How can you be said to have broken an agreement to which you were never a party? It would be like saying that I'm a renegade Mormon. I've never associated myself with that religion, so I could scarcely be said to be a renegade of that faith.
Covenant Breaking, as I understand it, requires that one has knowledge of the Covenant, has at one point agreed to be bound by its provisions (at least implicitly), and then sundered one's self from that covenant. If one was never bound by it, one may be outside its provisions, but has not broken faith with that Covenant.
There are some illustrations of this where some baha'is have been declared to not be Baha'is, but not "Covenant Breakers" by the Universal House of Justice, because it felt that they had never understood the provisions of the covenant, and therefore had not covenanted. They were not Baha'is because their beliefs were contrary and outside the teachings, but they had never been Baha'is, because their beliefs had never been consistent with the Covenant, and they had not broken anything. The divergence was merely underscored to the point that the Universal House of Justice felt that it needed to clarify the situation.
Please feel free to correct me if I have misaprehended this point.
regards, Christian.
David Friedman wrote:
Dear Dean,
> According to Baha'i belief, though, this woman apparently became a
> Covenant-breaker and got a spiritual disease on her acceptance of the Bab
> and becoming a Babi.
The woman could not possibly be a Covenant-breaker if she had never heard of
Baha'u'llah. After all, it's Baha'u'llah's Covenant we're talking about.
I don't know I agree. So you're saying Azali's who have never heard of Baha'u'llah wouldn't classify as Covenant-breakers?
> Is there something bad about belief > in the Bab?
Are you not a Baha'i? Do you not know Who the Blessed Bab is?
I wasn't saying I thought that might be so.
Regards, David
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