B

 

UNIVERSAL MAN 95

mediary of written signs, i.e., without any creature being
an intermediary, and he is also the unique and universal
“beloved” (habib)of God.!

 

1. From the Christian point of view the Unique Prototype is none other
than the Son. The Son is identified with the Word, uncreated in its nature, or,
to use the Chris*ian expression, eternally ““engendered’’ by the Father being ‘‘of
the same essence’ (homoousios) as He. As we know, Islam rejects the symbo-
lism of Divine Sonship, for the very reason that it denies all ““inner’’ distinction
in the Divine Nature, the Names and Divine Qualities being only “‘extrinsic’’
aspects of God. This theological position of Islam, which also determines Sufi
language, on the one hand respects the inability of most men to conceive of
such a distinction without projecting a duality into the Divine order—and this
is the relatively exoteric reason for the rejection of Divine Sonship—and on the
other hand also affirms the Supreme Unity of the Divine Essence. In this res-
pect it coincides with the theology of the Eastern Church in as much as this
Church equally affirms that the Essence (Ousia) is beyond Being and thus
beyond every distinction, such as that of the three Hypostases.