Under lock and key

That religion is a sickness with a specific cure is known from the tradition of the Old and New Testaments. However, that this sickness and cure exists in the Bible is known only to those who know that it is there and know how to use the Bible as a guide to said cure. For this reason the Bible is a closed book to all others, even to most Jews and Christians today. This means that Jews who accept the Old Testament alone, or Christians who accept both the Old and the New Testament, yet are not in the process of being cured under the guidance of one already cured, i.e. "glorified" (1 Cor. 12:26), automatically and unknowingly distort these books into supports for the sickness of religion, rather than its cure. Many such students of the Bible become Fundamentalists and at times quite dangerous. On the other hand the critical Biblical scholar, who uses whatever tools he has at his disposal to understand the Bible, cannot complete his task unless he knows the existence of the sickness of religion and its cure, and indeed in a Bible which is supposed to be his specialty.

Fr. John Romanides