Peter Abelard is the awesomest thing ever.

[highlyeccentric]

Even St Peter fell into serious error and was publicly corrected by the Apostle Paul [cf. Galatians 2:11ff]. None of them were infallible. Augustine found himself mistaken in some instances and he retracted his errors publicly. He warned readers that his writings were certainly not the Gospel truth. So, we should accept only those things which we examine, and then, find to be true....

We are free to critique all writings of this type. We should accept none of them unquestioningly. If we did, it would be a roadblock to all discussion. Then, future generations would be deprived of the excellent intellectual exercise of debating difficult questions of language and of ideas. An exception must be made: In the Bible, when something seems wrong, we should not say that the writer failed, but that some scribe failed in copying the manuscripts correctly, or that there is a mistaken interpretation, or that the passage is misunderstood....

ok, so the Biblical escape clause is hardly outstanding in any time period, but he's doing a damn sight better than large groups of Christians I know, who'd never think about manuscript error or possible misinterpretations.

Rest of the Intro Here

Comments

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

waaaah LJ script fucking up again