Ibn Arabi (Fusus): Abraão

• O título deste patriarca é Al Kalil = o amigo
• Leitura como originário da raiz khalla = permeação ou penetração
• Abraão = o permeado por Deus  
• Como o amor raptor a amizade   é uma intimidade
• Princípio da divina permeação
• Permeação mútua Deus-Cosmos

The traditional title of the Patriarch Abraham   is al-Khatīl, which is usually translated as “the friend.” Ibn al-‘Arabī, however, reads into the word one of the other derivative meanings of the root   khalla, that of permeation or penetration. Thus, in this context, Abraham’s title means, rather, “the permeated one,” permeated, that is, by God. The friendship, therefore, is of the most intimate kind; indeed it is, as the title of the chapter suggests, more like rapturous love by which the lover is wholly permeated by the beloved. Our author goes   on to use the example of Abraham to illustrate the principle of divine permeation in general. Thus, the Cosmos and each of its constituents, as being totally receptive to the divine Command, is wholly permeated by the divine agent as something implicit and not explicit, so that the manifest complexity and multiplicity of the Cosmos conceals the all-pervading reality of God. As usual, however, he insists on the mutuality of this principle of permeation, since, just as God is implicitly present in cosmic creation, so is creation implicitly and essentially present in God.

This leads Ibn al-‘Arabī on to point out that the terms “God” and [90] “Cosmos” are interdependent, the notion of divinity being dependent on the notion of that which worships Him. Thus, neither God nor the Cosmos may be known, except in relation to each other. He is saying, therefore, that the Cosmos cannot be properly known or understood without reference to God, nor can the concept of divinity be comprehended without reference to creation. Proceeding to the subject of our essential latency in divinis, he concludes that, in knowing the Cosmos, God is knowing Himself, and that, in knowing God, we, as creatures, know ourselves in essence. Thus, in aeternis, we are the latent and essential content of His knowledge of Himself, while, in time and space, He is the all-permeating substance and reality of which we are but apparent facets. This prompts him to point out that, in view of this, we have no cause to blame God, since, in reality, as being nothing other than what He knows Himself to be, we determine what we experience ourselves to be, past, present, or future.

Ibn al-‘Arabī goes on to reinforce the concept of mutual permeation between God and the Cosmos by comparing it with the process by which consumed food becomes one with the consumer by the assimilation of its particles and substances to the substance of the one who eats it. Thus, divinity is the existential nourishment of the Cosmos, while it, in turn, is the archetypal nourishment of the divine Self-awareness  . Indeed, the two poems with which he concludes this chapter express his daring vision of mutuality very explicitly, and it was this kind of expression, on his part, of concepts shocking and unacceptable to less flexible minds, that earned Ibn al-‘Arab! so much opprobrium among the religious scholars of his time.