Some of the protagonists in the discussions on the Internet
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 Bahá'ís who, imbued by what they conceive to be loyalty to
Bahá'u'lláh, 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 Bahá'í 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 dated February 8, 1998, written on
behalf of the Universal House of Justice to an individual believer)
