Henry Corbin, Ibn 'Arabi and modern Christianity...

"I was a Treasure unknown then I desired to be known so I created a creation which to which I made Myself known, then they knew Me."

This a saying attributed to Prophet Muhammad.  For notes on the soundness of the tradition go here.

I'm reading Corbin's Creative Imagination In The Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi (also retitled Alone with the Alone) and am astounded by some of the parallels to modern Christianity (at least in the circles in which I have run lately).  Corbin's presentation is a contrast not only with orthodox Islam but with "incarnationist" Christianity.  There may be an agenda behind his writings but I can't help but feel in many ways that the view of many of today's Christians veer more toward how he presents the Isma'ili Shi'ite Islam, the idea that there is an "intermediary" world in which the believer finds the "Imam of his own being" that carries him ever upward to his true self, his paredros/fravarti/Daena/Angel. 

"But in Ibn 'Arabi's own terminology Al-Lah is the Name which designates the divine Essence qualified and invested with the sum of His attributes, whereas al-Rabb, the Lord, is the personified and particularized Divine in one of its attributes (hence the divine Names designated as so many "lords," arbab)." (p. 122)

In many ways, this is how Jesus is viewed by the Christian.  He is called "God" but that isn't really a meaningful phrase as "God" remains undefined.  What is defined is "Jesus" so as Jesus is so we tend to view God.  However, based on where we are is how we view Jesus.  So our view of Jesus depends on our mode of perception.

In many ways, this mode of perception, the "Holy Spirit" of Christianity running a somewhat striking parallel to Corbin's presentation of the "Holy Spirit" (i.e. the Angel) as that faculty in man that enables him to perceive the divine figure (mazhar), his "celestial self" in that imaginal world that carries him ever upward.

It could be just me but these two run a very parallel course.  What is most interesting to me is that this is certainly not orthodox Islam but is the Sufi/Shi'ite/Isma'ili strain of Islam.  I can't help but think that there is a need in man for relationship with the divine and that this particualr strain of Islam is the manifestation of this longing.

Of course, the reductionist in me tends to think of "influences" as Islam developed, especially those strains that operated on the fringes that may have certainly had contact with other faiths, in this case more "Christologically" correct Christianity.  Perhaps its development was a response to the claims of the Christian as filtered through an Islamic paradigm.  More accommodating than polemical, the end result is the "theosophy" of which Corbin speaks.

It does, however, pose a possible alternative.  One can remain a Christian and yet gravitate and glean from an Islam such as this as the demarcation between the two tends to blur as we are in the realm of the spirit and not the realm of doctrine.

For the Shi'ite (as far as I can ascertain), the Imam tends to me what Jesus is for Christians.  There are, of course, differences (primary among them being primarily the resurrection of Jesus and the meanings that arise from this claim).  It isn't his divinity as the term "divinity" can be spun in such a way that any meaning it has blurs and not only Jesus but the Imam can be considered "divine" in some fashion. 

May not please the orthodox theologian but there is a realm in which this mode of exegesis finds life and does not strip away the fact that the believer is in fact still a believer in the original revelation.

I lost the point I was getting at...doesn't matter, really.  Even in neo-Protestant circles, with all the doctrinal squabbling, the average Christian believer may be compared phenomenologically to a Shi'ite that Corbin within Islamic tradition that to the traditional Christianity of, say, an Athanasius or Augustine. 

The Trinity tends, if it is considered at all, to be just a belief that comes with the faith.  The subtleties of the Trinity are lost in those who try to reason that "Jesus is God" is the basic tenet of the faith.  Just listen to the lyrics of many modern Christian worship songs and you'll hear that the nuances and subtleties of doctrine are nowhere to be found.

So in reading Corbin and others like him I find more freedom in my Christian walk.  Doesn't mean I've gone Muslim, mind you, but it does mean that I do not find myself bound to the text of the Bible.  My freedom is found in the "Holy Spirit" as the Bible is not the Word...Jesus is.  The Bible may ground us but it is not to the text that we devote our faith.

Any difference between Christianity and any other faith or, for that matter, between Christians, comes down to the answer to the question Jesus asks: "Who do you say that I am?"