I’m afraid Mr. Guillaumier is wasting his time because he is not humble enough to ask, like a minister of Candace, queen of Ethiopia, Philip….( Acts 8.26-40)  “Why, how can I understand unless someone shows me?”

St Jerome, that great scholar of the scripture, wrote: “You can never understand the Holy Bible if you have no one to lead you towards the right interpretation of the Holy Books. The farmers, professionals, workers and the rest who do any kind of work cannot aspire to start their career without an instructor. It’s only the teachings of the Bible that everybody tries to explain by himself.”

The above conforms to the author of the second letter of St Peter with reference to the letters of St Paul. “In these epistles there are certain things difficult to understand, which the unlearned and the unstable distort, just as they do the rest of the Scriptures also, to their own destruction.” (2 Pt. 3-16)

Instead, I propose the following quotation:  “Christianity has been a boon to mankind and has had a beneficent effect on the human race… most people today who love in a ostensibly Christian environment with Christian ethics do not realize how much we owe Jesus of Nazareth. What goodness and mercy there is in this world has come in large measure from him” (Dr James Kennedy), which sounds to me more mellow, peaceful, factual and encouraging.

 

John Azzopardi

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