and accountability necessitates that the way be shown to him without depriving him of his will; the door has to be opened to his intelligence without snatching its freedom from its hand. If the Messenger’s (UWBP) miracles had occurred in so apparent a way, intelligence would have had no choice; Abu Jahl would have believed as did Abu Bakr; coal would have had the value of diamonds, and no purpose would have remained for testing and accountability.
It is a source of amazement that while thousands of men of different character came to believe through observing a single of his miracles, a single proof of his prophethood, or a word of his, or through merely seeing his face, some wretches are nowadays going astray as if those thousands of proofs of his prophethood were not sufficient evidence, although they have come down to us through authentic transmission and with certain proofs, and have caused many thousands of exacting scholars and thinkers and different men to accept faith.
Second Principle
God’s Most Noble Messenger (Upon whom be blessings and peace) was a human being; hence he acted like a human being. He was also a messenger and prophet, and with regard to his messengership, he was an interpreter and an envoy of Almighty God. His messengership was based upon revelation (vahy), which is of two kinds:
The First is explicit revelation. In this case, the Noble Messenger (Upon whom be blessings and peace) is merely an interpreter and announcer, with no share in the content. The Qur’an and some sacred Hadith (Hadith Qudsi) are included in this kind of revelation.
The Second is implicit revelation. The essence and gist of this is also based on revelation or inspiration, but its explanation and description were left to the Messenger (UWBP). When he explained and described such revelation, sometimes he again relied on revelation, or on inspiration, or sometimes he spoke in terms of his own insight. When he resorted to his own interpretation, he either relied on the perceptive power given him on account of his prophetic mission, or he spoke as a human being and conformably to usage, custom and the level of common comprehension.
Thus, all the details of every Hadith were not necessarily derived from pure revelation, nor should the lofty marks of messengership be sought in such thoughts and transactions of his as were required by his participation in the human state. Since some truths were revealed to him in a brief and abstract form, and he himself described them in the light of his insight and according to common comprehension, the metaphors and allusions in his