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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Theology and Metaphysics in Nahj Al Balaghah God, the First and the Last; the Manifest and the Hidden Of the many issues discussed by the Nahj al-balaghah is the notion that God is the First and the Last, the Hidden and the Manifest. Of course this, too, like other notions, has been deduced from the Holy Quran; though here we are not going to quote the verses from the Quran.

God is the First, but His precedence is not temporal so as to be in contradiction with His being the Last. He is the Manifest, but not in the sense of being physically visible or perceptible to the senses; His Manifestness does not contradict His Hiddenness.

In fact His Firstness is identical with His Lastness and similarly His Manifestness and Hiddenness are identical; they are not two different things: Praise be to Allah, for whom one condition does not precede another, so that He may he the First before being the Last or may be Manifest before being Hidden ... (Sermon 65) Time is not His accomplice, nor does He need the assistance of tools and agents His Being transcends time.

His Existence transcends nothingness and His pre-eternity transcends all beginning. (Sermon 186) The Divine Essence's transcendence over time, nothingness, beginning, and end is one of the most profound concepts of al-hikmah philosophy. God's pre-eternity does not mean that God has always existed.

Certainly God has always existed but Divine pre-eternity (azaliyyah) is something greater in meaning than 'existence at all times'; because, 'existing at all times' assumes existence in time; but God's Being has not only been at all times, It precedes time itself. This is the meaning of Divine pre-eternity. This shows that His precedence is something other than temporal precedence.

Praise be to God, whose creation bears testimony to His Existence; temporality (huduth) of whose creation is the evidence of His preternity the similarity and likeness amongst whose creation proves that He is unique. The senses do not perceive Him and nothing can conceal Him. (Sermon 152) That is, God is both Hidden and Manifest. By Himself He is Manifest but is Hidden from the human senses. His Hiddenness from the senses is due to man's own limitations and not on account of Him.

It needs no proof that existence is synonymous with manifestation; the more powerful the existence of a being, the more manifest it would be.