can't find Steven's version of "Abdu'l-Baha's reasons anywhere. Of course they may be his understanding of 'Abdu'l-Baha's comments, but he actually attributed them to the Master.
Dear David,
The nice thing about oral traditions is that kam, kam they are subject to endless revision. I rather like Birkland's creative retelling myself. ;-}
In some ways the fact that these texts were subjected to a little tweaking to make these particular points indicates to me the level of committment to these ideas themselves. Sometimes Baha'is repeat things in the Writings simply because they are in the Writings, not because they have any conviction for principle itself. We've all known Baha'is who play lip-service to things like the independent investigation of truth, for instance, so long as it applies to non-Baha'is only. But when a Counsellor goes out of his way to underline the importance of scholars raising the difficult questions, even to the extent of tweaking a source to make his point, it indicates to me that there is some real committment to the principle. But then part of asking the hard questions is we get to get to dissect and pick his talk part. ;-}
In any case, I think this talk contains a number of things that Baha'i scholars have been waiting a long, long time to hear.
warmest, Susan
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