Secret Alias wrote: ↑Fri Sep 23, 2022 4:17 pm
My point is we should try to incorporate the Church Fathers into any understanding of early Christianity. This is controversial?
It is certainly "controversial" when you insist on your interpretation of them as the only valid one -- and throw out an insulting response against someone who tries introduce a different approach.
SA, if you are wanting rules for a scholarly discussion, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You will find many statements of such rules on the web put out by research institutes and universities. One thing they will all have in common, I suspect, is the obligation to treat peers with respect and avoid any form of denigration of others. If only more biblical scholars followed those rules! But we don't have to follow the bad examples here.
You clearly don't have patience for LC's views. Okay -- following the professional standards that exist already, you are free to ignore them without comment. You are also free to argue against them with respect.
I for one am glad LC has expressed his views here because it has given me a chance to ask him some critical questions that I have had about his theory. As a result, I have been forced to think more deeply about how I would respond were I to take the time to engage with his views.
When you try to define limits to a discussion as you are doing here -- reducing it to a sporting field with do's and don'ts re content -- then you are opposing free academic inquiry.
It is a "good thing" that someone challenges us to think carefully about how we know what we know, or think we know. Evidence is always subject to interpretation. Years back I took "time out" to try to figure out exactly how we knew anything about the past, especially the ancient past. The answer is not immediately self-evident. We always have to be ready to question anything and everything we believe or take for granted or read in a scholarly publication.
If one cannot answer an opponents objections rationally and calmly, but cannot help but throw in insults and denigration, then I suspect that person has a weak spot that they cannot defend rationally.
If we think that our point of view is the only valid one on any particular point, and we cannot understand how or why someone else sees it differently, then we have a problem and need to do more to understand that other point of view. Only then can we be in a position to engage in a rational and scholarly discussion -- otherwise we are reduced to impatience and hostility and denigration --- the very things that most codes of conduct in academic institutions condemn.