Resolution between crucifixion and substitution arguments between Christian and Muslims
My resolution of the "crucifixion" versus
"substitution" arguments between Christians and Muslims from the
esoteric Bayānic point of view with the resolution being the numerological
Tawil and correspondence offered in the final clause of Qur'ān 4:157.
This is now officially part of FSO doctrine. Originally, here.
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This discussion between Christians and Muslims is such a giant waste of time. The substitution thesis taken literally and verbatim makes a mockery of any creed of martyrdom and contradicts what the Qur'an says that no prophet has come to humanity without being persecuted and even killed. Muslims, even some Shia, are ready to accept the substitution thesis literally where someone besides Jesus (ع) was killed, but would have a huge problem if this same substitution theses was applied to, say, Husayn (ع).
What the Qur'an instead is cryptically delineating is a docetist or even theophanological doctrine about the crucifixion. So, yes, in terms of the eternality of the First Intellect, Primal Will or Angelos Christos, Jesus (ع) was not killed or crucified. This is a veridical fact of the Spirit. But in terms of the spatiotemporal, horizontal facts of history, the material human body of Jesus (ع) was crucified and murdered by the forces of negation and darkness who rejected Him just as they did to the Primal Point in His time whose animating spirit was immediately transferred to Subh-i-Azal just as upon the martyrdom of Christ that animating spirit was transferred to James (ع) such that in the dispensation of Jesus the Primal Will and Angelos Christos after the martyrdom of its founder rose from the dead into the reality of the Teacher of Righteousness, James (ع), who was now the Christ and Manifestation of the Primal Will in the station of the Divine Volition just as this happened in the Bayan with Subh-i-Azal after the Sun of Reality set in its talismanic-temple in Tabriz and rose again in its locus of Manifestation in Tehran as the Moon of Providential Guidance mirroring the Sun of Reality. Therefore, substitution - just like the resurrection - has nothing to do with material facts but with spiritual realities, so indeed, "they killed Him not, but only a likeness/phantom" (Qur'ān 4:157), and that likeness or phantom (شبّه) was the material, physical veil of the Primal Will/Angelos Christos and Messiah which was the human body of Jesus (ع) who was a merely a material loci for the Manifestation of the Primal Will but not the Reality Itself. Moreover, the Teacher of Righteousness, James (ع), was also the son of Mary (ع) as well as the Messiah, and he outlived His younger brother only to be martyred on the Temple mount some time later just a short time before the Romans burned the Temple down, took over its remaining structure, and dispersed the Jews from Jerusalem.
"And they certainly did not kill him" (numerologically 759
in the original Arabic) "by the Light of the Primal Will"
(numerologically 759 in the original Arabic).
وَمَا قَتَلُوهُ يَقِينًا = 759 = بِالنُّورِ المشيئةِ الأوّليةِ
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Question: So when Tafsir al-Askari says:
[commentary of Qur'an 2:87] We also helped him [Jesus] through Jibraeel (a.s.), when he took him through a ventilator of the house and took him to the sky and one who intended to kill him, his face became like Isa’s, due to which he was killed and peopled labeled him a sorcerer.
What ta'wil would you offer? Is the material body of Jesus "the one who intended to kill him" (a.k.a. an allegorical Judas, penalized for its attachment to the world)?
Answer: First, it usually does not occur to exotericists that the names of angels in Hebrew actually denote the powers of God rather than independent entities with agencies of their own separate from the All-High. Jibraeel/Gabriel (גַבְרִיאֵל), for example, in Hebrew means "God is my strength" or "God is my power," i.e. the Arabic الله قوّتي. In the pre-kabbalistic Hekhalot literature, which Islam drew heavily from, the powers are called by names like Akhatriel Adonai Tzabbavot ("I am crowned by God, the Lord of Hosts"), which cannot be interpreted as other than a divine power rather than an independent entity. This is like Zoroastrianism where the Ameshaspentai (the six Holy Immortals) are seen as powers of Ahuramazda itself. Ironically even though Hekhalot is Gnostic (with a capital 'G'), its understanding of angelology is more akin to Neoplatonism than the Kabbalah whose popular angelology is more akin to Gnosticism whereas its whole system is merely an esoterified form of Judaic Neoplatonism. This point is significant because of how angels and angelology in general may have been understood at the time of the early Islamic centuries among more refined, non-popular circles.
Now read the passage again from the 11th Imam's (ع) tafsir in light of this. Then consider the narratives regarding Paul and/or Pontius Pilate who intended to kill Jesus (ع) with both later (in Pilate's case according to pseudoepigraphic gospels widely available at the time of the Imams) converting to Christianity. On one surface layer, the passage is denoting that Jesus (ع) as the embodiment of His own cause cannot be killed nor was killed because what is embodied by God's power is the Cause (الأمر) of Jesus (ع) - which as Personification is the Primal Will - and not the physical body literally which was indeed crucified. That these individuals or single individual were killed in Jesus' (ع) place, means that their former, antagonistic selves - i.e. their نفس الأمارة بِالسوء - were killed instead and Jesus' (ع) triumphed over His enemies in physical death in their conversion to His Cause, i.e. that their former, concupiscent egos were annihilated (fana') in the Reality (الحقيقة) of the Perfect Human (al-insan al-kamil). The Imam (ع) is laying out a deep initiatic doctrine here each of whose elements needs to be taken as symbols leading to the truth of the matter rather than the whole thing being taken as literal narrative about an actual physical and literal event of history. "House", "ventilator" and "sky/heaven" are likewise symbols here that can be unpacked. Be that as it may, the post-exilic rabbinic literature indeed labeled Jesus (ع) as a sorcerer (sahir), among some of the better things they pejoratively labeled Him with (some of which are outright pornographic and grotesque beyond imagination).
That said, the Quranic passage about not saying regarding martyrs that they have died, but that they are always alive, also needs to be taken into serious consideration and juxtaposed with this overall Islamic narrative around Jesus (ع). So just as Husayn (ع) as the embodiment of the True Cause did not die at Karbalah (never mind that He was resurrected and returned in both Zaynab and Zayn'ul-Abidin ع), so too Jesus (ع) did not die on the cross atop Skull Hill upon His crucifixion (never mind that He was resurrected and returned in James ع) even though the individual human bodies of both Husayn (ع) and Jesus (ع) were indeed killed.
ويضرب الله الأمثال
Let the baha'is offer an interpretation better than this.
يا أيّها اهل الهباء فاتوا بِمثل هذا التأويل مِن مؤسسكم الكذاب إن كنتم صادقين
