Abstract
Ibn ‘Arabî’s vast corpus of writings analyzes a great variety of templates that allow seekers of understanding to grasp the Necessary Being and the entire realm of contingency. By the necessity of its very nature the Necessary Being gives rise to three complementary images of itself—the universe, the human self, and scripture. It discloses itself in each in keeping with its inherent attributes, both the “natural,” such as life, consciousness, desire, power, speech; and the “moral,” such as compassion, love, justice, forgiveness, and pardon. The goal of human existence is to actualize these attributes in perfect harmony. No human model can possibly embrace the infinity of the Necessary Being, but each model will necessarily reveal something of its nature. Ibn ‘Arabî shows why each model must be simultaneously affirmed and denied if we are to achieve the full potentiality of our human existence.
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Notes
- 1.
For an overview of his teachings and a bibliography of important secondary sources, see Chittick (2008).
- 2.
For a history of the expression and various meanings that have been ascribed to it, see Chittick (1994).
- 3.
For example, Afḍal al-Dīn Kāshānī, an Aristotelian and contemporary of Ibn ‘Arabī, writing in Persian, classified wujūd into two basic sorts, which he called “being” (hastī, cognate with “is”), and “finding” (yāft). Then we have a hierarchy: potential being (e.g., a seed), actual being (a tree), actual being along with potential finding (the soul), and actual being along with actual finding (the fully realized intelligence). See Chittick (2001, pp. 41–45).
- 4.
Ibn ‘Arabī (1911, vol. 3, pp. 276–277).
- 5.
Ibn ‘Arabī (1911, vol. 2, p. 473, line 33).
- 6.
Ibn ‘Arabī (1911, vol. 2, p. 482, line 26).
- 7.
In order to forestall the usual theological objections—namely, that to speak of beginningless and endless duration is to claim that the world is “eternal”—one can say briefly that for Ibn ‘Arabī, the Arabic terminology itself nullifies such objections. “Eternity” (qidam) belongs exclusively to God in himself, and all things other than God, the sum total of which is the cosmos, are by definition muʿdath, literally, “caused to occur,” which is to say that they do not exist in themselves and must be given existence. Second, “the world” that theologians are talking about when they deny its everlastingness is not the same as the “cosmos,” even though the same Arabic word may be used, for the cosmos embraces anything other than the Nondelimited Wujūd, not least the posthumous realms known as paradise and hell. Scholars, by the way, commonly used the expression “18,000 worlds” when they wanted to refer to God’s endless creativity. Third, it is incoherent to talk about a time “before” the creation of the cosmos, given that God is the creator eternally, and time is a word that applies only to our own created circumstances. It seems to me that had Ibn ‘Arabī been familiar with Hindu views of samsara and cosmic cycles (which he was not), he would have considered them good ways to explain the nature of the cosmos. In at least one place, when he tells of a visionary encounter with a man who existed before our common ancestor Adam, he alludes to cycles by saying that he recalls hearing a saying of the Prophet that there were a hundred thousand Adams (see 1911, 3:549.12). Ibn ‘Arabī explains how he reconciles the philosophical notion of the world’s eternity with the theological insistence that it originates in time on more than one occasion. See Chittick 1989, pp. 84–85.
- 8.
Ibn ‘Arabī (1911, 3:317.31).
- 9.
Ibn ‘Arabī (1911, 3:552.20).
- 10.
Ibn ‘Arabī (1911, 3:94.16).
- 11.
- 12.
Take, for example, the book-length chapter 558 of the Futūḥāt (Ibn ‘Arabī 1911) which explains each of the 99 names of God as a specific divine presence.
- 13.
Ibn ‘Arabī (1911, 2:281.27).
- 14.
See Chittick (1989, p. 120).
- 15.
Ibn ‘Arabī (1911, 2:379.9).
- 16.
For Ibn ‘Arabī’s analysis of the five basic senses in which people use the word evil, see Chittick (1989, pp. 290–292).
- 17.
Ibn ‘Arabī (1911, 4:386.17).
- 18.
- 19.
Ibn ‘Arabī (1911, 3:208.13).
- 20.
Ibn ‘Arabī 1911, 3:506.30.
- 21.
Qūnawī (1996, p. 266). For more on Qūnawī and the station of no station, see Chittick (2004, pp. 25–45); also http://www.ibnarabisociety.org/articles/centralpoint.html.
- 22.
Ibn ‘Arabī (1911, 2:85.11).
- 23.
Ibn ‘Arabī (1911, 2:667.13).
- 24.
Part of the controversy that has surrounded Ibn ‘Arabī’s name can be traced back to the fact that for many scholars, his claim to provide the model of all models seemed like enormous arrogance, even if many other scholars accepted that he was indeed “The Seal of the Muhammadan Saints” (khātam al-awliyā’ al-Muḥammadiyya). Notice here that “the Muhammadan Saints” are those friends of God who achieved the Muhammadan Station, which is precisely the station that encompasses the stations of all saints; to be the “seal” of this station is be its last historical embodiment, not the seal of sanctity per se, which continues until the end of time. See Chodkiewicz (1993). For a few of the controversies surrounding Ibn ‘Arabī’s name, see Knysh (1999).
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Chittick, W.C. (2013). Ibn ‘Arabī on the Ultimate Model of the Ultimate. In: Diller, J., Kasher, A. (eds) Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Realities. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5219-1_76
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