ʿIlm al-Kalām Archive · Quranic Verses · Q 57:3
He is the First and the Last, the Manifest and the Hidden — and He is Knowing of all things.
Ṭabāṭabāʾī reads Q 57:3 as the Quran's most compressed statement of divine ontology: four names arranged in two pairs — al-Awwal wa-l-Ākhir (the First and the Last) and al-Ẓāhir wa-l-Bāṭin (the Manifest and the Hidden). The pairs are not contradictions but complementary descriptions of the same ontological reality from different axes. The first pair (Awwal/Ākhir) governs the temporal axis — God precedes all things and remains after all things end. The second pair (Ẓāhir/Bāṭin) governs the ontological axis — God is the most outwardly disclosed reality and the most inwardly hidden reality simultaneously.
Imam ʿAlī's first Khuṭba in Nahj al-Balāgha opens with an extended meditation on divine transcendence that directly engages the ẓāhir/bāṭin pair:
Nahj al-Balāgha, Khuṭba 1 — Imam ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (ع)
"The Manifest — not by being seen; the Hidden — not by being subtle." The Imam refuses both anthropomorphic ẓuhūr (God is manifest like a visible object) and simple concealment (God is hidden like something small or far away). The ẓāhir is not visual disclosure — it is ontological primacy: God is the most fundamental reality, the ground of all that is, so more "disclosed" than anything in creation precisely because everything else derives its being from Him. The bāṭin is not spatial hiddenness — it is the inexhaustibility of the divine essence: no created intelligence can encompass it, not because God is far, but because the divine reality exceeds any finite container.
Ṭabāṭabāʾī develops this through Al-Kāfī's tawḥīd traditions: the divine names in Q 57:3 are not descriptors added to a neutral divine being — they are the divine being's own self-disclosure in the registers that creation can receive. Al-Ẓāhir: God is more manifest than the world, because the world is manifest only through God's being; without God's sustaining act every moment (Q 2:255 — lā taʾkhudhuhū sinatun wa-lā nawm), nothing would be manifest at all. Al-Bāṭin: the divine essence behind this self-disclosure remains beyond all created comprehension — the bāṭin is the inexhaustible source from which the ẓāhir continuously flows.
The Imami tradition draws the key implication for the doctrine of the Imam: the Imam is the living mazhar — the locus of divine self-disclosure — within creation. Imam ʿAlī's Khuṭba 179 (Nahj al-Balāgha) states: "Through us God is known, through us God is worshipped." This is not a claim of divine identity but of the mazhar's function: the divine ẓāhir reaches creation through the Imam who is the most complete locus of the divine names' disclosure. The Imam is therefore the living instantiation of Q 57:3's al-Ẓāhir — the point where the divine self-disclosure enters creation most completely — while the divine bāṭin remains eternally beyond the Imam as its inexhaustible source.
Mullā Ṣadrā's synthesis of the Imami and Akbarian readings of Q 57:3 begins with a formal clarification: ẓāhir/bāṭin is not a spatial distinction and not a temporal distinction. It is a distinction of ontological register. When Imam ʿAlī says "the Manifest — not by being seen; the Hidden — not by being subtle," he is refusing the spatialization of both terms. When Ibn ʿArabī says the cosmos is the divine ẓāhir, he is refusing the externalization of the world as something alongside God. Ṣadrā brings these together under the principle of tashkīk al-wujūd (the gradation of being): there is one reality of being (wujūd) that admits of infinite degrees of intensity.
The Convergence
Al-Ẓāhir: the most intense degree of being — the divine being itself, which is the ground and cause of all other beings' manifestness. Al-Bāṭin: the inexhaustibility of that same being — it discloses infinitely without being exhausted, because infinite being cannot be encompassed by finite disclosure. Imam ʿAlī's formulation (ẓāhir not by vision / bāṭin not by subtlety) and Ibn ʿArabī's formulation (cosmos as tajallī / divine essence as bāṭin) are both correct descriptions of the same ontological structure from different angles. Ṣadrā's synthesis: the divine ẓāhir and the divine bāṭin are not two aspects of God — they are the single reality of God described from the perspective of creation (which receives the disclosure) and from the perspective of the divine essence (which infinitely exceeds all disclosure).
Ḥaydar Āmulī adds the Imami dimension: the Imam as mazhar occupies the ontological position of highest created ẓuhūr — the being in whom the divine self-disclosure within creation is most complete. This does not make the Imam the divine bāṭin, which remains eternally beyond. It makes the Imam the living axis of the divine ẓāhir within creation — the being through whom Q 57:3's al-Ẓāhir reaches creation in its most complete form. Imam ʿAlī's statement "through us God is known, through us God is worshipped" is therefore not theological excess — it is the ontological description of the mazhar's function within the Q 57:3 framework.
Ṣadrā's final point in Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb: the verse closes with wa-huwa bi-kulli shayʾin ʿalīm — "and He is Knowing of all things." This is not an afterthought — it is the proof that the bāṭin is not ignorance of the ẓāhir. God is the most disclosed being (al-Ẓāhir) and simultaneously knows every thing within the created disclosure (bi-kulli shayʾin ʿalīm). The divine knowledge encompasses the ẓāhir from within the bāṭin. The Imam's function in this structure: as the most complete created mazhar, the Imam carries the widest created ʿilm — which is why Al-Kāfī's traditions on the Imam's knowledge of all things are grounded in Q 57:3's ontological architecture, not in miraculous exception.