The training of some scholars in fields such as religion and
history seems to have restricted their vision and blinded them to the
culturally determined basis of elements of the approach they have learned. It
causes them to exclude from consideration factors which, from a Baha'i point of
view, are of fundamental importance. Truth in such fields cannot be found if
the evidence of Revelation is systematically excluded and if discourse is
limited by a basically deterministic view of the world.
Some … have implied that the only way to attain a true
understanding of historical events and of the purport of the sacred and
historical records of the Cause of God is through the rigid application of
methods narrowly defined in a materialistic framework. They have even gone so
far as to stigmatize whoever proposes a variation of these methods as wishing
to obscure the truth rather than unveil it.
The House of Justice recognizes that, at the other extreme,
there are Baha'is who, imbued by what they conceive to be loyalty to
Baha'u'llah, cling to blind acceptance of what they understand to be a
statement of the Sacred Text. This shortcoming demonstrates an equally serious
failure to grasp the profundity of the Baha'i principle of the harmony of faith
and reason. The danger of such an attitude is that it exalts personal
understanding of some part of the Revelation over the whole, leads to illogical
and internally inconsistent applications of the Sacred Text, and provides fuel
to those who would mistakenly characterize loyalty to the Covenant as
"fundamentalism".
(From a letter date 8 February 1998 written on
behalf of the Universal House of Justice to an individual believer)
