Is well known that many scholars dispute the traditional authors of OT books and dating. For example for the Pentateuch we have the Documentary hypothesis, for Isaiah's book separation in three parts, and this happens for most books in OT. Do you know any source (book or website) that examine the...
@Sotiris That is an interesting question. However, since it's not directly relating to Christianity (or any of its teachings, beliefs, tools, history, etc.), I've migrated this to Meta. I don't think it's ideally suited for Meta either, but it would be much more acceptable there.
I want to mention that this is not part of the series regarding refining of the guidelines for questions and answers. This is about how to write Excellent questions, regardless of the topic.
Introduction
Over my years as a moderator (OK, it's only beeen a month so far), I've seen a lot of qu...
Is well known that many scholars dispute the traditional authors of OT books and dating. For example for the Pentateuch we have the Documentary hypothesis, for Isaiah's book separation in three parts, and this happens for most books in OT. Do you know any source (book or website) that examine the...
I want to mention that this is not part of the series regarding refining of the guidelines for questions and answers. This is about how to write Excellent questions, regardless of the topic.
Introduction
Over my years as a moderator (OK, it's only beeen a month so far), I've seen a lot of qu...
One of my closest friends was a calvinist... I think he's less adamant than he used to be...
But I attended a bible study with him for a while, and the leader was "very" calivinist
I left that study thinking "What the heck?"
I think I got some of the dark side of calvinism
Anyway, it's been 10+ years since then... but I'm still left with lots of questions about it
The church I attend now is technically calvinistic, too, but the pastor doesn't really preach it very hard.
Which I think is appropriate... most of the finer points of calvinism have little or nothing to do with daily life... so when preaching about how to be a better Christian, there's not usually very much to say about calvinism :)
Calvinism is practically nonexistent in Finland, which is a pity 'cause I don't have the chance to meet Calvinists :)
@Flimzy yeah, I think that's also the reason why Lutherans don't very much talk about single predestination though it's a Lutheran doctrine... it just doesn't matter much in practice.
@Flimzy I don't think that is a true statement -- I came into it with that impression as well but as life has gone on I've found it hugely relevant! I do realize it's often mis-understood and sometimes even mis-represented in a way that becomes counter-productive rather than productive -- but the same can be said of a lot of doctrines.
@dancek There seem to be a fair handful spread around here. Also based on your own personal exegesis answers I'm pretty sure you're closer than you think yourself!
@Caleb well, Calvinism and Lutheranism are very close to each other... they just don't get along :) Finland is the most Lutheran country in the world, and I guess that's the reason we don't have many Calvinists—there's practically no differentiation.
@Caleb Actually now with †.SE I've got the chance to get a better idea of Calvinism and am familiarizing myself with it.
I've been interested for a long time in what the Body is like in different countries and denominations, but I've never before had as good a chance to really find out!
Well it sounded like your example question was pretty good
It might be useful to go with something like that to start to get a sense of what calvinists are getting at
then another might give another slice of it
perhaps asking a couple questions about application of the calvinistic understanding of God's sovereignty would give enough to ask a more focused question that is more directly about the sovereignty of God and not just about it's application
When the question says "How do you explain X from a Y perspective?" and the answer starts with "I don't know Y's perspective, but..." I think it's a clear failure before it's off the ground
i will try to take a stab at it tonight... now that there's this darned "refocus" effort, answering questions actually requires putting some thought and effort into it
@Flimzy Ya sorry about that one. I actually edited my comment because I was kind of harsh with the guy and he turned out to be at least a little cooperative, but that's just the kind of answer we're hopping to curb. Not only did he forward an opinion but he forwarded an opinion to a question about a specific doctrinal view and one he didn't understand in the first place.
I think it's easy to fall into the trap of "This question has no answers, so even though I don't really know the answer, maybe I can help a little bit with my half-formed theory."
Sure I'm busy with educating everybody else, but I have a daunting list of answers I'm going to have to go and fix! Answering new questions is not attractive at the moment.
On another subject... I thought of something today, and I was wondering if it was on topic for BH or Christianity... or if I would need to do some research to make it on topic
I was flipping through the radio and heard a pastor suggesting that angels have wings... actually what he said was that it's not in the bible that they don't always have wings
so my reaction was... does it say in the bible that they do?
@Ray Questions require some amount of research in order to ask them. Anything so out there that you couldn't write an answer except to say "there is nothing like that in Christianity" probably means the question should be closed as not a real question or off topic depending....
If there are traditions that actually have doctrines on the issue, that's different.
In any event an answer that says "there is no verse about this" is considered a good answer by the guidelines because it is falsafiable. There isn't a reference but it could be specifically shown to be wrong, it's not just an opinion.
sure.. i'm looking more for what's in scripture (or not) as opposed to traditions... maybe that's better suited for BH... but then they're trying to stick to exegesis of specific texts
I want to mention that this is not part of the series regarding refining of the guidelines for questions and answers. This is about how to write Excellent questions, regardless of the topic.
Introduction
Over my years as a moderator (OK, it's only beeen a month so far), I've seen a lot of qu...
