Fountain of Christianity — Page 36
36 their hidden faculties and powers, for He is their Creator, and the creator cannot be ignorant of what he creates. But if God is not the Creator of these faculties and powers, there can be no way to prove that He has any knowledge about them. It is sheer temerity to say that He has this kind of knowledge without giving any argument to prove it. As against our argument—that a creator has to have knowledge of his creation—do you have anything to prove that God knows about the hidden qualities of things which [you believe] He has not created with His own hands, and while they are not even part of His own Being so that He should know them just as a person knows himself? Accord- ing to the A rya belief, all things are their own gods, and are eternal and self-existent, and are so independent of the Parmeshwar [God] that it would make little difference to them even if He were dead. And it is obvious that if they did not need Him for their creation, they will also have no need of Him for their continued existence. Two of God’s names are ( H ayy i ) and ( Qayy u m ). H ayy i means the Living One Who also gives life to oth- ers. Qayy u m means the Self-Subsisting One Who also sustains His creation. Only such things can benefit from God’s attribute Qayy u m which have already benefited from His attribute H ayy i , for He supports the things that He has created, and not those which His hand has not even touched. Therefore, only he who believes God to be H ayy i , i. e. , the Creator, can believe Him to be Qayy u m , i. e. , One Who sustains His creation. But he who does not