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Theology Constructed Authority (28:0) Over time, theology succeeded in constructing in the heart of each one of the great faiths an authority parallel with, and even inimical in spirit to, the revealed teachings on which the tradition was based. Jesus' familiar parable of the landowner who sowed seed in his field addresses both the issue and its implications for the present time: "But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way." When his servants proposed to uproot them, the landowner replied, "Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn." Throughout its pages, the Qur'an reserves its severest condemnation for the spiritual harm caused by this competing hegemony: "Say: The things that my Lord hath indeed forbidden are: shameful deeds, whether open or secret; sins and trespasses against truth or reason; assigning of partners to God, for which he hath given no authority; and saying things about God of which ye have no knowledge." To the modern mind it is the greatest of ironies that generations of theologians, whose impositions on religion embody precisely the betrayal so strongly denounced in these texts, should seek to use the warning itself as a weapon in suppressing protest against their usurpation of Divine authority
(28:1)
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