Equality
See also: Bahá'í Faith and the unity of religionIn Bahá'í belief all of the Manifestations of God are from the same God and have the same spiritual and metaphysical nature, and that there is absolute equality among them. The differences between the various Manifestations of God and their teachings, Bahá'u'lláh explained, are due to the varying needs and capacities of the civilization in which they appeared, and not due to any differences in their level of importance or nature.
The Manifestations of God are taught to be "one and the same", and in their relationship to one another have both the station of unity and the station of distinction. Bahá'u'lláh wrote in the Book of Certitude that in respect to their station of unity "if thou callest them all by one name and dost ascribe to them the same attribute, thou hast not erred from the truth." In this sense, the Manifestations of God all fulfill the same purpose and perform the same function by mediating between God and creation. In this way each Manifestation of God manifested the Word of God and taught the same religion, with modifications for the particular audience's needs and culture. Bahá'u'lláh wrote that since each Manifestation of God has the same divine attributes they can be seen as the spiritual "return" of all the previous Manifestations of God.
Bahá'u'lláh then states the diversity of the teachings of the Manifestations of God does not come about because of their differences, since they are one and the same, but because they each have a different mission. Bahá'u'lláh writes regarding this station of distinction, "each Manifestation of God hath a distinct individuality, a definitely prescribed mission, a predestined Revelation, and specially designated limitations." Bahá'u'lláh wrote in the Gems of Divine Mysteries that those who perceive distinctions and differences between the Manifestations of God, will notice the underlying unity of the Manifestations once they continue on their spiritual path. Bahá'u'lláh in several passages goes so far as to say that denial of one Manifestation is equivalent to denial of all of them. `Abdu'l-Bahá said that a Bahá'í will choose death over denial of any of the great Prophets, whether Moses, Muhammad or Christ.
The Bahá'í belief in the oneness of the Manifestations of God does not mean, however, that the same individual soul is born again at different times and in different physical bodies. In the Bahá'í view, the various Manifestations of God were all different personalities and had separate individual realities. Instead their equality is due to that Manifestation of God manifested and revealed the qualities of God to the same degree.
Read more about this topic: Manifestation Of God
Famous quotes containing the word equality:
“I pray every single second of my life; not on my knees, but with my work. My prayer is to lift woman to equality with man. Work and worship are one with me. I can not imagine a God of the universe made happy by my getting down on my knees and calling him “great.””
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“I’m tired of earning my own living, paying my own bills, raising my own child. I’m tired of the sound of my own voice crying out in the wilderness, raving on about equality and justice and a new social order.... Self-sufficiency is exhausting. Autonomy is lonely. It’s so hard to be a feminist if you are a woman.”
—Jane O’Reilly, U.S. feminist and humorist. The Girl I Left Behind, ch. 7 (1980)
“Even healthy families need outside sources of moral guidance to keep those tensions from imploding—and this means, among other things, a public philosophy of gender equality and concern for child welfare. When instead the larger culture aggrandizes wife beaters, degrades women or nods approvingly at child slappers, the family gets a little more dangerous for everyone, and so, inevitably, does the larger world.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (20th century)