The Upper Room

7:18 AM

@fredsbend you're a bit like the Russians with your power of veto: christianity.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/30120 - care to explain your thinking on this one to the rest of us?

fredsbend

3:11 PM

@bruisedreed Really, lmao.

I'll take a look and see.

bruised reed

3:41 PM

@fredsbend you're not the only one - the Bear is not one to follow the crowd either: christianity.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/29938

fredsbend

@bruisedreed I'd be careful about asking him about that. He might eat you.

bruised reed

@fredsbend yes, it was merely an observation, not a challenge

fredsbend

@curiousdannii Re your comment and flags: I agree this is not representative of the general Protestant position at all. But it does seem to be a valid answer in that it purports to answer the question that was asked. It's just wrong. And we don't moderate the site based on right or wrong answers, only whether the intended scope of the question is being addressed or not. This is neither NAA nor VLQ, it's just factually wrong which is a time for downvoting (and/or commenting) not flagging. — Caleb ♦ Aug 1 at 11:35

Caleb's reasoning. I pretty much always agree with Caleb, and this is one of those instances where I'm content to just believe that his assessment is sound.

So I downvoted, as he suggested.

TRiG

@fredsbend Do bears eat reeds?

fredsbend

@TRiG If they try to make him look foolish or challenge him publicly, you bet.

@lonesomeday I think your last two paragraphs address the question exactly. Summed up "We can feel free to neglect those parts of the epistles as influenced by the culture Paul was living in." That is certainly an answer. — fredsbend 13 secs ago

Or, in other words, "a biblical basis is not needed, because the biblical basis that only men can be pastors can be dismissed by this reasoning."

Nathaniel

4:02 PM

@fredsbend So you disagree with this answer: meta.christianity.stackexchange.com/a/3915/21576

fredsbend

@Nathaniel I don't think lonesomeday's answer is pointing out a false premise, but it is taking a step back before approaching the question.

There certainly is biblical support that Christians use for female pastors, and if he added some of that in, it would be a perfect answer, imo.

pterandon's answer stands out in that respect.

Combining those two would make the best answer, I think.

And if we adjust David's words from that meta post just a bit, I think lonesomeday should feel obliged to do that.

> In other words, it's fair to [address the question from a step back], but if the question is answerable from an accepted perspective, and you can provide a good answer, then provide that answer after [taking a step back].

Nathaniel

That answer is basically saying, "just ignore all the parts of the bible that disagree" as an answer to a biblical basis question. If that's legitimate, what's the point of a biblical basis question?

@fredsbend I think this wording is legitimate though

fredsbend

4:36 PM

@Nathaniel If it were sourced would it make a difference? I'm sure that is exactly how a good deal of female pastor supporters would respond, so corroborating sources should be easy to find.

In general, yeah, you can't just answer biblical basis with "well, there is none." But I don't think lonesomeday's answer does that.

Nathaniel

@fredsbend I don't think so... I think it's just my (perhaps overly strict) view of biblical basis questions. Maybe me forcing a "whole bible" approach isn't right. If someone asked, "What is the biblical basis against animal sacrifice?" I'd be hesitant to accept an answer that said "the OT doesn't apply now, so it's not legitimate" without citing NT passages to back up that statement.

And I'm not sure that extra-biblical references make sense in a biblical basis question, except perhaps for exegesis purposes

fredsbend

@Nathaniel Sometimes people use biblical basis questions to try to pigeonhole a belief is admitting that there's no biblical basis. The best examples would be some questions about Catholic beliefs about Mary. The fact is, not every belief and practice has a biblical basis, and of those that do, not all of them are strong.

This is kind of one of those cases.

Nathaniel

But again, I'll have to think about this more; given that there are people who call themselves Christians who don't accept the bible as inspired, perhaps even a biblical basis question could be answered from that perspective

fredsbend

Instead of biblical basis, this question might be better as "what are the arguments for (including the bible) female pastorship?"

Nathaniel

@fredsbend Yeah, that's true.

bruised reed

4:46 PM

@fredsbend well opinions certainly differ on that!

fredsbend

@Nathaniel It's easy to think of biblical basis questions as a kind of cookie cutter thing and they are all answerable the same way. Sometimes they just aren't. This is an indication of an issue with the question (false premises, too narrow of a view, etc.) rather than an issue with ensuing answers.

@bruisedreed It's disingenuous to say that the biblical argument for female pastorship is strong. It certainly is not stronger than the argument against it. There is a basis, but it is weak. Hence, reasoning beyond exegesis is needed to justify the belief.

I suppose that's just my opinion ;)

bruised reed

@fredsbend I very much doubt that NT Wright is in the business of promoting weak bibilcal arguments

Nathaniel

@bruisedreed Crap, now more reading to do!

fredsbend

@bruisedreed I honestly have not read much Wright, but I've seen plenty of esteemed persons support weak arguments before, so I would not be surprised.

ThaddeusB

5:33 PM

I don't think any of the answers to the female pastors question are particularly strong - there are many good partial answers, but no complete answer (IMO). I may try to write my own answer... @fredsbend is correct - the question could be better worded as "what are the arguments for female pastorship?"

ThaddeusB

6:16 PM

@Nathaniel Did you remove "overview" on purpose? It looks likely that it was an edit conflict, but I wanted to be sure.

Nathaniel

@ThaddeusB I did an "improve and edit" on your edit, and removed that one -- at this point I don't see the value of it

it seems like an "overview" tag will push out more useful subject-based tags when we approach the five-tag limit, so my preference is to get rid of it

That question does need "overview" in the title and body though, if the OP is not going to modify it further

ThaddeusB

@Nathaniel k, it is only used on two questions, so easy to get rid of if desired :)

Nathaniel

I think @bruisedreed disagrees with me though: meta.christianity.stackexchange.com/a/4651/21576

ThaddeusB

@Nathaniel It is perhaps that post that I learned of the existence of it from

bruised reed

@Nathaniel People have a tendency to ignore requests for overviews unless they are super-obvious. Tagging would be one way to reinforce that.

Nathaniel

6:28 PM

@bruisedreed I could get behind that if it's the first one to be removed when trying to fit five other tags, but I suspect that in practice it would be treated as the most necessary one

Thus I'd prefer emphasizing overview in the title/body, and dealing with a few extra deletions

bruised reed

@Nathaniel I'm not married to the idea - whatever works basically

ThaddeusB

@Nathaniel @bruisedreed Should we post this as a meta question?

Nathaniel

I'm new to this too; not sure how these sorts of minor things are usually handled

bruised reed

6:51 PM

@ThaddeusB the question being? whether there should be an overview tag? whether we should use it religiously? You can certainly post a question on Meta, but if it's just about this, most people probably won't care too much one way or the other

fredsbend

@ThaddeusB I agree about the available answers. A combination of a few of them would make for a strong answer.

ThaddeusB

@bruisedreed The question being an offshoot of the linked question, I suppose: "Since we decided to allow overview questions, how aggressive should be in 1) tagging them as such and 2) editing the subject/body to make it clear an overview is desired"

You are certainly correct that few will care one way or another. If you and @Nathaniel agree to a plan, then there is no need to raise it to the broader community.

fredsbend

@bruisedreed I don't think people see the tags pretty much ever. I know personally, I rarely look at them and almost never search by them.

@ThaddeusB @Nathaniel @bruisedreed I think this is small enough right now to if most of us four don't really see much value in it, then just edit it out of the two questions with the tag and let it die.

bruised reed

@fredsbend hush @curiousdannii might hear you!

fredsbend

He does have a curious knack for tagging.

Back to the overview, I'm not convinced there's much value there.

bruised reed

7:04 PM

I'm finally out, later everyone

fredsbend

Editing the title and body to include the word overview, and even making it bold text will go much further.

@bruisedreed bye

Nathaniel

@fredsbend I'm good with that plan.

fredsbend

@Nathaniel Yeah, it's sort of already a rule that the question must say "overview" if that's what you want.

So, if it looks like that's what they are asking, then editing it in will help keep it from being closed and force answers into a higher bracket of quality.

ThaddeusB

8:15 PM

So I think we are in agreement then to retire the "overview" tag and make it obvious something is an overview via the title instead... I'll remove the tag from the two questions it is on tomorrow unless someone objects.

curiousdannii

9:23 PM

@bruisedreed I know most tags won't get used much, but I still think they're useful for improving the quality of the related questions list

Mr. Bultitude

@fredsbend Nah, I'm a Christ-like bear. A bruised reed I will not break. Besides, the only plants I eat are berries. Reeds are gross.

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