The Light Shineth in Darkness by -Udo Schaefer- 4 Para

(A theologian).. wrote "Throughout the Old Testament we hear of man suffering through God's justice and his own sin, and of his ending in helplessness and despair. This is why the Bible speaks of "Fallen Man," who has not the power to heal himself. It speaks of the failure of the experiments with commandments and laws." In his book he referred to the Bible's answer to the basic problems of human existence-- the account of Man's enslavement of guilt and hostility to God, his bondage to sin, and his inability to redeem himself-- and to the testimony of Christ's crucifixion, through which Satan's power was broken. He asked "So what point would there be in a new revelation, while man has not abandoned his age-old state?-- and said that faced by this message of the Cross, all reformers end in helpless and embarrassed silence: that Baha'u'llah breaks off where Jesus is only beginning. (77:2)

Whenever Christian theologians wish to prove the uniqueness, peerlessness and absolute superiority of Christianity over other religions, they all retreat to this doctrine. It is the kernel of the Church's faith, which distinguishes itself from all other religions by having at its centre not just a revealed doctrine and God-fearing obedience towards the will of the Eternal, but belief in a divine figure, the Word made Flesh. Anyone who holds that the quintessence of the Christian revelation is this doctrine of the incarnate Son of God who, through his various sufferings, has reconciled God to the world, is bound to reject belief in a cyclically recurring progressive revelation of God and in the unity of all religions. To that extent I quite understand.. (his) viewpoint. But this plan of redemption proclaimed by the Church for almost nineteen centuries, the orthodox Church doctrine which.. (he) took as his standard of judgment-- is this the real message of Jesus? (77:3)

I dispute it, and find myself in the best of company, that of many critical theologians. The question of who Jesus was and what his message was is today wholly controversial. Concerning elementary questions of faith, especially over Christology, present-day Protestant university theologians are engaged in an irreconcilable conflict. I cannot think that this has escaped.. (the theologian's) notice and can only wonder at the way he fulminates from the outdated credal positions of his Church, as if there had been no two hundred years of research by liberal Protestant theologians and no modern historical criticism; as if what he presented as the message of Jesus were not the subject of vehement dispute within the Church. (78:1)

..in the last decades critical theological research has produced results "which are irreconcilable with the Church's teaching positions but remarkably in accord with the teachings of the Baha'i Faith" (Sabet- Heavens Cleft Asunder). In his review (the theologian).. rebuked Sabet by resorting to the pathetic argument that he did not know the facts, even if he had "acquired a smattering of modern theology"-- as if his view were so absurd that it was not worth discussing. But whole sections of traditional Church doctrine have been called into question to such and extent that in Germany, for instance, there is today the threat of a real schism in the Protestant Church. This remarkable fact.. (he) passed over as deliberately as Sabet's quotations from distinguished scholars-- because they did not fit into his scheme of things. Rather than consider 'them', he faulted Sabet on his quoting Karl-Heinz Deschner, instead of going by Martin Luther, and tried to give the impression thereby that Sabet's sole guarantor was Deschner, who is a free-thinker and not a theologian (and so not to be taken seriously). (78:2)

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