Questions about theology, doctrine, philosophy
We're off to a great start and even have our first question! The question provokes some interesting questions about scope that I figured it'd be best to raise here for the community to discuss.
Typically, questions that are theological/doctrinal/philosophical in nature should specify a specific tradition from which they wish to hear, to prevent from being too broad and to enable answers to be evaluated based on conformity to a specific Christian tradition. Alternatively, we could allow answers from any Christian perspective (and ask that those posting answers state their perspective). What do you think?
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Part of the issue within Christianity is where various traditions turn for authority. For example:
- Protestant, non-denominational: The Bible alone (defined as the 66-book, traditional Protestant canon).
- Protestant, Lutheran: This differs depending on the specific Lutheran denomination, but they tend to advocate "Scripture alone" as above but consider the Lutheran Confessions (the set of documents is also somewhat differently defined by various groups) to be true and binding expositions of the Scriptures. Other confessional denominations also have historical documents they consider to be binding interpretations of Scripture.
- Catholic: Authority includes the Holy Roman Pontiff (the Pope), ecclesiastical councils and Sacred Scripture, the latter of which includes the deuterocanonical texts as part of the biblical canon. Beyond this, it depends on the specific rite (e.g., Latin, Byzantine/Ruthenian), as each rite has its own set(s) of canon law, ecclesiastical documents, etc.
- Eastern Orthodox: This can also somewhat depend on the specific jurisdiction, but largely includes the ecumenical councils, Sacred Scripture (which includes even more texts than Roman Catholics and also considers the Greek Septuagint to be the authoritative Old Testament), canon law, and patristic consensus (however defined).
As you can (hopefully) see:
- Christians don't agree on what constitutes "the Bible" (or "Scripture").
- Christians don't agree on what other historical councils, documents, etc. are authoritative (if any), and how they are to be used within churches.
- There is an incredibly large array of opinions and perspectives within the Christian faith.
This makes it challenging to answer questions seeking a broad overview of Christian perspectives (particularly when some questions assume an authority model such as that of the first bullet). As such, another Christian community has required that questions asking about theology, doctrine, etc. specify a perspective from which they wish to hear. I think this is prudent.
Alternatively, as recommended by another user, we could allow questions to ask their questions "as is" and allow answers from any perspective (but should likely ask that answers state their perspective).
Further, sometimes (largely evangelical) Protestants wish to hear "what the Bible says" about a specific topic, but assume an authority model (and which books constitute "the Bible" consistently with the first bullet). One other community uses a "biblical basis" tag to indicate these types of questions. I propose that such questions here are labeled as "non-denominational" (Protestant) or similar since they are essentially questions seeking answers assuming this authority model.
The Christianity Stack Exchange site didn't take long to realise that free-for-all questions were a bad idea. This isn't inevitable, if all the community members are exceptional respectful and patient with each other. But as a religion which (mostly) teaches Original Sin this isn't a very good assumption ;).
So while I'd recommend just requiring well-scoped questions from the beginning, if this site community wants to allow unscoped questions with scoped answers, they should do so as an experiment, and be prepared to tighten the rules quickly if it doesn't work out.
I don't feel that there's a reason we necessarily have to take the view that questions have to be about a specific tradition; there's no reason a question has to have a single 'best answer' - answers are answers, voting dictates how good/bad that answer is, there's no reason we can't have 5 answers all being equally good, is there?
If we were to allow such a thing, answers should indicate which 'tradition' this comes from, except when it shouldn't. That is, maybe someone has a really good answer explaining the differences between all the traditions, which can be good and interesting to know. I don't see the point in forbidding such questions from the get-go, unless there's something I'm missing?[1]
Don't get me wrong, if there's a reason that all questions should indicate a specific tradition, then listening to that reason is important, of course. But we can decide what is 'too broad' and just because someone can evaluate one answer doesn't mean they have to evaluate them all, I'd have thought?
Also, if someone wants to specify a single tradition, or authority model, then they should absolutely be free to do so.
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There very well could be something I'm missing here. Also, just because I have a little marker by my username doesn't mean you have to listen to me either, this answer is purely my own opinion. ↩︎
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