Article 27 — The Incomplete Words
The Incomplete Words: Can prophets make mistakes, and how should their teachings be understood?
The Goal of the Wise — Door Number Twenty-Seven
Read aloud in English
Are prophets and messengers absolutely infallible? How should we understand religious passages that seem to attribute errors or contradictory behavior to them?
The question of infallibility occupies a major place in religious traditions.
In the twenty-seventh Door of The Goal of the Wise, Abdullah Hashem Aba Al-Sadiq (From Him is Peace) examines the difficulties involved in understanding prophetic words.
Infallibility in religions
The chapter compares different conceptions of religious authority.
In certain Christian traditions, the question concerns in particular the doctrinal authority of the Church.
In Islam, it concerns especially the prophets and, depending on the school, the Imams.
But believers do not always agree on what it means to be infallible.
Does infallibility concern all actions?
All words?
Or the faithful transmission of divine guidance?
The difficult accounts of the Scriptures
Certain biblical passages present prophets in situations that may seem problematic.
The book examines how these accounts are accepted, rejected or interpreted.
It invites the reader not to resolve every difficulty automatically by declaring that a text must be false.
Understanding the context and the meaning of the words becomes essential.
The danger of isolated interpretations
A sentence detached from its context can take on a meaning very different from the one intended.
The title The Incomplete Words invites reflection on precisely this difficulty.
Transmitting a teaching requires understanding the circumstances in which it was spoken.
Humility before sacred texts
The chapter indirectly recalls that difficulties of interpretation are not always real contradictions.
They can also reveal the limits of the reader.
This does not exempt us from examining the sources critically.
But it encourages us to avoid hasty conclusions.
Conclusion — Do we truly understand the words of the prophets?
The twenty-seventh Door invites us to distinguish between the text, its context and its interpretation.
How many religious controversies arise from words whose full meaning we have not understood?