Barahin-e-Ahmadiyya Part III — Page 44
BarĀhĪn-e-a H madiyya — Part three 44 Some denied God as being the Knower of everything down to the last particle. Others offered sacrifices to idols and prayed to artificial gods. In short, many of the great philosophers remained in denial of God’s existence and none managed to steer clear of these pitfalls. Returning to the original subject, let me reiterate that the study of creation alone can never lead to perfect certainty, nor has it ever done so. Rather, what can be achieved, and perhaps was achieved by some, is only the belief that something ‘ought to be’. And this belief, too, is limited only to the existence of the Creator of the universe. The belief in His reward and punishment etc. , does not amount to even that much. Having thus failed to obtain perfect certainty from the study of creation, we must choose one of two possibilities: either that God never intended to bestow perfect certainty at all, or that He must have provided some other means of arriving at it. The first proposition is, however, obviously false and no reasonable person doubts its falsity. The second, whereby we acknowledge that God must have provided some perfect means for the salvation of His creatures, is only possible if we believe the perfect means to be a revealed book that is matchless and incomparable in itself and explains every abstract law of nature. If the criteria for this perfect means is that it should be matchless and incomparable, and a bearer of unmistakable written testimony to its divine origin and its religious teachings, then all these qualities can be found only in a revealed book that is without any match. Nothing else can combine all of these qualities, because this merit can only be found in a revealed book, which through its discourse and its peerless nature, can lead to the stage of perfect certainty and perfect enlightenment. It may be possible for an unfortunate atheist to assert that the heav- ens and the earth are eternal [precluding the need for the Creator]. But how can anyone who accepts a text to be beyond the power of man to create, have any option but to admit that God, who has revealed the text does indeed exist. And, in this case, the admission of God’s exist- ence is not merely based on conjecture; rather, the Book itself provides testimony to the fact that God exists and to the truth of the Day of