The Baha'i Studies Listserv
On 15 May 2009 at 11:20, David Friedman wrote:
> This leads me to a question. Shoghi Effendi was not a prophet. He
> didn't know when he would die and wouldn't have known when any
> successor would die. So what happens if he shows the Hands his will
> and during his lifetime his successor dies? Write a new will? What
> if he writes a will early and later changes his mind as to the best
> person to appoint? He might meet someone later who was a better
> choice. His current choice could have an accident or develop an
> illness that would make them unable to be Guardian.
The first part of the Will and Testament specifies the "firstborn of
his lineal descendants" so there is a strong presumption that it
would be eldest son: the element of choice is secondary, in the event
that the firstborn is not suitable. But you point is valid: the way
that Abdu'l-Baha set it up, if there was a candidate for successor,
the sitting Guardian would have reasons to delay the formal choice,
to see what develops, and in the nature of things, sooner or later,
the sitting Guardian would die without having presented his choice to
the chosen Hands. Therefore, the way Abdu'l-Baha set this up, the
line of Guardians was bound (or highly likely) to end some day. If I
can see that (partly from looking at the Shiah imamate and seeing why
that ended, while the Ismaili imamate continued), so could Abdu'l-
Baha. Therefore it seems likely to me that Abdu'l-Baha envisioned
that the institution he established - the Guardianship - would not
last forever. That's one more argument against the claim that a UHJ
without a Guardian is not the authentic thing.
Sen
----------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Sen McGlinn senmcglinn.wordpress.com
***
In reality, the radiant, pure hearts are the Mashrak-el-Azcar
and from them the voice of supplication and
invocation continually reacheth the Supreme Concourse.
Tablets of `Abdu'l-Baha Abbas, p. 678
----------------------------------------------------------------------
--
__________________________________________________
You are subscribed to Baha'i Studies as: mailto:[email protected]
Unsubscribe: send a blank email to mailto:[email protected]
Subscribe: send subscribe bahai-st in the message body to [email protected]
Or subscribe: http://list.jccc.edu:8080/read/all_forums/subscribe?name=bahai-st
Baha'i Studies is available through the following:
Mail - mailto:[email protected]
Web - http://list.jccc.edu:8080/read/?forum=bahai-st
News (on-campus only) - news://list.jccc.edu/bahai-st
Old Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
New Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
