 there would be no willingness to work.”
From the viewpoint of Islamic logic, such a belief would mean a deficient kind of worship, to show devotion and worship only in order to be rewarded in heaven, There are many references to this by the Imams (t) such as this: “Those who worship for fear, act like slaves fearing their master.”
Similar are the words of Ali (The Nahj ul Balaghah, Wisdom 229: “Some worship God for the sake of their desires, and that is merchants’ worship; some worship for fear, and that is slaves’ worship; and some worship out of gratitude and that is the worship of the noble,”)
Again, in another saying, Ali (a) is even more explicit: “O God, I do not worship you for fear of your Fire or for cupidity in desiring heaven; I worship you because you are worthy of it.”
Therefore, it is not right to think of human perfection as the ability to secure maximum material benefits, even by negating every virtue in this world, or to postpone such benefits to future life. There are various materialistic views all of which end with the idea of benefit, Spiritual views are of the following types:
1) The first and perhaps the most important is the view of the gnostics concerning “Perfect Man .” Their view is derived from various religions They are inspired by ideas, such as ‘Adam’, ‘Prophets’, ‘Saints’ and the ‘Perfect Man’ like the “awaited Mahdi” . Mackinion has written a book entitled “Perfect Man in Islam” which has been translated into Arabic by Abdur Rahman Badawi, In it he says: “The theory of perfect man is not a Hellenic bequest, for, Greek philosophy has said nothing of it . “
In the Islamic world this topic has been presented by the Sufis, and especially by Mohuyuddin Arabi. There are similar books by Abdo-Karim Deylami, Aziz-el-Din Nasafi, and a Sufi poet called Sayyid Muhammad Bururgedi. The gnostics have a clear view about man’s perfection and a perfect man, which may not be wholly acceptable to others, but they offer it with a decisive finality.
They believe that there is one truth and that is God. They consider other things shadows of the truth. In their opinion everything is an attribute of God. If we die without recognizing the truth we would have died in infidelity, ignorance, darkness and absolute unawareness.
A man is perfect when he understands the truth and attains it They think it impossible for God to appear in man or be allied to him, For them incarnation is dualism, so attaining the truth or God means losing one’s identity in Him, and that is when man understands the whole truth, and then he will know himself. God is the only truth and everything else is its manifestation, This is some- what similar to the phrase of ‘approaching God, except that they believe in phases of proximity, subject to a definite order. So, there are stages of gnosticism before truth is attained, One who does not attain it is imperfect, and man’s humanity consists of knowing and attaining truth.
What helps this advance towards God and truth are love, affection and familiarity. The way to Him is through the heart, not the mind or philosophy Every other perfection is derived from this perfection, and for that reason alone it may be considered perfection. Is asceticism perfection? They will say, yes, because it is a condition for following this path. So are humility and other qualities like assistance, and guidance which are moral goodness.
2) Divine philosophers have a view different from that of the gnostics. They think human perfection depends on two things: (1) recognition of facts, or wisdom. Gnostics emphasize truth, but the philosophers attach importance to wisdom, which for them is understanding the reality of things and existence as they are, generally but not to wisdom. For example, the properties of an apple are related to science, not to wisdom. Similarly knowing a city or a house as a whole unit, is different from knowing parts of it.
A sage considers human perfection is the general context of proper and scientific recognition of the universe, His subjective world is a scientific and intellectual one which co