Spiritual History

History, however long, complex and tumultuous in appearance, is at its core one and single and at its heart is sacred.

(George Townshend. The Promise of All Ages p. 43)

            Historical understanding in a philosophical sense is the capacity to grasp essential forms of meaning and human development.  In any philosophy of history, whether social, economic, intellectual, Marxist, or any other kind, to discover and elucidate meaning historical events do not dictate perceptions and concepts, though they influence them, rather perceptions and concepts are used to reconstruct events. That is, a philosophy of history does not want representations but re-presentations, for simply recapitulating the events and viewpoints of past ages will not give us the complete meaning of those times.  This requires another kind of view, an overall philosophical one.  

For example, when I was in high school and university, more years ago than I care to admit, the history textbooks often presented the progress of  “western” civilization as some sort of cultural baton-pass from the “Greeks” through the Empire of Rome, whose “fall” sent “Europe” stumbling blindly into the tunnel of the Dark Ages, which came out into the bright light of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, then vast expansion around the world, but especially into the western hemisphere where everything came to some grand finale in America.  This philosophy of history—arranged on the scheme of ancient-medieval-modern history--was put forth to show the superiority of the west even when it was clearly inferior, or its “peoples” did not yet know they were superior.  The grand march of the west had all the feel of an ineluctable destiny.  It is a completely discredited view.  So the search is on for a new and universal one.     

In his groundbreaking study The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn argued that a new paradigm in science is never cobbled together from bits and pieces of other viewpoints, nor is it laboriously figured out piece by piece before it appears.  Its essential features emerge into view whole though not wholly developed, and while it may again recede into unconsciousness and come back, recede and return again to view until it can be held by the conscious mind, from the beginning it was another and complete way of looking at the world. 

            Following Kuhn, a universal perspective of history is not the sum total of the different viewpoints—social, political, economic, intellectual, religious etc.--about historical events.  Rather universality is its own way of viewing humanity's history.  A truly universal vision of history must from its inception be a distinct way of viewing the past and interpreting human experience, not an integration of different views but their integrator.  Universality means to unite within a single vision purposeful processes both within and over time; it must unite past, present and future.  Universality is not just to unite within one such conceptual framework the whole world now, a mental exercise more properly called a global view. 

             Where can one look for such a universal conception?  A key can be found in the words of George Townshend found above.  Sacredness puts religion at the center of humanity’s meaningful development.  But this is religion in a special sense.  By religion I don’t mean religious doctrines or theologies, but as ‘Abdu’l-Baha defined religion: "the essential connection that emanates from the realities of things", (Some Answered Questions:158) connections that are known by the "universal divine mind" which is the "special attribute of the Holy Manifestations." (Some Answered Questions:218)

            The Bahá’í view states that what gives both structure and development, unity and sequence, to human history is the succession of the Manifestations of God and Their progressively unifying Message. From this perspective the different religions are "different stages in the eternal history and constant evolution of one religion." (Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Bahá'u'lláh: 114.)  The "divine and creative purpose” of this periodic renewal of the human condition by the powerful impulse of Revelation “was the evolution of spiritual man. . . The cycle of existence is the same circle; it returns. The tree of life has ever borne the same heavenly fruit." (`Abdu'l-Bahá, Promulgation of Universal Peace: 220.)

            From the perspective of the evolution of spiritual man, history is spiritual history.  But spiritual history is not another branch of historical study, even as a special kind of expanded heilgeschichte, or “salvation history” to describe God's redemptive work in the events of history.  Neither is it the mere chronicle of the succession of religions.  Scripture is not secular history, but divine history, and divine history is in no way divorced from the economic, political, social or intellectual history of humankind: these being in fact parts and expressions of divine history.  Spiritual history is not just God's redemptive work, but also humanity's developmental work through God.   

            Spiritual history is the study of the play of transformations, formed in time, by the changing configuration of eternal forms, the revelations from God which founded the great religions.  The meaning of collective human development, then, is to be found in humanity’s relation to this great overarching theme, this transcendent premise, this unfolding Divine purpose of the Revelations that are each an expression of what philosophers traditionally called Logos. 

Mr. Townshend summed up his philosophy of history gleaned from study of the writings of Baha’u’llah this way: “History, he (Baha’u’llah) taught, in its length and breadth is one and single.  It is one in its structure.   It is one in its movement.   From the beginning of time the whole human race has been subject to one law of development; and it has advanced age after age in accordance with one and the same principle and by the application of one and the same method.   Its whole movement has one source and one cause, and is directed towards one goal.  The unification of the world, instead of being an afterthought, or of needing an improvised miracle for its completion, is the normal conclusion of a process that has been going on since the race began.” (The Promise of All Ages:28)

A history of all humanity that is “one in its structure…one in its movement” is directed and animated by Revelation through two processes, each operating both within every Dispensation of a Great Prophet and as the final purpose of all Revelation.  These interacting processes I call “reorganization” and “development.”  The purpose of these processes is the actualization of human potential to advance civilization. But these are really two aspects of one process; that is to say, reorganization is development.  Why?  From a universal standpoint (i.e one that simultaneously unites humanity’s past, present and future in developmental time and the world now as a single space) there can only be transformation within a universal system.  A universal system cannot transcend itself, only forms of itself as more of its potentials are brought into actuality by a greater power than the system itself.  This is what Baha’is name progressive revelation.  Growth is the progressive actualization of latent potentials.  Hence, human development by Revelation does not simply present history as a sequence of events, but as a sequence of spiritual contexts in which the whole of human character is periodically transformed to develop humanity's spiritual, mental, and physical capacities.  As Baha’u’llah wrote: “Is not the object of every Revelation to effect a transformation in the whole character of mankind, a transformation that shall manifest itself both outwardly and inwardly, that shall affect both its inner life and external conditions (The Kitab-i-Iqan:240) 

            The complete spiritual history of mankind has yet to be written. But since the coming of Bahá’u’lláh the basic guidelines for such a writing are known because we know where historians should look for the real pivots of human history: to the Manifestations and Their Message.  ‘Abdu’l-Bahá further defines that purpose for us: “For a single purpose were the Prophets, one and all, sent down to earth...that the world of man should become the world of God, this nether realm the Kingdom…that the organic unity should reappear and the bases of discord be destroyed and life everlasting and grace everlasting become the harvest of mankind.” (Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá:31)

            More on this topic in the next post.