I made my points and stand by them Sirs. I see no reason to reiterate them another time.
Which point would that be?
My point is that I find it humorous that Edwards is condemned for his home, while some of the same people making these condemnations have been shouting about how unfairly the conservatives are treated when they are caught with their pants down after preaching morality to the American public.
See how you singled out 1 person to apply your rationlization, but then apply a broad brush when trying to make a comparison. The "gripe" has been explained. The "gripe" is in the largely applied free pass that folks on the left get for far more egregious ammoral/immoral acts, based on some psuedo non-moral platform apparently. Are you alluding that the left has no moral foundation, thus the explaination for the pass they get?
You can't have it both ways.
Not asking for it. You seem to be the one hung up on the attached rhetoric, coming from whomever. What I'm asking for is in fact equal condemnation for equally immoral/ammoral
acts. Regardless of what they do or don't "preach". From the other thread, a request for equal condemnation for racist acts, whether it's white on black or black on what-ever.
And both Prince's & Bt's commentaries remain valid in judging Edwards, as we'd judge any indivdual, for their
actions, as compared to their rhetoric
As for the question itself, I think the answer is relatively simple. Look at it like early Christianity. There was a great debate between the very early Christian scholars on what to do with non-Christian (and non-Jewish) philosophy and learning. Was it valuable? What place did it hold? Some scholars argued that it held no value. It was not fruit from the divine and therefore held nothing of value for a Christian. Indeed, any such philosophy could only lead to heresy. Tertullian was somewhat noted for this position. Other scholars argued that it certainly had value. It wasn't divinely inspired, sure, but there was clearly value in Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and other Gentile cultures and philosophies. To simply discount them completely, due to their pagan roots was faulty logic. They weren't there to replace Christian thought, but surely they would be useful. Proponents of this course included Saint Clement and Saint Augustine. The argument still occurs today in some form (and I gave a rather simple view), but I agree with the latter as did the great Scholastic thinkers. I'm not going to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Yeah, Edwards may have built himself a grand estate. Yet, that doesn't make his ideas terrible by default. In my mind that is a ridiculous manner of approaching the issues.
Not so simple apparently
Also keep in mind, no is claiming Edwards' rhetoric is defacto terrible, only that his credibility in applying what he preaches takes a hit.....JUST as the conservative who preaches moral values, takes a major credibility hit if found having an extramarital fling with an intern. Or are you claiming that said conservative's actions need not be necessarily applied to the "ideas" and rhetoric they're advocating?
