Subtleties and Allusions

1. The Scope of the Authority of the Infallible’s (a.s.) Words

The perfect, infallible human (a.s.) who has attained prophethood has both a claim and an invitation: his claim concerns his own prophethood and messengership, and his invitation concerns religious knowledge, such as monotheism, resurrection, and the truthfulness of other primary and secondary religious matters. The scope of a miracle’s influence is primarily to prove the claim, not to establish the “invitation”; that is, it is to prove the claim of prophethood, not to prove the truthfulness of doctrinal, ethical, jurisprudential, and legal knowledge. This is because if the content of the invitation concerns principles, reason accepts it by virtue of logical demonstration. However, if someone becomes certain of a prophet’s messengership and prophethood through miracles, they can use that prophet’s words as the middle term of an argument and, after establishing the existence of God, rely on his words. Therefore, even the proof of the principle of monotheism can be based on the words of the infallible (a.s.), because if someone is in the presence of the infallible (a.s.), they possess the three pillars of certainty and conviction (certainty in three areas: the principle of issuance, the aspect of issuance, and the indication). If a hadith possesses these three pillars, its content can be used as the middle term of a demonstration and can be used for reasoning and reference. The difference between such evidence (transmitted) and rational evidence is only in terms of brevity and detail. Secondary religious matters can be proven both through certainty (ʿilm) and through confidence (ʿilmī).

2. The Glad Tidings of the Coming of the Final Messenger (s.a.w.)

The Qur’an attributes the glad tidings of the coming of God’s Messenger (s.a.w.) to both Jesus (a.s.) and the Gospel; meaning both the Christian scripture and their tradition gave glad tidings of the coming of the Final Prophet (s.a.w.).(449) Regarding the glad tidings of Jesus (a.s.), it states: “And when Jesus son of Mary said, ‘O Children of Israel! Indeed I am the messenger of God to you, to confirm what is before me of the Torah, and to give the good news of a messenger who will come after me, whose name is Ahmad.’ Yet when he brought them manifest proofs, they said, ‘This is plain magic.’”(450) And regarding the glad tidings in the Torah and Gospel: “those who follow the Messenger, the uninstructed prophet, whose mention they find written with them in the Torah and the Evangel.”(451) This means that true Jews and Christians are those who act according to the authentic Torah and Gospel, and in the Torah and Gospel, the matter of the messengership of the Final Prophet (s.a.w.) is mentioned. This verse shows that the Torah and Gospel of the time of revelation also contained these glad tidings, and the verses of the Medinan chapters also paid attention to this.

The Qur’an only suffices with mentioning the glad tidings in the Torah and does not speak about Moses’s (a.s.) glad tidings of the coming of the Final Prophet (s.a.w.); perhaps this is because the temporal distance between Moses (a.s.) and the Final Prophet (s.a.w.) was very long, and during this interval many prophets came, among whom was a resolute prophet like Jesus the Messiah (a.s.).