For one who is just, his existence is for the sake of things for
which he is just, and so he is dependent upon another.
It should now be known that it is not necessary for all the people to
be told this interpretation in its entirety. Only those should be told
it who have some doubts about this problem. For not every one among the
common people is confronted by these contradictions in the universal
verses, and Tradition. Such people must believe in the exoteric
meanings of them. There is another reason for these verses. The common
people cannot differentiate between possible and impossible, while to
God is not ascribed power over the impossible. If they be told what is
impossible (_Mustahil_) and they think that God has power over it, and
then told that God has no power, they begin to think that there is some
defect in God, because He cannot do a certain thing and hence He is
weak. As the existence of things free from evil was possible according
to the masses, God has said, “If we had pleased, we had certainly given
every soul its direction; but the word which hath proceeded from Me
must necessarily be fulfilled, when I said, Verily I will fill the hell
with genii and men, altogether.”[154] This verse means one thing to
the common people, and the other to the learned. The former take it to
mean that it is not incumbent upon him that He should create a class of
men to whom evil may be attached. But it really means: Had we thought
we could create men with whom evil could not be attached, but would
have been good in all and all, and hence every one had been given his
guidance. This much is enough for this problem. Now we would deal with
the fifth question.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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