The Twelfth Letter

In His Name, be He glorified!

And there is nothing but it glorifies Him with praise.(17:44)

Peace be upon you and upon your companions. My Dear Brothers!

You  asked  me  a  question  that  night  and  I  did  not  reply,  because  it  is  not permissible to argue over questions of belief. Your discussion of them had turned into a dispute. For now I am writing very brief replies to your three questions, about which you were arguing. You will find the details in The Words; the chemist wrote down which. But it did not occur to me to mention the Twenty-Sixth Word, about divine determining and man’s faculty of will; have a look at that too, but don’t read it like a newspaper. The reason I advised the chemist to study of those Words is this: doubts about matters of that sort arise from weakness of belief in the pillars of faith. Those Words prove all of them.

FIRST QUESTION

What wisdom does it spring from, Adam (Upon whom be peace) being expelled from Paradise and some of mankind, the sons of Adam, being sent to Hell? What was the reason for it?

T h e  A n s w e r :  The reason for it concerns the charging of duties: the duty with which Adam was charged yielded such results as the unfolding of all human spiritual progress and the revealing of all human potentialities and man’s essential nature being a comprehensive mirror to all the divine names. If he had remained in Paradise, his rank would have been fixed like that of the angels; man’s potentialities would not have been disclosed. In any case, the angels, with their unchanging ranks, are numerous and there is no need for man to perform their sort of worship.