A Bahá'í, through this faith in, this "conscious
knowledge" of, the reality of divine Revelation, can distinguish, for
instance, between Christianity, which is the divine message given by Jesus of
Nazareth, and the development of Christendom, which is the history of what men
did with that message in subsequent centuries, a distinction which has become
blurred if not entirely obscured in current Christian theology. A Bahá'í
scholar conscious of this distinction will not make the mistake of regarding
the sayings and beliefs of certain Bahá'ís at any one time as being the Bahá'í
Faith. The Bahá'í Faith is the Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh: His Own Words as
interpreted by 'Abdu'l-Bahá and the Guardian. It is a revelation of such
staggering magnitude that no Bahá'í at this early stage in Bahá'í history can
rightly claim to have more than a partial and imperfect understanding of it.
Thus, Bahá'í historians would see the overcoming of early misconceptions held
by the Bahá'í community, or by parts of the Bahá'í community, not as
"developments of the Bahá'í Faith" -- as a non-Bahá'í historian might
well regard them -- but as growth of that community's understanding of the
Bahá'í Revelation.
(Memorandum from the Research Department of the Universal
House of Justice on Baha’i Scholarship, accompanied by a letter written on
behalf of the Universal House of Justice dated 3 January 1979; ‘Messages from
the Universal House of Justice 1963-1986’)
