The Upper Room - 2011-11-07

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12:52 AM

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Q: Is there any effort to make digital copies of records in the Vatican Library and the Vatican Secret Archives publicly available?

I know that they Vatican is digitizing records in the Vatican Secret Archives, and I imagine they're doing the same with significant items in the Vatican Library. Is there any effort to make the digital records publicly available? Images can be ordered, but online access to digital records would ...

vatican vatican-library vatican-secret-archives

I know that question is pushing the bounds of this site. I'm okay with it being closed if the community thinks it should be. But I would still really like to know the answer.

0

Q: Enough with the "Which Bible" stupidity

There's been run of questions which specifically ask about "The Bible", which have been closed on the ridiculous grounds that the user didn't specify which Bible they were talking about. This is ridiculous because: Questioners may not have a deep knowledge of Christianity (surprise!) and may no...

discussion richard

15 hours later…

4:00 PM

@JustinY Actually, I think this would definitely be on-topic. This might, however, be a "current event", which is off-topic network wide. Still, until the secret archives are publicly available, I don't see a problem with this.

It might be able to be worded into a "history" question after it's no longer a current event, too. That's already established as on-topic.

So if it's in the future it's on topic, if it's in the present it's off topic, and if it's in the past it's on topic again.

4:19 PM

So, you're saying that the moderators should feel free to add the Protestantism tag? I don't disagree.

By "unless otherwise stated" this could of course mean stated in the question, or by tagging the question appropriately

Oh, of course. If people specify the Bible or doctrine they are seeking, then this whole meta discussion goes away. This is about questions that don't seek a specific Bible. That's the rub.

@Richard no, I don't think this is about tagging. It's about which framework to use to answer the question by default. A question about the (non Catholic) Bible isn't necessarily a question about protestantism itself, so the tag wouldn't necessarily be appropriate.

@Caleb If we want our questions to be specific, surely we want our terminology to be specific too? In my experience if someone has a question specifically about JWs or Mormons they state that explicitly in the question - otherwise by "The Bible" they tend to mean what the wider Christian Church would accept as "The Bible"

@Waggers So, then with this line of thought in mind, we should create a "protestant-bible" tag?

If we accept the "Protestant Bible" as default, why isn't this "Protestantism and Christianity.SE". We have to be careful to not promote one denomination or doctrine over another

@Richard I don't think using a generally understood meaning for a generally understood term is promotion of that kind.

Besides, the "Protestant Bible" isn't specific to one denomination or one doctrine.

4:19 PM

Would the Mormons agree? Or the Catholics or Orthdox Christians or Jehovah's Witnesses? I know the Richardonians disagree...

@Richard Frankly, we can't please everyone and we shouldn't try to. We need to take a pragmatic approach. If someone asks a straightforward "what does the Bible say" question we should not be scaring them off with hordes of questions about which Bible they mean and a lecture on the complex myriad possible answers to those questions.

@Waggers So, why not make the New World Translation the default Bible? This is just as logical of a conclusion as making the Protestant Bible the default Bible. (If you go to a Jehovah's Witness bookstore and ask for a Bible, that's the translation you will get...)

Nice. I love the auto-migrate.

Because the NWT is only used for one denomination. "The Bible" is used by many more

It makes me wonder if this should be over on C.SE main chat, though.

@Richard Me too

@Richard Yep. Is there a way to move it there?

4:20 PM

OH sure... Here we go!

← 18 messages moved from Discussion between Waggers and Richard

OK... :)

Choosing the Protestant Bible isn't arbitrary; it's the most commonly used and most commonly recognised combination of canon and translation

The really screwy thing is that I totally agree. I really want to be able to presume a default Bible. In fact, I started doing that exact thing. However, the very first time I try this, DJClayworth comes along and yanks my default bible tag, making the question Not Constructive!

Still. We have to have some doctrinal basis for choosing a Bible.

If we don't have a doctrinal basis, we can't choose a Bible.

The more I think about it, though, adding the protestantism or even protestant-bible is really putting words into the OP's mouth. I don't think that's what we should do.

@Richard The thing is, the "protestantism" tag isn't the same as a "protestant-bible" tag. DJClayworth didn't remove the latter

Why not make the Catholic Bible default? Or the New World Translation? Who am I to make that choice for the op?

@Waggers True, but the protestantism tag is effectively the protestant-bible tag until we can come to a community consensus on the "which Bible" issue. Also, this is true based on our new standards.

@Richard Quite right - but if we can agree a site-wide default on Meta then that problem is solved

4:27 PM

@Waggers And if we can agree on a site-wide default, then we might be able to agree on a definition of "Christian". However, I just don't see that happening.

@Richard I can't speak for DJ but I doubt he understood it that way

@Richard Oh but wouldn't it be great... [slides off into a dream world]

Got to commute now but will try to rejoin on my phone on the way...

@Waggers Yeah, but then this would turn from Christianity.SE to [All Christianity except FLDS and Jehovah's Witness and... etc.].SE.

I think the Catholic Bible canon should be default, as it is the most accepted bunch of books in the entire world. However, for the set of books in [Septuagint] - [Masoretic] a Masoretic translation should be used. That'd be a good compromise.

@Waggers That sounds scary. Are you driving?

This is exactly the problem I'm seeing. At this moment, Protestants are more or less the majority. However, if I look into my crystal ball, I see that this may not always be the case. This could be a site dominated by Catholics or Mormons or Witnesses. If this happens, I don't want there to be a "default Bible" that belongs to a minority.

If we do that, we should consider all site minorities at this moment and find an objective way to decide on a default Bible. Unfortunately, everyone has their opinion and preference--plus doctrine to back it up.

That's why I believe we can't choose a default Bible.

As much as I want one...

Not driving, passenger. (car sharing)

Yep, perhaps a default bible isn't the way to go.

4:43 PM

@richard it's not a default Bible, it's just what 'scholars' would consider when translating the Bible today. Everything else would be a deviation from the norm and would require the intent in the OP, the actual OP not the goaded OP. As much as I loathe biblical scholarship for introducing all sort of doubt and confusing Q and A during catechism class, I do appreciate their ability to reconcile the many translations.

Do Protestant Bibles usually say they're translated with the help of Catholics/Orthodox and Jewish scholars?

But I'd still like us to avoid putting the onus on a newbie OP to understand the various connotations before we allow their post to survive unclosed

@PeterTurner To my knowledge, they claim that they are directly related from the text. They kind of gloss over their sources for understanding the translation.

@Waggers I definitely understand that, and there should probably be some granted leeway for folks with <250 rep, BUT, it has to be determined for the post to be valid.

The idea here that we have to get across is that all you need to do is specify some kind of framework for a perspective of your question. If we don't know what game you're playing its awful hard to answer your question with anything useful.

Q. What does the bible say about x? A1. The protestant bible says this, the NWT says that. A2. The catholic bible also says Y and Z. ...... Why is that scenario so abhorrent?

@djclayworth If you want to have a say, we're discussing things here.

4:50 PM

@Waggers because none of those answers are right.

and they all are

But that's no different on SO.

If we comparing to SO, it would be like asking "How do I write an 'If' statement?" but not specifying the language.

Without the basis for answering the question (the language guidelines), there's no way to answer definitively.

How do I code X in language Y? (several answers, all of which work...)

C++ says this, C# says this. VB6 says this. VB.Net says this, etc.

@Waggers right, but you've specified a framework there

4:53 PM

And still no one answer is more right than the others

@Waggers this is true, but at least some comparisons can be made to the quality of the answers directly.

If you ask a generic question (how do I code an If loop) and get 20 answers in 12 different languages, you can't make any determination between the answers.

There's another problem with list questions: What we end up with is "My opinion is X". Unfortunately, due to the "priesthood of all believers", any opinion is as valid as doctrine and all interpretations should be accepted.

(And there's the slippery slope which leads to the Richardism doctrine and Richardonian translation.)

That's why we have come up with the solution: Questions must be focused. Otherwise, it's a big quagmire.

Generic programming questions ought to be answered in pseudocode. Generic Bible questions ought be answered with Biblical principles, not Bible quotes.

@PeterTurner That would be more of a Computer Science question then rather than a programming question.

Which would be like comparing Philosophy to Christianity, imo.

Without being able to use a specific Bible, we're just asking general questions about a specific religion, which devolves rapidly.

(Or a specific doctrine/doctrinal tradition/ etc.)

Surely the best answer is the one that is most complete... An if statement looks like x in java, java script and php, like y in vb, vba, vbscript, etc

Same for covering different doctrines, bibles, etc

5:01 PM

@Waggers What experts are you attempting to draw? Who knows all about FLDS, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witness, Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Baptist doctrines, etc?

And we have seen unconditionally that what we end up with isn't a list of doctrines, but a list of opinions.

There's no one-answer-one-doctrine limit

"I think it means X."

@Waggers Then how do you determine "Right" and "wrong"? How do you vote? This site turns immediately into Survivor

An exper t in christianity will have a good knowledge of alternative doctrines

@Waggers Mmm... I disagree. I think they'll have a base knowledge, but won't be able to speak from at an expert level.

@Richard, I think that's one of the fundamental differences between our creeds. (the ability and propensity to quote). In general, Catholics avoid quote slinging mainly because we're a little slow on the draw, but also because they're rattling loosely in the backs of our minds from Mass where we hear the same thing every 3 years. And furthermore, we (the Catholic laity) are not even supposed to invent our own ideas about scripture.

5:04 PM

Answers still need to be supported and/or verifiable, that doesn't change by widening their scope

@PeterTurner Right! I think that most denominations believe that the laymen shouldn't invent their own understanding of the scripture. Protestantism is a bit different that way.

@Waggers Do you think that there's a quality problem?

@waggers I don't think I'd want an answer from an expert in Christianity. I don't know that the Pope has even an inkling of LDS or Jehovah's Witness doctrine, but I'd have to hope his answers would be highly regarded on the site.

Yes and no

@PeterTurner I suspect he has a good base knowledge. But I wouldn't necessarily trust his opinions on LDS or JH views.

The quality is better than I expected when we first started in private beta

but we're not attracting experts

5:08 PM

@Waggers Really? Wow. It's worse than I expected.

@Waggers Partly, this will come with time. However, we have to have the questions that will draw the experts.

Family time. Back later :)

@Richard well, I trust his opinions on matters of faith and morals in the absolute sense. Catholicism, and most of Christianity, is against relativism so maybe questions that can't be answered with certitude should be disallowed.

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3 hours later…

7:42 PM

A real expert in Christianity would have a good idea of other doctrines. I speak to Bible college professors and they know that sort of thing. Maybe not LDS or JW, but certainly a wide variety of Protestants and a good idea of Catholic doctrine.

@DJClayworth good afternoon to you too

@DJClayworth Agreed, however how many people are actually experts in "Christianity" (a rather nebulous term)? Aren't way more people experts in church history, doctrine, OT/NT or Christology?

8:30 PM

@Richard Yeah. My previous experience of a web based Christianity forum (and yes, I know we are NOT a discussion forum) was the one on the BBC site, which was rife with aggressive atheists lambasting Christians who didn't agree with them, with the content very apologetics based and very little in the way of positive discussion of theology, doctrine, hermeneutics, etc. I wasn't expecting this to be exactly like that, but that was my benchmark

So essentially this had to be better!

@Richard The concern is that right now we're not even drawing the non-experts

@PeterTurner Sure, the Pope's answers on Catholicism would no doubt be highly regarded. But if he can't answer questions on other denominations with some considerable expertise then he's not an expert on Christianity, which is what this site is all about

Granted, an expert in Java isn't necessarily an expert in C++ but they can both be expert programmers. So there's no doubt that the Pope is an expert in certain fields of Christianity. I suspect he knows his Bible pretty well, and could easily answer a "what does the Bible say about X" question. But that doesn't have to be a Catholicism doctrine question for his answer to be valid

When I think about "experts" versus "novices" I question things like "Who are our experts? What will draw them in?" Ultimately, I realize the problem is not that we don't have experts. It's not that we aren't drawing them.

The problem is that we have low quality answers being generated.

That is the goal of the standards we created. How do we fix the low quality answers?

Widening the scope, I believe, would make things worse.

8:47 PM

@Richard Could you explain more why you feel this way? I feel like I've been getting very good answers to my questions (when I ask good questions, that is).

@JustinY Aah, when you ask good questions. That, we believe is the key to getting good answers. Let me find some broad, poorly scoped questions for you that got some bad answers.

2

Q: What can we do to grow closer to God?

Throughout my life, I've been close to God sometimes and further away at other times. This "distance" is present in both my emotions and also in my devotion. I mention both of those because there are times when I feel close to God emotionally, but far from Him in my devotions. Conversely, ther...

This example shows that all answers received had absolutely no support to it. It's filled with pure opinion. There's no expertise in there. It drew no expert answers.

The question itself drew opinions.

6

Q: Should we allow doctors or God to heal us?

Inspired by this post regarding moving mountains by faith. God has told us to rely on him (Matthew 6:25-34) for all things. Also, James 5:15 says And the prayer of faith will make the indisposed one well, and Jehovah will raise him up. Also, if he has committed sins, it will be forgiven ...

Another good example. This one is asking "What is the doctrine of X?" without actually specifying "X".

"Should Catholics allow doctors to heal them or God?" is a much better answer since there will certainly be a good solid doctrine about that rather than some half-baked opinion.

7

Q: When are children held accountable for ther sins?

There's an interesting topic regarding the salvation of unborn babies that inspired this question. I believe that babies that die previous to birth go to heaven. I also believe that young children that die go to heaven as well. But at what point are children responsible for their sins? My 2...

Again, some doctrines hold that children are accountable for their sins at a given age. Some do not. This question is a poor question without the light of doctrine.

Okay, I can agree with that.

I thought maybe you had more recent trends in mind.

I think things are much better than before.

@JustinY I agree.

In terms of quality.

What we're lacking is quantity.

@JustinY Yes, but most betas have that issue. We can rebuild. But we have to fix the quality issue in the process.

8:55 PM

Agreed, but we have to find a way to get quantity without sacrificing the quality we have achieved.

or are attempting to achieve.

@Richard right, now we have the problem of most other betas, intead of super unique ones

Why have people like Caleb, Jonathan Byrd, and Starman stopped asking questions?

(others can be added to the list)

Me.

@Richard I already think the scope of the site is too wide, if I'm brutally honest. But I also think the scope of questions should be allowed to be as wide as the scope of the site. There are some subjects that do span all denominations and where doctrine is irrelevant. Questions on those subjects can still be sufficiently focussed to produce good, supported answers.

8:57 PM

Please provide examples.

I know that it's possible to have good supportive answers. But I've seen far too many questions that simply don't.

The question that prompted this discussion is a good example

John 1:1 In the beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god.

New World Translation places Jesus as a separate god.

@JustinY Right now we're scraping the bottom of the (empty) barrel, hoping to find something of good quality there. If we have sufficient quantity, there will inevitably be some better quality questions in there. THEN we can afford to start cherry-picking

The entire question is invalidated using that translation as a basis.

But that's not a quote from the Bible as most Christians would recognise it

That's what I mean by the scope of the site being too wide

9:01 PM

@Waggers This site cannot distinguish between a JH and a non-JH "Christian".

@Richard Why not?

If the community can agree a definition of Christianity, why shouldn't we accept it?

@Waggers I agree. We have a bad definition of "Christian". I've said this from the beginning. If you can define "Christian" for us in a way that isn't inflammatory, then I might agree to support it.

5

Q: What is the definition of "Christian"?

For the purpose of answering questions along the lines of "Is X Christian?" (several examples of which have already come up--and undoubtedly will continue to come up, especially once the site is public), I wonder if we need a definition of "Christian." As I mentioned in one of my own answers, th...

discussion faq site-definition on-topic-definition

@Waggers because we aren't allowed to.

@Waggers This is the problem. We can't agree!!

I've gotta go.

Best of luck.

Thanks Richard, see you soon

9:04 PM

@Waggers Are we cherry picking? It's not like we're deleting anything ... and a lot of the stuff that gets closed also gets worked on and re-opened. The problem is with some of the questions that come along that OP's doing want to take the time to learn a little even to ask a better question. Those tend to stagnate.

@Richard I don't think we've tried. We started off with the premise that everyone who self identifies as a Christian is a Christian, and we've taken that as gospel (no pun intended)

@Caleb Cherry picking is probably the wrong phrase

@Waggers right and that came down from on high. We might be able to change it, but based on the fact that SE mandated it from day one (something they rarely do) I'd say its going to be tough to do anything else

I've tried to help every OP that I've closed a question on help get their questions answered. I know other mods and community folks have helped re-write stuff too. The idea here is that we need to help bring things up to par and show how it's can be done ... to prove that this is a viable site.

@waxeagle Ah, I wasn't aware that's where it came from. I thought it was just proposed and agreed by the community at definition stage

@JustinY All my SE time lately has gone into moderating. I'm not done asking, but I've spent all my time helping other people re-write their questions that I haven't had time to write any of my own.

9:06 PM

@Waggers no it was set in stone by SE.

@Caleb But Richard's locking of a question doesn't really help that. Was he right to re-close and lock after the community had voted to reopen?

@waxeagle That does indeed make life tricky.

@Waggers I've seen it happen before on another site.

@Waggers Judging from how contentious the meta post has been -- yes I think the lock until the dust settles is warranted. He tried to edit the question so it could have a scope and the OP could have helped refine that to their liking, but when sombebody else stepped in and reverted that and tried to make it too broad again in denial of their being a recognized issue ... then its' time to work out the issue on meta before turning people loose on it agian.

@waxeagle It makes sense to a degree to mandate something, to prevent an endless debate taking place. It's just a pity they mandated that and not the Nicene Creed or something of that ilk

@Caleb makes sense.

@Waggers The community didn't re-open it either. He didn't re-close it.

9:10 PM

@Waggers I think it was smart. Very PC. Imagine the headlines: SO doesn't consider Mormons and JW's to be Christians.

It's collected a couple of re-open votes but it didn't re-open before the content dispute broke out.

@Waggers I would have loved that, but we started off with a diverse intial group (Mormons, JWs, Catholics and Mainlines) so we wouldn't have been able to agree on a creed. We still have the same group and its still going to be impossible to agree.

@Caleb Sorry, it was the locking/unlocking and the content dispute notice that was done and undone then redone

@waxeagle Ok, but since we like making SO analogies, that's the equivalent of mandating that everyone who considers themselves a programmer is a programmer (even if they have never done any programming in their life)

@Waggers That was only re-done because he forgot to set a time-out for it to unlock itself after so he had to unlock it and re-lock it with the right settings.

@Caleb I see :)

9:13 PM

@Waggers this is exactly it. (Ive actually made this analogy).

So, if the question in question stated that it's scope is the Bible(s) recognised by Nicene Creed churches, would that be sufficient focus?

I don't see how SE's definition of Christianity is a problem. Questions would still require scope even if Christians were limited to those who uphold the Nicene Creed.

@Waggers Sometimes

@Waggers I don't think that works as a question scope.

@waxeagle Not for most questions, no. But this is a "what does the Bible say" question. The only real query about it is, which Bible?

@JustinY True, but it would mean the scope of some questions was inherited from the scope of the site. We wouldn't have this debate about whether a "what does the Bible say" question includes the NWT and other non-Nicene-Creed variations of the Bible

Still, it's set in stone and we can't change it, so I guess there's no point in discussing it

Since this is a Bible question can we migrate it to BH? (joking. Actually, only half-joking.)

And, on a related but different point - does BH have the same problem we have (that SE has dictated they must accept any version/variation of the Bible accepted by people who self identify as Christians or Jews)?

9:38 PM

@Waggers While searching for an answer to your question I found this interesting post and answer:

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A: How can we attract high-quality Biblical scholars and still be welcoming to interested amateurs?

Don't dwell too much about being specifically "welcoming" to interested amateurs, per se. Our mantra is always "be nice." But make no mistake about it: Build a site for experts with great expert answers, and the less-expert users will take care of themselves. This is right out of the blog post: ...

Perhaps we should stop worrying about amateurs as Robert Cartaino suggests.

0

A: Enough with the "Which Bible" illogicality

I think you are being overly reactionary here and need to step back and consider the bigger problem. If you don't think we had a problem with questions not being focused enough to answer in a sane way, you can go back through the reams of discussions, posts, and documents regarding that issue. Se...

Nice response Caleb.

@JustinY Hard to argue with, that. I think one of our biggest problems - particularly for those of us from evangelical denominations - is that our whole lives are about "worrying about the amateurs"

user2334

@Waggers I think Caleb's last few lines in his answer is on point:

user2334

> We are not a church and do not have the same focus as a church. We are not trying to cater to seekers and answer every question out there. We're trying to build a site for experts.

2

user2334

9:47 PM

Christianity.SE is not intended to be an avenue for evangelism.

@Waggers C.SE isn't a church. People who treat this like a ministry are going to butt heads with our aims. We're trying to attract experts that know the issues and can engage in the details, not door-greeters that nod and smile no matter what you say when you walk in the door to a church.

2

I know this. It's just quite a mind-shift, especially when you see behaviour that could be construed as less than welcoming

It is indeed a great response, Caleb

I think that if we started asking more high-quality questions ourselves then it would make these issues with the low-quality questions less significant.

We wouldn't notice as much because we would be busy asking and answering better questions.

user2334

@PeterTurner Have you happened upon my answer about minor basilicas? First downvote I've received on a "why do Catholics do X?" question; would appreciate a second look by you to make sure I didn't misrepresent anything.

user2334

@JustinY While that'd be ideal, we shouldn't be asking questions just to seed the site. I think rather than doing that or answering any question that gets asked, we can look at the questions that are getting asked and ask ourselves "how can this question be improved?"

user2334

9:59 PM

Like the Jesus's claim to divinity question: lot of talk about the question and how maybe the OP didn't know how to ask it. Well, why not improve it?

user2334

Flimzy and I were talking the other day that it'd probably be just fine if it only asked about literal instances where Jesus claimed to be God and avoided the whole interpretive part

@MarkTrapp Because (a) it's locked and (b) we can't be sure we'd be improving it in line with what the OP was really asking. At least that's the response I keep hearing; not sure I totally agree with it

user2334

@Waggers The question's not locked, it's closed. It can be edited right now. And if nobody know's what the OP intended, why are people defending it?

@MarkTrapp We'd still need clarification on "which Bible?" Even if it's simple as "excluding the NWT"

user2334

Oh, nevermind. It was recently locked

10:01 PM

:0

oops, meant :)

user2334

@Waggers That question's irrelevant if it's just about what was literally written in the Bible without the whole "can we infer X from other passages part?" That is, the "Before Abraham was, I am" passage would not be a correct answer

It's late, I can't even type smileys right now!

@MarkTrapp So I guess John 1:1 wouldn't either

The only snag with the no interpretation thing is that it then may become BH.SE territory instead of C.SE. Personally I've no problem with it being migrated there :)

user2334

I don't think any of the current answers would do it. They could, in the process of saying "Nowhere", mention how others infer it, (i.e. "Nowhere, but according to X, we infer that Passage X:Y alludes to it")

user2334

@Waggers Yeah, I agree on that.

@Waggers It's locked because somebody was rolling back attempts to improve it. If some community wants to step in and help convince that somebody that they were being counter-productive we can fast track the unlock.

@Waggers Not knowing what the OP intended is when we comment asking for input and close it pending their response. That's how the system works.

10:06 PM

@Caleb You and your hint-dropping

@MarkTrapp Actually there is a locked question out there because we had somebody removing attempts at improving it.

@Caleb So you disagree with Mark that we should try to improve it? (because doing so would be second-guessing the OP's intentions?)

1

Q: What is grace according to the bible?

So what is grace? What does the bible say that it is? I have to put more text here because stackexchange does not allow me to answer such short questions. But the question is just that short one: What is grace?

@Waggers No I think there might be ways to improve it ... and I've unlocked it.

@Caleb Brave!

user2334

10:11 PM

I'm going to take a stab at it based on what we've talked about here

@MarkTrapp Knock yourself out.

Would it be okay to rework that question to ask for a summary of the different types of grace?

I think the required change is quite simple - specify which canon / Bible and either insist on literal proclamations of Jesus being God (or Son of God) or a doctrinal framework for interpretation

@JustinY Ya probably ... as long as it specifically demanded a fairly exclusive summary so that the standard for judging answers would be on how inclusive they are of the different views on what grace, not just how attractively they argued for one of them. It's still a bit broad but it would give them op someplace to start asking specific questions.

I like the Google philosophy - release early and iterate. If you can make it more focussed, Justin, then we can see if it's focussed enough.

user2334

10:17 PM

5

Q: Does Jesus ever claim to be God, or the son of God?

While I understand there are many potential passages in the Bible of Jesus claiming to be a messiah (which I understand to mean "anointed"), a king, or one through whom it is necessary to know God, I'm interested to know if there are any places where He literally claims to be God, God-like, or re...

user2334

Try that on

I like it

It's good. I think it still needs to specify whether it's talking about the Catholic Bible, Protestant Bible or NWT etc

That seemed to be Richard's main problem with it

@Waggers I'm not sure it does ... since it specifically asks for ones that DO support it, the known issue with translations that specifically avoid that issue is side-stepped.

user2334

Yeah, I think if you found a place where it does say it, your answer should specifically mention where you found it (i.e. which Bible/translation)

10:22 PM

@Caleb That's very neat. But a JW could still post a "my Bible is the NWT and nowhere does it say this" type answer and spark a voting war

@Waggers I would consider that a bad answer and downvote.

user2334

@Waggers I don't see why. If the NWT doesn't say it, it doesn't say it.

@Waggers Previously it was partly a yes/no answer that and different translations could be called on to defend either yes or no. Now it puts the burden of proof on those who would want to show where he does say that. Those who's interpretive stance has them understanding that are in pretty solid agreement on that, so it's about an order of magnitude less likely to spark a war.

@Waggers Sure it could, but I think its' far less likely than the previous iteration.

@Caleb No arguments there

@Caleb There's still a degree of yes/no to it - but I've certainly no qualms in it being reopened in this form. Presumably the existing answers would have to be deleted

Anyway I'm going to quit while we're ahead. Good work, Mark. Goodnight all

I don't think I can save that grace question without choosing a denomination.

Asking a broad question about the different types of grace would require too long of an answer.

A link to Wikipedia could solve that problem.

user2334

10:33 PM

@JustinY Would fit the "Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much." part of the #dontask section in the FAQ

10:51 PM

5

Q: Why does the OT discuss "trust in the Lord" while the NT discusses "faith?"

I just noticed that the word "faith" rarely appears in the Old Testament. The only two examples are in Deuteronomy 32:20 and Habakkuk 2:4 (KJV) 1. Yet faith is often discussed in the New Testament. The Old Testament seems to talk more about "trust in the Lord," a phrase which only shows up twice...

faith old-testament new-testament

Any tips on how to save that question?

It seems like more of a issue of translation.

Would it better fit on BH.SE?

user2334

@JustinY Does it need to be saved? The comments suggest BH.SE was the better place to which you crossposted.

@MarkTrapp The question on BH only addresses those two verses I mention from the OT. It doesn't address the larger idea of whether there is a difference between "trust in the Lord" and faith.

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