sometimes from the state of the effects (which is more beneficial), and sometimes by giving the door of creation precedence over the door of governance - and that last is straight from bāb 1's ordering, the same مترتبة.

Immediately after this he makes an admission of incapacity - and draws a certainty out of it. This is the most beautiful place in the bāb:

Look at the structure of the argument, for it is finely measured:

1. Our knowledge cannot encompass the causes - granted.
2. Nor, in a conflict, can we know which has the better claim - granted too.
3. But we know with certainty that whatever came to exist had the better claim to exist.

The last part of the bāb takes up a practical question, and it is the finest sample of his carefulness. The question: هيآت الكواكب - what influence do the configurations of the stars have? The answer comes in three parts, and all three must be kept apart.

One - what is necessary and established. Some influence is ضروريّ: the difference of heat and cold, the lengthening and shortening of the day - from the varying states of the sun; and the difference of the tides - from the states of the moon. And there is a hadith too: "when the star rises, the blight lifts" - and here he adds his own qualification: يعني بحسبِ جَرْيِ العادةِ, that is, in accordance with the running of custom.

Smile at the second footnote: explaining the tides, it says بفعلِ الجاذبية - "by the action of gravity" - the editor writing in twentieth-century language the very thing the text said in the eighteenth by "the states of the moon". The proximate cause changed; the claim did not.

Two - what is not established. But that poverty and wealth, famine and plenty, and the rest of human events come from the motions of the stars - فمما لم يَثْبُتْ في الشرعِ, that is not established in the law. And the Prophet forbade meddling in it: "whoever acquires a branch of astrology has acquired a branch of sorcery." And he was severe about saying "we were given rain by such-and-such a star".

Three - and this is the most important. Now see where he stops:

And at the end, divination: it is forbidden, and its mechanism is described - the angels descend in the cloud and mention the matter settled in heaven, the satans listen by stealth, then pass it to the diviners, who mix a hundred lies with it. (Bāb 3's highest council and satans are before us again.)

Then three texts that hold everything in place: the Qur'anic command not to be like those unbelievers who said of their brothers لو كانوا عندنا ما ماتوا وما قُتِلوا (had they been with us they would not have died or been killed); the hadith "none of you will be admitted to the Garden by his deed"; and - most beautiful of all - إنما أنتَ رفيقٌ والطبيبُ اللهُ: "you are only a companion; the physician is God."