Subject: Re: Fathers (fwd)

From: "Jean Valentin" <[email-masked]>
Date: 26 Jul 97 03:02:23 +0200

A few thoughts about this whole debate about the Informations that Bob
Waltz has put on the Encyclopedia site about the fathers.

Once again, we are stumbling over the issue of vulgarization. This reminds
me the thread about "academic imperialism" that took place some months ago,
and I'm really perplex about the issue.

Vulgarization of scholarly knowledge seems to cause difficulties. On the
one hand, there _are_ many people wishing to find short and accessible
information about our discipline. On the other hand, professional scholars
are often very critical when such information is provided. And judging by
their standards, we can only understand them.

Vulgarization is necessary, but then good vulgarization. But what is good
vulgarization? Probably the one that is done by the real specialists. But
they don't have time for it... It is probably not what their institutions
are paying them for. This is just one of the many frustrating realities of
life. 

The problem then is that there is a growing gap between the preoccupations
of the scholars and those of the "lay" people who want to get information
because for some reason the subject is existential to them (and we're
dealing with matters related to religious faith, right?). 

There is a difficulty of communication. What can we do about it? To give a
personal example, the congregation of which I've been a member for years
considers me now as "dangerous" just because I study textual criticism and
eastern christianity... I experience a growing gap, or difficulty of
communication that becomes really conflictual, between them and me. And on
my side, the way these brave believers and their leaders are speaking about
things they don't know about irritates me. This happens to many studying
people: there comes a point where they can no more communicate with the
public, and the public gets also frustrated because it probably expects
something else from them. It's a sociological reality we all have to live
with, I don't know if there's a solution... but sometimes it hurts. And
probably it hurts some of you too. Seems like we live "in two different
worlds" like the song says! This raises other issues like: what's the use
of scholarship anyway, what is its contribution to the construction of a
better world? But I guess I'm getting off-topic...

So coming back to Bob's work and to the remarks of many of you, I think
it's good that Bob thought about providing information to "the public". And
when he wrote to us, it was with the intention of making his informations
more accurate. If somebody like Bob wants to build bridges between
scholarship and the public, maybe it will prevent these frustrations I was
mentioning... So why not help him, this would become _our_ contribution to
the setting of an information that would be both correct when judged by
academic standards, and accessible for those who just need short
information. 

BTW, a very important work about the fathers and the text they used are the
volumes of the "Biblia Patristica" published by the CNRS. To my knowledge,
there are already five volumes in this collection. These books follow the
order of the Bible texts and give references of quotations in the patristic
sources. In front of a biblical reference you find references in a father's
work. It makes hundreds of pages, just of references. No text, nothing else
than references to chapters and verses and pages of patristic editions,
nearly like a telephone book. An essential tool for the study of the text
of the Greek and Latin Fathers... It's worth using for us, and it's worth
mentioning to the public that such things exist, just for information...

It was just a few reflections in disorder, because this all makes me feel
very perplex...

Peace to all!

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Jean Valentin - Brussels - Belgium
email: [email-masked]
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