43. The Secret of the Heavens and the Earth (2)

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The Knowledge of GOD is, at its highest level, but one knowledge. Those aspects of it that are granted to His creatures are like the various colours that emerge from a prism, whereas the incoming light is intense, undiluted white. In Chapter 15, I referred to the knowledge of the angels as only slightly coloured, as it were, due to their proximity and obedience to GOD and utter reliance on Him. Consequently, among all creation, they are directly cognizant in a way that most resembles GOD’s Sight, namely in an integrated, holistic manner. One feature of this visual knowledge is to see things spiritually, i.e., in the light of the Divine Glory and Holiness. That feature is never absent from their awareness, which is why their knowledge is not a matter of standing around and staring like scientists in white lab coats in some ethereal laboratory, but rather they exalt [AL-LAH] by night and day without respite (Q21:20).

They are therefore ready to go beyond the limitations of their visual mode of knowing, and to comply with what this new knowledge implicitly requires. For them, the creation of the human race is pure gain, for they acquire, through Adam (peace be upon him), an awareness that would have been unobtainable for them otherwise. This is their introduction to verbal reality.

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The angels are learning from Adam (peace be upon him). Can the same, conversely, be said of Adam? What does he gain from the knowledge of the angels? This is not yet clear. We can observe, however, that his origin on earth and from the earth – as he is so described in Q20:55, From it We created you and back to it We send you – will establish a kind of affinity with solid, earth-like objects that he will continue to regard as necessary to his existence. This is what naming does – it solidifies the named object, rendering it something that can be grasped by the mind (even though the name itself retains its cloudy attributes.) One might say that man was made wearing earth-tinted spectacles.

Naming works in two ways. On the one hand, it creates a horizontal system of classification in which various levels of reality – the divine and the bestial, the material and the abstract, the proven and the unproven, the simple and the complex, the good and the bad, etcetera – are all brought together as objects in a field where they are indiscriminately visible and accessible. Look almost anywhere in the Qur’an, and you will see the word ‘AL-LAH’ jostling for its bit of white space on the same page, or even the same line, as, for example, references to homosexual acts, an old woman, rain, and fraudsters. This is the metaphorical earth that AL-LAH bestowed on Adam (peace be upon him) with the deconstructive power of naming.

On the other hand, this potency in language liberates the subject, the namer, from the sensory surface of what he names, enabling him to ascend to heights of meaning, truth, beauty, justice, and love that constitute the very pinnacle of human achievement. It is by their names that we gain access to the absolutes, those supersensory realms that irresistibly attract us to believing in and worshipping something, or Someone, greater than ourselves. If we are human, we cannot help doing so, and yet – by the supreme wisdom in this gift – we do so voluntarily. By naming, we obtain our only freedom and, instantly with it, the urge to merge its power with the Power Who first named us.

Both of these abilities, the levelling and the elevating, were beyond the range of the angels – one too low for them, and the other too high. (The scholars of Islam have, therefore, continuously debated over whether man has a higher or a lower rank than the angels in the sight of GOD.) This two-fold capacity is demonstrated here by Adam giving names . . . to them. Since the angels have just been referred to as them prior to mentioning their names, it is quite possible that the angels themselves, collectively and individually, are included in the entities whose names they had not known until Adam informed them.

This power of naming is nothing less than the secret of the heavens and the earth – a secret possessed by GOD and then shared with Adam (peace be upon him). It is by GOD’s naming things that they obtain their original being; Adam is allowed to utilize the seeming limitless plasticity in names to enhance or detract from that template of truth.

The angels were all about disclosure, which is why they did not hide their doubts about what Adam would be doing on earth. But they had been concealing something as well – something of which they themselves had been unaware until that moment, namely their own unique identities. Your uniqueness is certainly present, but until you can identify it to yourself, i.e., give it a name, it remains what you have been hiding. You reveal much of yourself by your actions, which humans and angels can see, but there is something in you, your sirr or secret, that only AL-LAH can see. That is why we are told to fear only His Justice, which will judge our secret self, and rely on nothing but His Mercy, which will forgive what is defective in it.

The angels have now been introduced to the duality of their own exterior and interior aspects, the dichotomy in Adam as both one who causes corruption and sheds blood on the one hand and a vessel of enlightenment on the other hand, and the bifurcation implicit in every created thing. It is this harmonious duet, this astounding interplay between the heavens and the earth, between what we mean and what we say, that entitles the whole ensemble to be named GOD’s most lofty metaphor.

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