The 'mutilation' passage

Subject: Mutilation passage
Date sent: Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:02:50 +0100
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The theme [in this section of The Dispensation of Baha'u'llah]
is that the two institutions are complementary, not alternatives or substitutes:

“Each exercises, within the limitations imposed upon it, its powers, its
authority, its rights and prerogatives. These are neither contradictory,
nor detract in the slightest degree from the position which each of these
institutions occupies. Far from being incompatible or mutually
destructive, they supplement each other’s authority and functions, and are
permanently and fundamentally united in their aims.”

Then the core sentence:

“Divorced from the institution of the Guardianship the World Order of
Baha’u'llah would be mutilated and permanently deprived of that hereditary
principle which, as ‘Abdu’l-Baha has written, has been invariably upheld
by the Law of God….”

By divorced I think he is thinking of a forceable and artificial
separation, that is, if a version of the Bahai Faith were to be
constructed (eg by Sohrab) without this institution, it would lack
the hereditary principle. In that event, there would still be a
theoretical hereditary element, since Abdu’l-Baha was the son of
Baha’u'llah; but he says, without the Guardianship the Faith would be
deprived of the hereditary principle, so he must mean, a living exemplar
of the hereditary principle. This is just the hand that history has dealt
us, and the deprivation is permanent. No way to fix it. But we probably do
not mourn the loss of a hereditrary institution too much. What follows is
more serious :

“… Without such an institution the integrity of the Faith would be
imperiled, and the stability of the entire fabric would be gravely
endangered. Its prestige would suffer, the means required to enable it to
take a long, an uninterrupted view over a series of generations would be
completely lacking, and the necessary guidance to define the sphere of the
legislative action of its elected representatives would be totally
withdrawn.”

Integrity, stability, prestige and a long view are definite plusses. But
these ones are not entirely “lost” – because this sentence can be read to
a certain extent as “If there had not been such an institution the
integrity of the Faith would have been imperiled…” etc. If Abdu’l-Baha
had died without the House of Justice elected and had not appointed the Guardian, it’s
not hard to see that things would have gone very badly. However the Faith
has suffered some of these negative effects through having one and one
only Guardian: some prestige (no equivalent to the Aga Khan as a public
figure), we’ve lost that element of the oral transmission of wisdom within
the family. The Guardian has given us a lot of guidance about the sphere
of legislative action that was not clear from the writings of Baha’u'llah
and Abdu’l-Baha: his specifying that we must not “allow the machinery of
their administration to supersede the government of their respective
countries” is priceless, to give one example.

++++++++
[in a later posting]

God’s will is not exhuasted by the “governor” model (in theology-
speak, gubernatorial providence). God is also described in the New
Testament as one who reaps where he did not sow, which is to say,
there is also redemptive providence, which opens every situation to a
divine possibility. If gubernatorial providence was 100%, there would be
no *** to redeem

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