Person A, after living as a Christian for some years, comes to believe a theological concept.

Person B, after living as a Christian for some years, comes to believe a different theological concept.

Both have researched. Both have studied the ancient manuscripts, and have learned the original languages.

Who’s right? Who has some to a firmer hold of Truth, and who has taken a firmer hold of Error?

Where can we go from here? This could turn into a nice discourse on the need for the Catholic concept of Authority. It could easily turn into a nice discussion on the problems our Protestant brothers and sisters have with division.

The more dangerous ground it could lead into is the topic of relativism… throwing out the concepts of ‘perfect truth’ in favor of ‘the truth we have now’. Truth as subject to time as it were.

But as worthy as these discussions might be, there might be a larger picture out there. The challenge for Person A and B is to simultaneously chase further after perfect truth, while at the same time loving, befriending, and walking with the other.

Some people would conceive the world as us emulating the angels, dancing for greater balance on the pinhead of truth, surrounded by the vast universe of error.

It may just be that if we strive to emulate the Mercy of God (‘forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us’) , we might just find a greater truth.

The danger here is discerning whether errors can be ‘important’ (which must be the case, so that relativism can’t be, and the Bible is upheld), and then discerning which errors are important (which is hard (see Jimmy Akin and his concept of ‘High Context/Low Context[1]‘ cultures for just one example), and then what to do about them (which is rough).

Thoughts on my mind.

[1] “This is one reason that the Bible is as mysterious as it is: It was written in a high context culture that assumed the reader already knew the background to the documents, so it doesn’t waste time explaining that background.” http://jimmyakin.typepad.com/defensor_fidei/2006/11/john_allen_has_.html