I don't feel it's in anyway improper to say the Guardian is drawing a
logical conclusion; maybe he is. I just am unable to read his mind in
that way, or draw that inference from what he has written. But that
might be correct; though I still tend towards the "synonym" approach.
This looks to me to be yet another passage where the Guardian is using
the "relativity of religious truth" as a synonym for Progressive
Revelation; that there are two aspects to Revelation -- the essence
which remains unchanged from age to age, and the "non-essential" part of
each Revelation which is subject to change in each Dispensation, as the
Master explains in Some Answered Questions. I think Shoghi Effendi is
referring to that principle here:
"The mission of the Founder of their Faith, they conceive to be to
proclaim that religious truth is not absolute but relative, that Divine
Revelation is continuous and progressive, that the Founders of all past
religions, though different in the non-essential aspects of their
teachings, 'abide in the same Tabernacle, soar in the same heaven, are
seated upon the same throne, utter the same speech and proclaim the same
Faith.'"
There are plenty of absolute statements in Baha'u'llah's Writings,
though I am not sure you are saying there aren't. I don't think that the
principle of the relativity of religious truth means that He is asking
us to see everything He writes, through that filter. Again, I don't
think that's what you're saying. It's just that when the Guardian says
that the proclamation of the relativity of religious truth is the
mission of Baha'u'llah; that it is a theme of the Iqan; and that it is
embodied in the design of the Mashriqu'l-Adhkar; I am chary of reading
too much into the word "relative". It looks to me to just be saying,
what a Manifestation sets as a law in this Dispensation, may be annulled
in a later Dispensation. I don't personally view the principle of the
relativity of religious truth as a broad statement about the nature of
all truth, or even of all Revelation, but only about that part of
Revelation that is subject to change by the Manifestation.
Also, I don't know what you mean when you say that "truths are relative
to one another." If you get too philosophical, you may quickly lose me.
Best regards
Brent
Sen & Sonja wrote:
On 24 Mar 2008 at 3:53, Brent Poirier Attorney wrote:
There are passages in the writings of the Guardian where he explained
that what he meant by the relativity of religious truth, is that
revealed truth is relative to the age in which it is revealed. That
is, the Guardian used this phrase as a synonym for "Progressive
Revelation".
This is true, but I would rather say that the *logical implication*
of progressive revelation is that religious truth must be relative.
The Guardian is drawing a logical conclusion, rather than simply
using a synonym.
Having established that religious truth is relative, that conclusion
has more applications: truths are relative to one another for example
(when the paradigm changes, it is a switch from one coherent system
of truths to another, not just a matter of this or that religious
truth changing.
Sen
----------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Sen McGlinn
***
Let the friends recall and ever bear in mind
the repeated exhortations and glowing promises of our beloved
Master
with reference to the Mashriqu'l-Adhkar,
the crowning institution in every Baha'i community.
(Shoghi Effendi, Baha'i Administration, page
108)
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