What constitutes doctrine?

Question

I'm feeling some dissonance between the stated policy of not-so-much-doctrine and the content of questions I see. To begin with, every time I see the term 'OT', I cringe. I appreciate that not all Christians are even aware of the insult implied, but it's there nonetheless.

I appreciate that it's not reasonable to ask that no one ever use the term OT, let alone to go on an editing spree eliminating it.

Then, consider, for example: a question about 'sensus plenior'.

This is a fundamentally Christian approach to the text. The question is sort of a meta-question to a number of questions which start from the assumption that the Hebrew Bible contains prophetic references to Jesus. Which, of course, is a mainstay of Christian doctrinal interpretation.

I haven't found any examples of conflicts going in the other direction. I could, for example, imagine someone getting upset over quotations from "Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic" by Frank Moore Cross.

Or, in another direction, I spotted a bit of comment dialog (which I can't find again) about being careful to avoid offending some people's sensibilities with profane language. I wonder, then, what would happen if Job 31:10 came up? (This might be a whole other question.)

One might imagine an alternative: a question framed explicitly as 'Do Christians read verse X to say Y?'. Would that be on-topic here? Or does it belong over there?

After reading Caleb's extensive answer, I wanted to explain a bit more about why I'm writing this.

I start from a hypothesis: I'm a member of a category of persons whom you would like to have around here. I'm an amateur scholar of Biblical Hebrew / Hebrew Bible. My tradition is Jewish, but my studies are primarily text-critical/modern.

Without descending into a pit of political correctness, I'll merely remind you that people are comfortable when they don't feel invisible. Some things that I see around here make me feel more visible/comfortable. Some less. There's a tipping point out there at which people like me won't feel inclined to show up. 'OT' is a negative. Explicitly owning ones assumptions is a positive. I'm not proposing that you 'solve' this 'problem' by imposing any particular rules on anyone. I'm just trying to communicate some sense of how the different flavors of content strike me.

I think that this is a very hard problem, since the people who show up to ask are not, reliably, going to be very sensitive to this topic. Chasing people away because they enter questions that have unstated doctrinal assumptions doesn't feel very friendly, but a front page entirely composed of questions about how the Hebrew Bible prophesies Jesus isn't going to keep people like me around, either.

Answer 1

Your question strikes at a sensitive issue that's still being hashed out on this site. I don't have time at the moment to fully answer your question, but reading your post does leave me with several thoughts you might find useful. These won't resolve this issue, but I hope they help lay groundwork for finding an answer.

• Any question that starts "Do Christians" is almost certainly off topic here and much better suited for Christianity.SE. If you want to know what a specific Christian sect thinks about a passage or doctrinal issue, that would be the place to ask, not here.

• Here, if you ask "Does verse X say Y", you are almost bound to get more than one answer. Maybe one says 'yes' and one says 'no' based on their respective doctrinal background and other presuppositions brought to the interpretive process. It is the very availability of these multiple perspectives in interpretation is part of what makes this site what it is. The Bible is used by more than one faith and is interpreted in more than one way. If you only wanted to know how one tradition deals with an issue, you should probably ask on a more religious specific site. If you want a broader view of what can be understood from a passage or how different groups come up with interpretations, this would be the correct place.

• The process of interpreting any text always involves presuppositions. The makeup of this site specifically allows for a broad mix of these. In order for such a multi-faith site to be productive at all, folks are going to have to set aside some of the sensitivities they might otherwise have in their respective traditions. In the example you raised: if this is going to be Hermeneutics.SE rather than Judaism.SE, one must allow that the term 'Old Testament', when used by a Christian, is in no way insulting. You may speak of the same text in other terms (in fact please do use the terms appropriate for your doctrinal background), but a Christian must identify which half of the Bible they are referring to. The term "Hebrew Bible", in the context of a Christian background, is not commonly used, nor do most Christians have any other moniker by which to refer to the OT. There are of course terms that could be used, but one must not read in insults where none are intended, otherwise this will never work.

• There will be questions here that will be off topic for some religious backgrounds. Sensus Plenior may be an obvious choice to pick on, but even a basic one about how the Historical Gramantical approach to hermeneutics is going to be naturally better addressed by those that use the approach, typically Christians. Likewise questions about how Rabbis comment on or how Jewish tradition plays into textual understanding are going to be focused on a subset of this site's audience. This is similar to their being both C++ and Python questions on StackOverflow: same general set of experts but very different backgrounds and biases. You don't have to be interested in or agree with every question and answer for the site to be useful.

• I would be impossible to rule out anybody bringing their "fundamentally __" approaches. There simply wouldn't be anything left if we started scratching out specific approaches. Approaches to interpretation is exactly what we are about in the first place.

Obviously this doesn't resolve the doctrine vs no doctrine debate. There have been reams of words spilled on that already, but generally we know at least this: questions really need to start with a text, be specific, and leave the door open for answers to take the text wherever specific interpretive frameworks take it.