Addressing the Non-Existent

In conventional addresses, the speaker commands their addressee and the addressee complies; but in existential address, how can one command an addressee that comes into existence after the issuance of the command? Perhaps this very doubt led Amīn al-Islām al-Ṭabrisī and others to have such an interpretation about “Be, and it is”.

In response, it must be said that addressing the absolutely non-existent (something that exists in no realm) is not permissible; however, if something exists in the realm of knowledge but is non-existent in the realm of concrete reality, God addresses that epistemic existent and grants it concrete form.

Yes, something may not exist in the material external world; however, it may exist in realms above the material external world, and God addresses that higher realm (above the external). Thus, addressing the absolutely non-existent is impossible; but not addressing what is non-existent in the realm of nature while existing in the realm above nature. On this basis, the verse remains in its apparent meaning and the objection of addressing the non-existent does not apply.

Summary:

1. God’s existential address is of the nature of illuminative relation (iḍāfa ishrāqiyya), and illuminative relation creates its related term, such that the related term is secondary to the relation; not the reverse as is common in categorical relation (iḍāfa maqūliyya).
2. When illuminative relation is expressed in discourse in the form of address, the law of discourse must be considered, and since in discursive language address cannot be directed to the non-existent, the addressee in existential address, to preserve the rules of discourse, is the epistemic existent.
3. Through divine will, the epistemic existent descends through manifestation (tajallī) (not separation (tajāfī)), and what descends from the hidden treasury to the realm of concrete existence is of this kind.