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 8 February 1998 written on
behalf of the Universal House of Justice to an individual believer)
