Bahai Philosophy and the Question of the Environment

which ignores the natural potentiality of human beings for cultural advancement and development. On the contrary, it harmonizes the imperatives of development and protection of the environment. It is no wonder, then, that all the Bahá’í writings dealing with socioeconomic development and rationalization call for a redefinition of the concepts of reason and progress through a multidimensional expansion of both ideas. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Secret of Divine Civilization is precisely an elaboration of this central idea. xi

B. The Principle of the Harmony of Nature and Culture

While the doctrine of manifestation explained the Bahá’í conception of the relation of God to nature, the same doctrine informs the Bahá’í view of the relation between culture and nature. In fact this harmony is a fundamental principle of Bahá’í ontology. The first expression of this principle can be found in the idea of manifestation itself. According to the Bahá’í writings, the divine reality is revealed through two fundamental types of manifestation. The first represents the realm of spiritual culture and civilization. This is the realm of divine revelation through the prophets and messengers of God who initiated successive stages of spiritual culture and civilization and whose teachings represent the highest potentialities of spiritual perfection for humanity in their particular historical age. They are called the Manifestations of God because they represent the purest reflection of the divine reality at the level of the created realm in a given socio-historical stage of cultural development of humanity. The differences between these Manifestations is only due to the changing forms of the appearance of divine revelation in accordance with the changing conditions of human cultural development. Like the sun, they appear from different horizons, but their reality is one and the same. In other words, these Manifestations of God represent an essential spiritual unity in the midst of historical diversity of revelations. But in addition to this cultural reflection of divine revelation, the Bahá’í teachings recognize the reality of another primary reflection of the Divine Will, which is the manifestation of God at the level of natural reality. Nature and culture are thus two fundamental modes of the reflection of the divine Will in the created realm. This means that both nature and historically specific spiritual civilizations are two different expressions of the same reality. It is again the fundamental principle of unity in diversity which is the supreme category of Bahá’í ontology. In the Tablet of Wisdom, Bahá’u’lláh explains this philosophical and theological principle:

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