http://socrates58.blogspot.com/
<< Hays has chimed in, completely missing the point, as usual. This guy is amazingly obtuse, or else he is purposely provocative (probably a little of both).
Pray for him. Someone who has to continually rely on lies about other belief-systems in his apologetic. >>
I challenge Armstrong to document my “lies” about other belief-systems. Let’s see if he has the guts to back up his charge.
<< not to mention, pejorative terminology. >>
<< Undaunted by either common courtesy >>
In this thread alone, here are a few choice examples of Armstrong’s customary courtesy:
“Asinine ,” “downright idiotic,” “amazingly obtuse.”
Sounds pretty pejorative to me.
Why does Armstrong resort to pejorative usage if he disapproves of it himself?
<< The fallacies in Hays' pseudo-linguistic defense are obvious (I wouldn't even trouble myself to point them out, except for the fact that he doesn't get it) >>
Translation: whenever Armstrong is beaten at his own game, he changes the rules or moves the goal-post.
<< If the Bible is to Protestantism what the pope is to Catholicism (infallible authority), then if Catholicism is "popish", Protestantism must be "Biblish," right? But of course no one uses such an idiotic title. It's left to our anti-Catholic Protestrant brethren to come up with "Popish."
If following the pope as an authority is "popery", then following the Bible as an authority (i.e., within the sola Scriptura paradigm, etc. -- Catholics, too, accept the Bible as an inspired authority) must be "Biblery." >>
Once again, Armstrong is struggling with rudimentary English grammar. We already have linguistic forms to express these relations:
“Biblicist,” “Biblicism.”
It’s simply that in forming adjectives from nouns, different sorts of words take different suffixes.
<< Baptists believe in the authority of local congregations only (strictly speaking). So again, if Catholicism amounts to "popery" and "popish" religion, then congregationalism must be "elderish" or "pastorish" or "elder-ery" or "pastor-ery" religion. If one is a Presbyterian, by this "logic" they are both "Biblish" and "presbyterish" or practice a faith which should be called "Presbyter-ery" or "Presbyterish Christianity".
Hey, Lutherans refer to themselves by use of their founder's name. So it stands to reason that they ought to also legitimately be called "Lutherish" or "Luther-ery" or "Lutherist" or "Lutheranist".
This is not about “logic,” this is about linguistic conventions for forming adjectives from nouns. Another word-group is formed from the “-an” suffix, viz., Anglican, Arian, Aristotelian, Augustinian, Bavarian, Calvinian, Colossian, Corinthian, Darwinian, Dominican, Ephesian, Franciscan, Gregorian, Iranian, latitudinarian, Marian, millenarian, Mohammaedan, Philippian, predestinarian, Roman, Sabbatarian, Sabellian, seminarian, supralapsarian, Thessalonian, Trinitarian, ubiquitarian, Unitarian, &c.
I didn’t invent the English language. English grammar doesn’t follow the laws of logic. This is simply a matter of historical usage, with its own sociolinguistic principles of morphology.
Words like “Romanist,” “popery,” and “papist,” as well as variations thereon, represent established historical English usage, with exactly the same etymological pedigree as other proper adjectives formed from proper nouns, including place names and proper names, according to whichever suffix linguistic convention assigns to the morphology of that particular word-group.
It's time to come out of the jungle, Dave. We won, Japan lost.
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Several comments:
ReplyDelete1.Notice that I allow Dave to post this at Triablogue. Indeed, if you go through the archives you'll see that a number of Roman Catholics have responded to various things I've written, and they're been given full rein to criticize me and my writing. They are also allowed to post links to their own sources. I've never deleted any of their comments. I've never censured them.
So, whatever my character flaws, which are abundant and evident, I try to be fair and give my opponent an even playing field to take his best shot.
2.Why doesn't Dave ever take his own advice? Why this incapacity for self-criticism? Why does he make no effort to emulate the virtues he urges on everyone else?
3.Notice, one again, that Dave is shifting ground. His original objection was that my designations didn't have a "proper etymological pedigree." He continued to flail away that this hopeless claim in the teeth of demonstrable evidence to the contrary.
4. Now, however, he is changing his tune. Now his objection is not that my usage is substandard or solecistical, but that it is derogatory, derisive, pejorative, offensive, objectionable, hostile, contemptuous, disparaging, and opprobrious.
This is worth discussing, but it's not the original objection.
5. He also describes my usage as "unethical and unChristian behavior, by any objective criterion."
Well, my objective criterion is the word of God, and Scripture is chock-full of derogatory, derisive, pejorative, offensive, hostile, contemptuous, disparaging, objectionable, and opprobrious language.
Just read the OT prophets. Or Mt 23. Or 2 Peter. Or Jude. Or Revelation.
6. This doesn't mean that it's always appropriate for use to use such language. But to say that it's never appropriate is simply contrary to Scripture itself. Of course, I'm a biblicist, not a Romanist--so my objective criterion is different than Dave's.
Should we go out of our way to be offensive? No. Should we go out of our way to be inoffensive? No.
7. Dave's Dictionary of History also commits the illicit totality transfer fallacy. The meaning of a word is not defined by all of the incidental associations of usage. "Popery" doesn't mean that the Pope is a tyrant, worshipped by Roman Catholics. "Popery" does not mean that Roman Catholicism is effeminate.
8. Dave also says that "if a group were as heretical and abominable as it is thought to be; that wouldn't give any professed Christian the "right" or prerogative to call them what they don't want to be called."
Here Dave and I have a principled disagreement. I have a perfect right to call a spade a spade.
We live in the age of the thought-police, in a time when--on the one hand--the liberal establishment makes propagandistic use of euphemisms as a political weapon to advance its radical agenda while--on the other hand--it criminalizes Scriptural and/or scientifically accurate usage as defamatory hate-speech.
Likewise, cults and heresies deliberately and habitually co-opt Christian terminology to cash in on respectable usage in order to further their disreputable ends. By controlling the language, they control their public self-image.
This is linguistic theft. And I will never be a willing party to the deceptive and manipulatory use of language.
9.In Scripture, there is also a principle of escalating and aggravating guilt. You begin with gentleness and charity. But if the audience is stiff-necked, it is then appropriate to assume a harsher tone of voice. You are welcome to reprove me whenever I misapply the standard, but that is the standard.
BTW, what do you bet that Dave will never address any of the specifics of my explanation. What do you bet that he will simply slap his all-purpose "anti-Catholic" sticker on my reply and then pat himself on the back for having gone the second mile. "Ah, he tried his very best, but there's just no dealing with such people!"
Apparently there's an escape clause in paragraph 22, subsection 144, article 37 of his resolution.
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Dave said:
ReplyDelete<< I'll refer to your warped, stunted, facile version of Christianity as "idiotism" or "intellectual suicidism" or "pompous assism" or how about "sophomoric sophism." >>
Thanks, Dave, for yet another illustration of your unwavering commitment to common courtesy and studied avoidance of anything savoring of the derogatory, derisive, pejorative, offensive, objectionable, hostile, contemptuous, disparaging, and opprobrious.
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First of all, Dave, why should I avoid making my point in light of a "crucial distinction" which you had not introduced until after I made my point? Is this one of those SF time-travel conundra?
ReplyDeleteSecond, I confess that I'm quite unable to tell when you're illustrating absurdity by being absurd, and when you're illustrating absurdity by being serious since all of your arguments are equally absurd, whether or not your being serious or intentioally absurd. But if you can offer me some "objective criterion" to tell the difference," I promise to do my best!
Third, what you're doing here is a classic throwaway argument. Like a lawyer who asks a question he knows will be overruled, but asks it anyway to plant the idea in the jury's mind, you're trying to sneak in your point and then exclaim that it was all just a rhetorical device, not to be taken seriously at all. That way you reap the benefit of having scored your point without being held responsible for it.
Very cute, Dave, and very transparent.
Xenophon,
ReplyDeleteAnother item of my stated editorial policy is that while people are free to say anything they like about me, minus cuss words, they are not equally free to say anything they like about everyone else. Triablogue is not free space for you to dump on Christendom in general and vent all your personal peeves against the church. If you want to do that, go somewhere else and start your own blog. You are a guest here. Conduct yourself like a house guest should. Triablogue is not a tacky afternoon talkshow where a guest gets to badmouth everyone within earshot because he got burned by this person or that person.
No, Xenophon, what you are doing, as you well know, is not merely to say that Protestants need to read the Bible, but that Protestantism in general is just as bad off as Romanism. That is not an exhortation to read the Bible; that's an indictment of modern-day Evangelicalism as a whole.
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How have I "wildly misread you"? You continue to accuse Protestants, as a lump sum, of not actually reading the Bible, or failing to read the Bible holistically.
ReplyDeleteSo, yes, this is a general purpose slam against the Evangelical church, an outlook which resembles the classic cultic view of church history where "all the world's queer but me and thee, and sometimes I think thou art a little queer!"
You level these broad-brush indictments without a scintilla of specific evidence.
"I've argued again and again that even if a group were as heretical and abominable as it is thought to be; that wouldn't give any professed Christian the 'right' or prerogative to call them what they don't want to be called, and to use terms with a history of hostility and bigotry attached to them."
ReplyDeleteNo protestant wants to be called "anti-Catholic." Dave insists anyway. To Dave, no one could believe Roman Catholicism does not save from the wrath of God unless they hate the church. Therefore anyone who believes such hates the church; therefore he's justified in applying the label. What's not permitted for abominable heretics is fine as long as you say your target hates you first.
Whereas the reasoning behind "Romanist" is that a Roman Catholic's ultimate authority is Rome, not the Scriptures, and knows nothing of meaningful catholicity. One could dispute either claim, but the use of "Romanist" does not require assigning motives.
A "history of hostility and bigotry" is vague. It's also irrelevant; much of the slander hurled against protestants (they're rebellious, morally loose, hate God's church/people, etc.) is still around. That doesn't mean we should tremble at the shadow of the Romish stake as if it were veiled within modern use.
First century Jews preferred "sons of Abraham" to "children of the devil." Did Jesus do an unchristlike thing? Given his ethical sensibilities, does Dave refer to abortion advocates (an abominably heretical group, right?) as "pro-life" or "strident warriors for the rights of women"?
His supposed reductio should be beneath any rhetorician. After calling Steve's Christianity stunted and facile (desirable terms for Protestants, I guess), Dave pantomimes declaring the Protestantism of the Steves as "dumb" in various ways and announces this to be the inevitable consequence of permitting challenges to self-assigned titles. But there is a difference (one I would have also believed self-evident) between claiming abortion is ultimately "genocide", Catholicism "Romanism", or Protestantism "anti-Catholicism", and dismissing any of them as "idiotism" or his other linguistic abominations.
Then xenophon jumped in with a reminder to all Protestants to read their bibles completely. That's true. Protestants should also get their 8 hours of sleep every night. Not getting enough sleep is bad not just for you, but for those around you.
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Well, Dave, you seem to be using a second party as a stalking horse to go after me without actually engaging my arguments. Since I’ve already responded to you, and since you did nothing to rebut the last thing I wrote by way of reply, the ball is in your court to show where I went wrong. Otherwise, I win by default.
ReplyDeleteMoving on, you said:
<< My terms were, of course, only rhetorical and examples of "illustrating absurdity by being absurd." I have no intention, of course, of actually using those terms in the literal humdrum, non-rhetorical sense. >>
After I commented on this statement, you then offered a lengthy reply, beginning as follows:
<< The fallacy here is that rhetoric and argumentum ad absurdum is not intended "to be taken seriously at all." As anyone who understands logic and argumentation knows, this is most assuredly not the case…>>
Literal versus non-literal usage has nothing to do with the definition of an ad hominem argument. It’s hardly my fault that you misdefined your own terms in the first outing, and then had to rush in with a patch-up job to shift the blame from you to me.
I’d add that your attempt at an argumentum ad absurdum is fallacious, because the two cases are not parallel.
Your original accusation was that my usage had no proper etymological pedigree. But as I’ve illustrated at length, this claim is demonstrably false.
Conversely, your neologisms, by definition, have no etymological pedigree whatsoever.
<< Nevertheless, Steve and others insist on using these terms known to be pejoratives, IN PLACE OF the title that Catholics use for themselves and wish to be rederred as. This is the language of bigotry. >>
Actually, I often use “Catholic” or “Roman Catholic” or “Catholicism” or “Roman Catholicism” for stylistic variation.
<< "Romanism", "popish," "papist," et al, on the other hand, are no longer used by scholars, since they are recognized in the dictionary and elsewhere as pejorative, hostile terms. The analogy simply doesn't fly. >>
That’s because your “scholars” worship at the altar of political correctness. These are the sort of people that identify a jihadist who beheads a female hostage as a freedom fighter rather than a terrorist, much less a Muslim terrorist.
<< That's a value judgment, but it doesn't overcome the ethical responsibility to use the standard terms of address. We do for you. why can't you for us? >>
I have no ethical responsibility to rubberstamp propaganda. To the contrary, I have an ethical responsibility to resist propaganda. There are all too many of pressure groups out there who insist on imposing their self-definition on the rest of us.
<< Indeed, but there is a huge difference here that you seem to overlook: at least I grant him the dignity of his Christianity and Christian beliefs (proven by your description above), whereas that is denied to me (on wrongheaded, erroneous grounds). It's fine to read me out of the faith altogether, yet I dare not refer to the Christianity of my opponent as "stunted and facile"! How DARE I do that! What am I, an uppity Romanist boy or something? >>
Setting aside your puerile hyperbole and crybaby rhetoric (“how dare he…uppity Romanist boy…”), I have a principle disagreement with Catholicism, as I also have with a number of other belief-systems. So, no, no one gets a free ride here.
How I “dignify” an opposing belief-system follows a sliding-scale depending on how much truth or error inheres in their belief-system. For example, I’m much more respectful of fundamentalism and Lutheranism because they’re much more respectable belief-systems. Calvinism has a family feud with fundamentalism and Lutheranism. We disagree, not on whether we are saved, but how we are saved—on how we account for our common salvation.
A Lutheran or fundamentalist can make a credible profession of faith, whereas a Catholic cannot make a credible profession of faith, but--at most--a saving profession of faith, while a Muslim or Mormon or Hindu or Buddhist or Jew (except a Messianic Jew) can’t even make a saving profession of faith.
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