The Screwball Whine and Rant Area

[disciple100]

After looking at this I want to say some things that all present are most likely aware of, however, I think they need to be voiced if they have not already been.

Perhaps we spend a bit too much time coming up with 'creative nick names' for some of the more 'colorful' (dare I say) 'denizens' of Tweb, but to insult someone goes further than that. It is not an insult to call out a heretic for being an heretic. If someone is a sorceror and a sinner, it is not a sin to call them a sorceror and a sinner. Over the last several weeks I've been taking a class based on the book "Biblical Eldership: An Urgent Call To Restore Biblical Church Leadership" by Alexander Strauch, and one of the quotes that stuck with me was (on page 21 of the expanded version)

"We have somehow got hold of the idea that error is only that which is outrageously wrong; and we do not seem to understand that the most dangerous person of all is the one who does not emphasize the right things." (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Sermon on the Mount, 2: 244)

We have been learning about how a biblical elder is a shepherd elder, and one of the duties of the shepherd elder is to protect the flock from wolves, especially those 'wolves in sheep's clothing' who rise up from within the flock that Paul warns us about. (Acts 20:17, 28-31a) So to a certain degree the calling of a spade a spade is necessary, though perhaps too much is invested in how many times and ways to call a spade a spade? We are also told by Paul that an elder is not to be pugnacious nor quick tempered, among other things. (1 Timothy 3:2-7)(Titus 1:6-9) While everyone may not be called to be an elder in the church, these are certainly attributes that would behoove us all within the Church Body to have.

But then, another insult is to totally dismiss (and deject) someone, especially one who is either new to the forum and does not seem to understand some of the more blunt dialogue that goes on between the more, eh, seasoned Twebbers, or to wave away at a comment by a Tweb vet who has earned a certain amount of reputation and respect. We ARE all called to be above that. I know I have personally said things, both on and offline, that were more hipfire than anything and regretted it. But then, I'm not perfect, and as far as I know there is only One Who ever was. That is why we are called to 'practice' righteousness.

And now, back to our irregularly scheduled program.

[OfficialPro]

Outside of some of the very hateful things he wrote, I like Martin Luther just fine. I simply don't see why anyone would use his plainly hateful speech as an excuse to insult and hurt others with their words.



I'm assuming you just copied and pasted these passages from some website or something without knowing the full context. Let's go through them.



I don't see how this citation supports insults, nor is it directed towards the reader of the letter with the purpose to insult them. This is a letter to the (apparently healthy) Christian church based as Smyrna (I'm assuming specifically to Bishop Polycarp). In this passage Ignatius is discussing the heresy of docetism, and as Bishop of Antioch it was his duty to keep an eye on those who proclaimed to be followers of Jesus who believed this heresy, and to warn others about it. I don't know much about your particular translation of this letter, but the one commonly found online at places like Christian Classics Ethereal Library and New Advent reads a bit differently. Perhaps you're citing a more modern translation, but here's the 1885 translation..

The Epistle of Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans, Chapter 5, Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. From Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1. Edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885.)

Some ignorantly deny Him, or rather have been denied by Him, being the advocates of death rather than of the truth. These persons neither have the prophets persuaded, nor the law of Moses, nor the Gospel even to this day, nor the sufferings we have individually endured. For they think also the same thing regarding us. For what does any one profit me, if he commends me, but blasphemes my Lord, not confessing that He was [truly] possessed of a body? But he who does not acknowledge this, has in fact altogether denied Him, being enveloped in death. I have not, however, thought good to write the names of such persons, inasmuch as they are unbelievers. Yea, far be it from me to make any mention of them, until they repent and return to [a true belief in] Christ's passion, which is our resurrection.

© source where applicable

I agree that Irenaeus' language is harsh here. Again, like Ignatius, Irenaeus is using his position of authority as a Bishop to dispel and warn of a heresy within the church (specifically Gnosticism). Here is a modern translation of the same passage,

Against Heresies, Book I, Chapter 13, St. Irenaeus, From St. Irenaeus of Lyons Against the Heresies, Volume 1; Volume 55, translated by John J. Dillon, The Newman Press, 1992

A certain member of their company, Marcus by name, who boasts of correcting his teacher, is also very skilled in magical imposture. By this means he deceived many men and not a few women, and converted them to himself as to one most learned and most perfect/ possessed of the greatest power from invisible and unnameable regions. In truth, he was the forerunner of the Antichrist. For example, he combimes the buffooneries of Anaxilaus with the craftiness of so-called magicians. As a result those who have no sense and have lost their mind think he is working wonders.

© source where applicable

One should keep in mind that Anaxilaus lived some 200 years before this writing, and the buffooneries Irenaeus is referring to is Anaxilaus' use of magic which got him kicked out of Rome in 28 BC. Irenaeus may be purposely insulting those who have "no sense" and "lost their mind", or he may be describing what he perceives to be very true circumstances.



This is not a quote from Irenaeus, but from Tertullian (Against Marcion, Book IV, Chapter 40). Tertullian, though a great apologist, was not (as far as we know) an authority in the church but was (in my opinion) an over-zealous, and sometimes controversial member of the laity.

Your citation is fairly new, and comes from the book, "The Faith of the Early Fathers: A Source-book of Theological and Historical Passages from the Christian Writings of the Pre-Nicene and Nicene Eras, Volume 1, translated by W. A. Jurgens, published in 1970 (possibly republished in 1998). The volume set describes itself as a basic English-language reference book of patristic works.

The older 1885 version from the aforementioned Ante-Nicene Fathers (Vol. 3) translates the same passage this way,

Against Marcion, Book IV, Chapter 40, by Tertullian

Then, having taken the bread and given it to His disciples, He made it His own body, by saying, This is my body, that is, the figure of my body. A figure, however, there could not have been, unless there were first a veritable body. An empty thing, or phantom, is incapable of a figure. If, however, (as Marcion might say,) He pretended the bread was His body, because He lacked the truth of bodily substance, it follows that He must have given bread for us. It would contribute very well to the support of Marcion's theory of a phantom body, that bread should have been crucified! But why call His body bread, and not rather (some other edible thing, say) a melon, which Marcion must have had in lieu of a heart! He did not understand how ancient was this figure of the body of Christ, who said Himself by Jeremiah: I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter, and I knew not that they devised a device against me, saying, Let us cast the tree upon His bread, which means, of course, the cross upon His body.

© source where applicable

Whether Marcion has a pumpkin brain or a melon heart, I don't think is very defensible. Its really up to the reader to decide whether or not Tertullian's language here warrants the use of modern day insults towards others, but again, the language is applied towards an in-house heretic, so that's something to keep in mind.



Like others listed here, Athanasius is using authority as a Bishop to right the error of heresy within the church, specifically Arianism. I don't know where you got your translation from, but the translation from the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 4, 1892 reads,

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers

For such must be the nature of the Image as is Its Father, though the Arians in their blindness fail to see either that image or any other truth of the divine oracles. For being forced from the conceptions or rather misconceptions of their own hearts, they fall back upon passages of divine Scripture, and here too from want of understanding, according to their wont, they discern not their meaning; but laying down their own irreligion as a sort of canon of interpretation , they wrest the whole of the divine oracles into accordance with it. And so on the bare mention of such doctrine, they deserve nothing but the reply, 'You do err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God Matthew 22:29;' and if they persist in it, they must be put to silence, by the words, 'Render to' man 'the things that are' man's, 'and to God the things that are' God's.

© source where applicable

This passage doesn't offer any excuse for insult, but simply lays out the truth of the situation; The Arians were spiritually blind, and they lacked understanding of the scripture's meaning. Athanasius, as an authority in the church had the right to call them out and correct them on that error, as well as to warn others of that error. I don't see the reason the other two passages were cited or how they make the point for insult rhetoric.



As a Protestant, the rhetoric of Jerome is not really worth my time defending, since I believe he was mostly wrong for lambasting Jovinianus' and Helvidius' stand against asceticism, and the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity. Jerome was a controversial individual in other ways as well.

Anyways, I'm not sure how useful these passages are in figuring out how one should carry themselves as ambassadors for Christ. The Bible tells Christians in no uncertain terms how we should talk to others. With gentleness, meekness, gracefulness, not rewarding insult for insult or evil for evil. If you are an authority within your local church body (or the church at large) then you not only have the right, but are commanded to teach, warn, correct, and reprove those under your care, but nowhere in the Bible (that I know of) are Christians instructed to cuss out unbelievers, or to draw grotesque portraits of them in hopes of shaming them. Furthermore, with the exception of maybe Jerome and Tertullian, the type of rhetoric employed by the writers above is not a whole lot like the worst that's sometimes seen here. You are good people who love God, and I know that there are some of you who believe in your heart of hearts that this attitude of "insult the unrighteous" is off.

Tone Argument™ raises its ugly head...

[Thersites]

Tone Argument™ raises its ugly head...

A few hundred words adequately answered in 6? I don't think that's quite fair.

Care to elaborate?

[OfficialPro]

A few hundred words adequately answered in 6? I don't think that's quite fair.

Care to elaborate?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Tone+argument

[Thersites]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Tone+argument

The discussions of "tone argument" to which the google search pointed me tend to relate to discrimination- specifically, racism and sexism. The substance of tone argument, according to these links, is that the arguer uses the tone of the person as an excuse not to listen to their complaints about the injustices they have suffered or as a way to avoid taking action against such discrimination. An angry tone, according to these links, is justified if for no other reason than one should not be expected to have to ask politely to get someone to stop stepping on one's toes.

Tone argument, if it is to be derided, must be understood as in some way fallacious. These links suggest that the fallacy lies in refusing to listen to a basically valid argument because it is not worded politely- in other words, "I'd listen to you if you weren't so mean." That does not seem to me to be what Adrift said or meant. Adrift is not using tone as an excuse to ignore your arguments or anyone else's. Tone argument is totally irrelevant to this discussion.

If you're not going to care about this discussion enough to actually pay attention to the other person's argumentation instead of wrongly dismissing it as fallacious, then you shouldn't be surprised when people start ignoring what you say. Even that isn't "tone argument," it's you destroying your own credibility.

[Thersites]

Ya know, here's just another example of something else that annoys me: rudeness, even when totally unjustifiable, goes totally unchallenged in most instances. If I saw y'all policing yourselves more often (like it or not, it's really easy to mistake the individuals who regularly participate in Tekton threads for a hive-mind), I wouldn't be complaining. It's not about comments being modded (if the people who step in happen to be moderators, fine, but it shouldn't just be them), it's about taking each other seriously as representatives of a group: one person's errors, if uncorrected, reflect poorly on the entire group.

This was actually just a way to the thread to try to get officialpro to either provide an apologia or apologize for their use of the term "tone argument", but any conversation that stems from this would be fine.

[OfficialPro]

Ya know, here's just another example of something else that annoys me: rudeness, even when totally unjustifiable, goes totally unchallenged in most instances. If I saw y'all policing yourselves more often (like it or not, it's really easy to mistake the individuals who regularly participate in Tekton threads for a hive-mind), I wouldn't be complaining. It's not about comments being modded (if the people who step in happen to be moderators, fine, but it shouldn't just be them), it's about taking each other seriously as representatives of a group: one person's errors, if uncorrected, reflect poorly on the entire group.

This was actually just a way to the thread to try to get officialpro to either provide an apologia or apologize for their use of the term "tone argument", but any conversation that stems from this would be fine.

You misunderstand. I wasn't saying Adrift was using it. I was saying Tone Argument rears its ugly head. Someone was using it. Not Adrift.

[Thersites]

You misunderstand. I wasn't saying Adrift was using it. I was saying Tone Argument rears its ugly head. Someone was using it. Not Adrift.

Then who was using it and when?

[shunyadragon]

Then who was using it and when?

JP Holding

[OfficialPro]

Then who was using it and when?

Whoever Adrift was referring to.

[OfficialPro]

JP Holding

You're confused, man. People use Tone Argument AGAINST JPH.

[Thersites]

Whoever Adrift was referring to.

In the post in question, Adrift refers to Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus of Lyons, Tertullian, and Athanasius, Martin Luther and St. Jerome. He was discussing the (rather sharp) rhetoric used by these. The only other people to whom Adrift referred in the post were the various targets of this rhetoric and Manwe Sulimo. Which of these was using tone argument?

[OfficialPro]

In the post in question, Adrift refers to Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus of Lyons, Tertullian, and Athanasius, Martin Luther and St. Jerome. He was discussing the (rather sharp) rhetoric used by these. The only other people to whom Adrift referred in the post were the various targets of this rhetoric and Manwe Sulimo. Which of these was using tone argument?

whoever he was talking to that was insisting that all the above were always nice all the time.

[Thersites]

whoever he was talking to that was insisting that all the above were always nice all the time.

No one in the conversation made that claim about those writers. If I am wrong, I encourage you to show me.

Adrift responded to Manwe, who was responding to Adrift, who was responding to Raphael, who was responding to Venryx. None of these, so far as I can tell, was using tone argument.

Besides, you had already (wrongly) accused Venryx of using tone argument, so it wouldn't make sense for you to repeat the accusation so long after he had exited the conversation, much less while quoting Adrift. Any reasonable person would assume that you were referring to Adrift's post when you mentioned tone argument.

If you're not making your claims clearly, you shouldn't be surprised when people misinterpret you.

[OfficialPro]

No one in the conversation made that claim about those writers. If I am wrong, I encourage you to show me.

Adrift responded to Manwe, who was responding to Adrift, who was responding to Raphael, who was responding to Venryx. None of these, so far as I can tell, was using tone argument.

Besides, you had already (wrongly) accused Venryx of using tone argument, so it wouldn't make sense for you to repeat the accusation so long after he had exited the conversation, much less while quoting Adrift. Any reasonable person would assume that you were referring to Adrift's post when you mentioned tone argument.

If you're not making your claims clearly, you shouldn't be surprised when people misinterpret you.

it's the general tendency of some people to claim that JPH is not being "nice" or is being too "insulting" that it seemed that Adrift was referring to, if not in direct reference to any that he replied to. I think he was just making a general statement on that.

You seem to interpret what I am posting rather literally?