Talk:Prooftext

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POV? Tone? It just doesn't jive well with me, perhaps an "expert" can clean it up. Ifnord 20:26, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] This article strikes me as quite slanted and biased

Holding out the use of the Bible by Protestants as the primary example of the fallacy of prooftexting is certainly biased. In the Bible reference cited, there is no analysis of how the conclusion is made that the example is taken out of context or why the use of it by Protestants to differentiate their beliefs and practices from those of the Catholic church is invalid.

Rather than start another chapter of the endless doctrinal war between Protestants and Catholics, there should be a less slanted presentation of the topic without the one-sided bias showing how Protestants do this with no equivilent example of how Catholics may do the same thing (such as building the case for Peter being the first pope from a single verse in Matthew, for example.) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.157.46.122 (talk) 13:58, 2 February 2007 (UTC).

I couldn't agree more. This article is outrageously biased against Protestants. I suggest its removal until a more balanced article can be presented. I'm especially offended at the author's statement that all Protestant citation of particular Scriptures are "decontextualised," implying Protestants don't know the true meaning of Scripture in full context, whereas Catholics do. As the commentator above points out, Catholics throughout history have narrowly cited Matthew 16:18-19 in support of the idea that there is no salvation outside the authority of the Roman Pontiff. The author implies that Protestants lack respect for tradition, which simply isn't true. Catholics look to the triad of papal authority, scriptural guidance and experience of the faithful. Methodists look to the Wesleyan quadrilateral of scriptural guidance, tradition, reason and experience of the faithful. These two approaches are very similar.

What bothers me most is the author's assumption that prooftexts are a fallacious way of doing theology. Has he not read the writings of the patristics? They are filled with prooftexts in support of various theological positions. In fact, Jesus himself often used the prooftext method, e.g., Mark 12:26-27; Mark 12:35-37. Sometimes a particular Scripture so perfectly address a theological question that, in good conscience, the matter should be considered settled. For instance, Pelagius cited the following Scripture in opposition to the now orthodox idea that we are born with a sin nature. In context, God said to Moses when he denied him and that entire generation of Israel the right to cross the Jordan, “Your children, who this day have no knowledge of good and evil, shall go in there, and to them I will give it, and they shall posses it” (Deuteronomy 1:39). If each successive generation is born as evil as the last, what logic was there in God's denying Moses and his generation access to the Promised Land? For that matter, if original sin is true, what logic was there in Noah's flood? Orthodoxy adopted Augustine's views over those of Pelagius. But I contend the reasons were mostly political. The plain meaning of this prooftext was suppressed. LMVining 21:29, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I removed some of the extremely slanted material earlier, but Papeschr apparently considered my edits to be destructive... so I've added some clarification of the protestant position instead. Of course, this makes the listing long and onerous, but better that than removing bias info, huh? --Ctobola 16:09, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Cheers! I think it's interesting this way, not particularly onerous. Papeschr 10:23, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Anybody out there that could even come within a country mile of justifying the uncited, seemingly arbitrary comment about Objectivists and Libertarians, especially with the specific 'founding fathers' example, and the mention of 'their religion?' Throwing examples around in this context puts us on thin ice. Examples of specific works, people, and so on would be a much better idea than the generalized examples we see ("Protestants have been accused, Libertarians do this, Catholics do this") even in the presence of citation. Also, the article just generally seems pretty muddled... if there is some significant number of people that genuinely consider this practice as reasonable, the article would probably need to be expanded significantly and 'toned down' a bit (words like 'accused' without qualification might have to go.) If not, introducing it as a 'practice which has some critics' seems awkward/confusing given the tone of the rest of the article, and it may be wise to at least consider/discuss merging this with 'quoting out of context.' As I'm relatively unfamiliar with the term, I do not know which of these cases is accurate and I'm refraining from making any changes.Snoogins47 21:55, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Snoogins47, I concur. dougmc 19:40, 19 June 2007 (UTC)