 Hello friends, in this presentation I will be introducing and summarizing the content of my article in the journal Baha'i Studies, Baha'u'llah and the God of Avicenna. The article analyzes the theological teachings of Baha'u'llah and Abu Baha and compares them with the core metaphysical principles propounded by Avicenna, who is the preeminent philosopher in the Islamic tradition. Specifically, the article argues that Baha'u'llah and Abu Baha affirm the metaphysical or philosophical principles that underlie Avicenna's argument for God's existence. This argument for God's existence asserts that he is the necessarily existent, the volgible voodoo, the self-subsistent reality that upholds all the rest of existence. The article furthermore argues that Baha'u'llah and Abu Baha affirm the rational content of how Avicenna deduces that this necessarily existent being has certain divine attributes. And it concludes by considering how Baha'u'llah and Abu Baha also confirm Avicenna's philosophical account of how God, or the necessarily existent, creates the world. To this end, the article is organized in three parts. In the first part, I present Avicenna's argument for God as a necessarily existent, and then I show how Baha'u'llah and Abu Baha affirm this concept of God in their writings, specifically that he has the attribute of necessary, or inevitable, or self-sufficient existence, in precisely the same way that Avicenna teaches or argues for. In part two, I show how Avicenna argues philosophically and deductively that the necessarily existent being, or God, has attributes that are considered divine, and these include simplicity, which is less commonly talked about, which means that God doesn't have any internal parts. He's completely one, includes singleness, that God is unique, immutability, eternality, perfection, and goodness. And I show that Baha'u'llah and Abu Baha affirm the self-same attributes of God that Avicenna does, and also the reasoning behind Avicenna's attribution of these attributes to God. In the third and last part before the conclusion, I present Avicenna's account of how God, or the necessarily existent being, creates the contingent world, or the realm of creation. And I show the remarkable similarities between Avicenna's account and that of Baha'u'llah and Amdubaha. Who then was Avicenna? I think that he really was the pre-eminent philosopher of the Islamic tradition, and he remains one of the most influential and important philosophers in world history. The reason is that he inherited the philosophical tradition that began in Greece with Socrates' Aristotle and Plato, and which then developed in the Aeneal-Platonic tradition of Platinus, and which then flourished in the Islamic world after the translation movement of Greek texts into Arabic in the 9th and 10th centuries. Avicenna inherited this tradition, and through his synthetic genius, he was able to have a picture of this philosophy, this rational philosophy that wasn't in chord with the truths enshrined in Islamic Revelation. Moreover, he was able to excel in pretty much every discipline of his time. This included the various branches of philosophy, logic, physics, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics, but also things such as medicine. The Canada medicine, his medical textbook, was in use in Europe even until the 17th century. Thus, Avicenna was able to be the intellectual consummation of all the intellectual tradition that preceded him, but he also set the terms of intellectual debate and of philosophy that came after him. And it's as such that he was an indelible influence even in Europe because he affected the thought of people like St. Thomas Aquinas, Don Skotis, of William of Ockham. So, Avicenna really was not just the important or preeminent philosopher in the Islamic tradition, but he was an important figure in the whole tradition of philosophy, of world philosophy. Some of his most influential contributions to intellectual life, however, were in metaphysics, which is the branch of philosophy which studies being, the nature of existence itself. And to this end, he had a number of compendia, philosophical compendia, that are mentioned in my article, including Asche Fall, which means the healing, that is the intellectual kind of healing, and Najat, the Salvation, and the Dhanishnomiya Alawi, which is in Persian instead of Arabic. Each of these compendia have metaphysical sections, and it's these that are specifically used in my article. But why is Avicenna relevant to us as Baha'is? Why is it worth anything pointing out ideas of his that Baha'u'llah and Abu Baha'a affirm? I think the reason is that we as Baha'is take it that our beliefs are rational. Baha'u'llah and Abu Baha'a don't tell us to take things on faith. They say, think for yourselves, and discern the reasons for your beliefs. And Abu Baha'a tells us in some answer questions that today, the peoples of the world require rational arguments, that are ele at liye. So Avicenna, since his philosophy and his theology are rational ones, since they're backed up with serious intellectual thinking, he provides a helpful model. This is especially true since his reasoning is explicitly and implicitly affirmed in the writings of Baha'u'llah and Amdubaha. His argument for God's existence, which doesn't depend on faith whatsoever, but merely logical reasoning, is confirmed in the writings. So Avicenna provides a helpful model for us when we are articulating and defending the rational foundation of Baha'i theology. A critical point I should make at this juncture, however, is that by affirmation, I do not at all mean derivation. When I say that Baha'u'llah and Amdubaha affirm the ideas of Avicenna with respect to God's existence, when they affirm his argument for God's existence, or perhaps his account of different divine attributes that God has, I don't mean that they have derived these insights from Avicenna. I think that Avicenna came to certain important truths about the nature of reality, and that he did so through the method of rational inquiry that he inherited from Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, and from Islamic philosophers before him such as Al-Kindi and Parabi, and that he furthermore was illumined intellectually by the teachings of the Quran, and that in so doing he came upon certain truths, certain reasoning that affirms the existence of God, and that later on Baha'u'llah and Amdubaha have affirmed the truths that Avicenna did reach. I don't think, however, that they've had to borrow these insights from Avicenna. My personal conviction as a Baha'i is that Baha'u'llah possesses an innate knowledge and comprehension of the realities of things, and a knowledge of God which nobody can equal or possess other than himself, and then Amdubaha is his authoritative and infallible interpreter, the infallible interpreter of his writings, and that therefore the insights they have affirm the truths that Avicenna reached deductively and logically, but which are not at all dependent on Avicenna. In any case, what then is Avicenna's argument for God's existence? It's based on two fundamental principles, metaphysical principles. For Avicenna, there are two possible modes in which, or by which, a thing can exist. A thing can exist either contingently or necessarily in itself. A thing can be either a contingent being or a necessary being. Now we know for sure that there are contingent beings. There are beings that exist contingently, that exist that is in a manner that is contingent or dependent or conditioned upon other things. All the things of our experience are contingent. We are contingent because we would not exist if it weren't for the existence of our parents. We wouldn't exist if it weren't for the maintenance of certain conditions, such as the composition of our elements. This table, for instance, would not exist for or not for the composition of the wood and the glue and the nails. So all the things in our experience are contingent beings. They would not exist without certain conditions, that is, without certain causes being in place to support and to sustain their existence, and in many cases to have originated their emergence. Now, these contingent beings in themselves are only possibly existent. They're made actually existent for Abbasana when their cause causes and sustains their existence. So we know for sure that there are these contingent beings. The question that arises for Abbasana is whether everything is contingent, or if there is at least one thing that is necessarily existent in itself, that exists without any need for a cause, that exists in a way dependent on no cause or condition whatsoever. For Abbasana, this unconditioned kind of reality would not be a momkana buddhud. It would not be a contingent being. Rather, it would be vodhipal buddhud. It would be the necessarily existent of itself. It would exist in a manner that is independent of any condition whatsoever. It would exist by virtue of its innate nature. Now, for Abbasana, since this thing would not be dependent on anything else whatsoever, it would be an ultimate and absolute reality that could serve as the cause for all other beings in existence. Now, if God exists, he could not be a contingent being. He could not, for Abbasana, be a created thing, a dependent thing. Because anyone be God, he would be subordinate to something else. So for Abbasana, determining whether there is something that is vodhipal buddhud, something that is necessarily existent, is essential to establishing the existence of God. Therefore, for Abbasana, in order to see philosophically whether God exists, we have to see if everything is contingent, or if we have good reason to believe that there is at least one thing that is necessarily existent of itself. Abbasana argues for the necessarily existent being in light of the following premises leading up to his ultimate conclusion. So the first premise that Abbasana would have us think about is that every contingent being, in order to exist, requires a concurrent cause. If there weren't some factors that enabled it to exist, at every single moment it would revert to non-existent. For example, a person's body relies on the coherence of its elements and certain external factors in order to be maintained in existence. Contingent beings don't have this innate power to exist, they're reliant upon external conditions, even if that is the composition of their parts, the composition of their matter and their form, and a surrounding environment. Therefore, every contingent being requires a simultaneous or concurrent cause. Now, when we go into premise two, we see that there are two possibilities. Either every contingent being has a cause and that cause of cause, and that cause of cause, to infinity, or the causal chain terminates in a cause that is not itself contingent, but which is necessarily existent of itself, a cause that is not dependent for its existence on another cause, but which is self-sufficient, which is self-subsistent. Now, as we go into premise three, we see that Avicenna thinks that there is not an infinite sequence of contingent causes. And he thinks this because the totality, if that were the case, the totality of these contingent causes in this chain would not itself have a cause. So individual contingent beings within the causal chain would have causes, but not the totality, since it would just keep on going on forever with additional causes. But Avicenna realizes that this cannot be the case, because then the totality of contingent beings would not itself have a cause. But it's a contingent being itself. The totality of contingent beings for Avicenna is itself a contingent being, because it is an entity composed of parts. And anything that's composed of parts is itself contingent, since it relies upon, it is contingent upon the existence of those parts. Therefore, since every contingent being requires a cause, and since the totality of contingent beings is itself contingent, the totality must have a cause. Now, the cause of the totality cannot itself be contingent being, because then it would require a cause, and in fact would be within the totality of contingent beings. Rather, the cause of the totality of all contingent beings could only be a necessarily existent being. And therefore, there is something in existence, at least one thing that is necessarily existent of itself, dependent on no other. Now, Avicenna, after he establishes the existence of something necessarily existent in itself, establishes also that that thing has to be a divine reality by deducing certain other attributes for it, which are divine attributes. At this stage, however, I also show that Baha'u'llah and Amdo Baha identify God as the necessarily existent reality that Avicenna talks about. They do this by explicitly affirming that God is vajib, that he is necessarily existent, and by talking about the creation as being contingent, using the same kind of philosophical terminology that Avicenna does, or in other places using different terminology that affirms the same ideas. Baha'u'llah, for instance, states that, the habitation wherein the divine being dwelleth is far above the reach and can of anyone besides him. Whatever in the contingent world can either be expressed or apprehended can never transgress the limits which, by its inherent nature, have been imposed upon it. God alone transcended such limitations. So, literally, Baha'u'llah says that that God transcends, literally, whatever is in the station of the contingent, the condition of the contingent, and that he transcends the limitations of contingency. Furthermore, repeats an argument from contingency for the existence of God in some answer questions. He says that, so long as the contingent world is characterized by dependency, and so long as this dependency is one of its essential requirements, there must be one who, in his own essence, is independent of all other things. And this is precisely an affirmation of the reasoning underlying Avicenna's argument, that there is contingent existence and necessary existence, and that the contingent world relies upon a necessarily existent being that is God in order to exist. It is in this light that Baha'u'llah distinguishes between creation and God by affirming that God is Baljeb or necessarily existent, that creation is contingent. He states that there can be no type direct intercourse to find the one true God with his creation, and no resemblance whatsoever can exist between the transient and the eternal, the contingent, and the absolute. Here Shoghi Effendi perceptively translates Baljeb or necessary as absolute, because absolute means non-contingent, non-conditioned, and the like. After showing that the Baha'i writings affirm Avicenna's conception of God as a necessarily existent, I show how Avicenna deduces that this being, this necessarily existent being, has divine attributes, and I show that Baha'u'llah and Abdu'l-Baha affirm the same attributes to God. Now the fundamental thing, the fundamental principle underlying this discussion, is that for both the Baha'i writings and Avicenna, we deduce that God has certain attributes through negation. We realize that he transcends the limitations and attributes of contingent beings, and thus cannot be constrained by the attributes of such beings. So when we affirm certain attributes of him, what we're really doing is negating from him certain imperfections, such as Abdu'l-Baha states, he says that, such things as we affirm for creation to be among the requirements of origination, we deny in God, for to be sanctified and exalted above all imperfections is one of the characteristics of the necessary being. Avicenna in the same light says that God has attributes his meaning is negative, such that when we say that God is one, we mean that his reality is such that he has no peer, or that he is not composed of parts. When we say he is eternal, we mean that his existence has no beginning, but these two attributes, oneness and eternity, do not bring about any multiplicity in his essence. That is to say, Avicenna and Baha'u'llah and Abdu'l-Baha affirm that God does not have a multiplicity of different attributes. We're not applying many different properties to God. Really he is possessed of absolute oneness. He is absolute oneness himself, but there are different ways of articulating what he is not, different ways of articulating what imperfections he does not have. The first attribute therefore that Avicenna deduces the necessarily existent has is simplicity, which means the lack of multiplicity. Now we saw that contingent beings have an internal kind of multiplicity in many instances. They're composed of parts, and being composed of parts, they rely on those parts to exist and would not exist without those parts. But God, since he is absolutely unconditioned, could not rely on various parts in order to exist, and on some external factor or principle to make those parts cohere. Therefore in him there cannot be composition of any kind, there cannot be physical parts or discrete elements or separable properties or diverse attributes, various internal relations or metaphysical parts either. He could not be a composition of matter and form, he's thus immaterial, and he cannot even be, and I explain some of these ideas more in my paper, a composition of actuality and potentiality. He has to be one indivisible essence for Avicenna. For Avicenna there is an additional radical way in which God is absolutely one, has no composition whatsoever. An important metaphysical idea for Avicenna is that there's a distinction between essence and existence. Now an essence of the thing is just what it is. For example the essence of a triangle is triangularity, the essence of a tree is treeness, but the essences of contingent beings are separate from their existence. They don't exist merely because of their essences. So there is not implicit in the essence triangle the idea of existence. A triangle doesn't exist merely because of what it definitionally is. It's possible for no triangles to exist whatsoever, it's possible for no trees to exist whatsoever, no dogs, despite of their essences. So what something is for Avicenna is distinct from the fact that it is or whether it is. Now God cannot have such a distinction of essence and existence. If he did he would be a contingent being. If his existence wasn't just his essence, if it wasn't just his essence to exist and to be, he would rely on something external to his essence, external to his being in order to exist. Thus for Avicenna God in not being contingent does not have an essence distinct from his existence and thus he absolutely transcends composition of even the most fundamental kind. His essence is to be. What then is God for Avicenna? He's nothing other than the absolute act of necessary of absolute existence, utterly sanctified from the properties and efficiencies of contingent beings. He is a perfect being or existence itself. He transcends all attributes. All attributes we ascribe to him are negations of imperfections or negations of properties that entail contingency, thus merely describe in negative terms his essence or existence. And this is what Baha'u'llah and Amdubaha affirm, beyond God as a necessarily existent. Baha'u'llah says, Thou art witness that God is one in his attributes and that multiple attributes are debarred from entry into the court of his sanctity. Recognize, moreover, that the multiplicity of various designations and attributes shall never be joined to his essence for his attributes are verily his essence itself. Baha'u'llah is saying that God does not have distinct properties. He's one thing, his own essence, and his essence is necessarily existent and that when we affirm properties to him, these are just various ways of describing what he is. For example, it's just entailed by necessary existence that God has no parts, but that's not a separate and distinct attribute that we are ascribing to God. Thus, for both Abbasana and for Baha'u'llah and Amdubaha, when we say, when we ask what is God, we can respond glibly, he's simple. As Abdubaha states, simple in the sense of having no parts. The Godhead admits of no division, for division and multiplicity are among the characteristics of created and hence contingent things and not accidents or incidental properties impinging upon the necessary being. And Abdubaha likewise affirms that the essential names and attributes of God are identical with his essence and his essence is sanctified above all understanding. It's also for this reason that Baha'u'llah uses the term essential permanence or existence as a reference to God. In sum, if this existence is essential to God and thus an essential attribute, and if God's attributes are identical to his simple essence, it follows that Baha'u'llah upholds Abbasana's position that God is a necessarily existent whose essence is his existence. If God's essence were not his existence, his existence would not be essential to him, would therefore proceed from an external cause, making him a contingent being. That is just something that I write in the article in talking about Abba'u'llah's and Abdubaha's affirmation of this profound simplicity of God as we find in Abbasana's thinking. In part two of the article, I then show how Abbasana deduces further divine attributes of God by the method of negation, by the method of apophatic theology of negating from God those properties that entail congenitity in order to see that he has the opposite of those contingent properties. So Abbasana concludes using similar methods that God is single, that is unique, that there aren't a number of other necessarily existent beings, that he's eternal, perfect, holy, good, immaterial, possessed of intellect and will, or that his nature entails intellect and voluntary action, and that he is infinite. And I show how Abba'u'llah and Abdubaha affirm these same attributes of God, these same descriptions of his absolute and ultimate reality, which is absolutely one, and how they also affirm the reasoning underlying Abbasana's arguments. Because of time I'm not able in this presentation to go into all these various attributes beyond simplicity, but it's in the article if you wish to read it of course. After showing in part one that Abba'u'llah and Abdubaha affirm Abbasana's reasoning for God as a necessarily existent, and after showing how they share with him the conviction that God is fully simple, and that all properties we attribute to him are negations of imperfections, I show in part three that they also affirm Abbasana's account of how God creates the world. Now for Abbasana the question that needs to be answered is how the many things in contingent existence proceed from the absolute oneness of God. For Abbasana they don't proceed from God directly, but through an intermediary cause he calls the first intellect. For Abbasana the first intellect emanated from God through from all eternity, and it is through this first intellect that all the other things in existence have been created. And Abba'u'llah and Abdubaha confirm this picture in many different instances, and Abdubaha in some answer questions notes that the people of Baha'u'llah, that is Baha'u's, call the first intellect the primal will, instead of the first intellect most generally, but that it's the same reality. Therefore Baha'u'llah and Abdubaha affirm Abbasana's idea of creation as an emanation, as a procession of existence from God from all eternity through the intermediary of the first thing in existence, the first created thing in existence, the primal will, or the first intellect. One way of thinking about the emanation of created things from God is perhaps to picture him as a pure white source of light, and that the first light to emanate from him is the first intellect. But as this light proceeds from him, and as it sheds and illuminates light from itself, it refracts through the prism of contingency to produce the multiplicity of colors and existence. Thus the multiplicity of all things is produced through the intermediary of the light, whereas God himself is the immutable source of that light. I think this idea is rather beautifully reflected by the poet Percy B. Shelley when he wrote, the one remains, the many change and pass, heaven's light forever shines, earth's shadows fly, life like a dome of many colored glass, stains the white radiance of eternity. It is thus said, Baha'u'llah and Amdubaha affirm another characteristic idea of Avicenna. For Avicenna, God does not begin to create, he always creates. If he were to begin to create, that would mean that something happened within him, some change, some alteration. But God, for Avicenna, as we discussed in the article, is immune to change. Therefore, he always willed to create, and therefore his creation is eternal. And this is a concept that Baha'u'llah precisely and explicitly confirms, as does Amdubaha in many instances. In addition to this idea of eternal creation, is that God always sustains the world, and Baha'u'llah, as with Avicenna, affirms this explicitly. At the end of my article, I then consider different possible objections, one could have to the claims that I made in the article, that Baha'u'llah and Amdubaha affirm the arguments of Avicenna and his reasoning, his theological and principles. Because I know that there might be concerns related to this and other possible objections. Of course, there's not time here to go into them. So I think in this presentation, I'll just have a last reflection on why this is important. Why be on the existence of God? Is it of any use to consider how Avicenna argues for different divine attributes, or for the account of creation that we find in the Baha'i writings? And the reason is that we can then show people that Baha'i beliefs on these matters are not arbitrary. They're not simply taken on faith, but rather they have a rational and philosophical foundation. And that Baha'u'llah, given his innate understanding of the realities of things, is able to give us, as humanity, a picture of the world that makes sense, that is coherent, and that can be rationally articulated to other people. And that we have a picture of the world from God's existence, to his nature, to his attributes, and to his mode of creation that can be defended philosophically. And of course, we believe this in the full trust and love and confidence of Baha'u'llah, but we can also use Avicenna as a model of how to articulate the rational foundation of these beliefs. Thank you very much for your time today and allowing me to present.