Page 222 - New English Book L
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“Heavenly Father” - to use the evangelistic expression.
In this respect, God is infinitely more beneficent than
an earthly father is. As regards the second name in the
formula, “the Son,” one is at a loss to know who or what
this “son” is. Whose son? If God be rightly addressed
“Father,” then one is curious, inquisitive, and anxious
to know which of His innumerable “sons” is intended
in the baptismal formula. Jesus (pbuh) taught us to pray
“Our Father who art in heaven.” If we are all His sons
in the sense of His creatures, then the mention of the
word “son” in the formula becomes somehow senseless
and even ridiculous. We know that the name “the Son
of Man” -or “Barnasha”- is mentioned eighty-three
times in the discourses of Jesus (pbuh) . The Quran never
calls Jesus (pbuh) “the son of man” but always “the son
of Mary.” He could not call himself “the son of man”
because he was only “the son of woman.” There is no
getting away from the fact. You may make him “the
son of God” as you foolishly do, but you can’t make
him “the son of man” unless you believe him to be the
offspring of Joseph or someone else, and consequently
fasten on to him the taint of illegitimacy.
I don’t know exactly how, whether through intuition,
inspiration, or dream, I am taught and convinced that the
second name in the formula is an ill-fated corruption of “the
Son of Man,” viz. the Barnasha of Daniel(vii), and therefore
Ahmad “the Periqlytos” (Paraclete) of St. John’s Gospel.
As to the Holy Spirit in the formula, it is not a person
or an individual spirit, but an agency, force, energy of God
with which a man is born or converted into the religion
and knowledge of the One God.