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WEB 4 - ARCHIVE
Commentary 23 - Page 2 |
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Until recently, only a small proportion of these works was available in the West. Many are still inaccessible outside monasticism, and many others survive only in one or two ancient copies because of their irrelevance to monasticism while it is particularly difficult to rediscover the parts of these teachings specifically intended for non-monastics. Another reason that these teachings have been unavailable to the West is that, at the time of the Reformation, the Protestant churches adopted the principle of "sola scriptura" - "Scripture is enough for us," we might say today.. Because this took a very good concept too narrowly, the small part of the inner knowledge that was available to the West fell into disuse for so long that the very meaning of the words - their 'inner meaning' - was eventually forgotten. The problem is that now, when modern travel and scholarship have at last restored to us some of the most important of the forgotten texts of this Christian tradition, it is almost too late. Monasteries have tended to preserve only writings relating to monastic methods. In fact, parts of that teaching that had gone underground as long ago as the time of Clement in the second century have survived, although often only as an unwritten teaching. In the past few centuries, small parts of this unwritten teaching have reached the West a few times, touched a few souls, awakened a brief flowering in places like Lindisfarne, and then been lost again. Christ touches many, but for some centuries, due to the accidents of history, this teaching has been accessible only to a few and in our time is to all intents unknown by the ordinary Christian.
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