{"id":4353,"date":"2014-08-27T06:42:34","date_gmt":"2014-08-27T10:42:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/?p=4353"},"modified":"2014-08-26T22:45:25","modified_gmt":"2014-08-27T02:45:25","slug":"reason-charity-must-promote-the-cause-of-truth-piety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/?p=4353","title":{"rendered":"Reason &#038; Charity Must Promote the Cause of Truth &#038; Piety"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A recent mailing from James Kushiner of <a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/19bd1tj\">Touchstone Magazine<\/a> included some discussion of how Samuel Stanhope Smith, president of Princeton about 200 years ago, handled a theological disagreement with a friend. Smith said that though he thought his friend\u2019s position was in error, this error did not jeopardize his salvation:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>therefore your asserting this principle will not provoke any pious rage in me. I will give your argument a fair and cool examination. If I am not convinced, I will represent my objections to you with the same candor&#8211;if I cannot answer you I will not grow angry&#8211;and that is more than you can say of every Christian Brother&#8211;but I have learned long since, not to fight for God as if the devil were in me. <strong>If reason and charity cannot promote the cause of truth and piety, I cannot see how it should ever flourish under the withering fires of wrath and strife<\/strong>. [emphasis added]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I think there is much to learn here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A recent mailing from James Kushiner of Touchstone Magazine included some discussion of how Samuel Stanhope Smith, president of Princeton about 200 years ago, handled a theological disagreement with a friend. Smith said that though he thought his friend\u2019s position was in error, this error did not jeopardize his salvation: therefore your asserting this principle &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/?p=4353\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading &lsquo;Reason &#038; Charity Must Promote the Cause of Truth &#038; Piety&rsquo; &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[316,315],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4353"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4353"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4355,"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4353\/revisions\/4355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}