Appeal: clarification
From Protestant vs. Orthodox: Scripture and Tradition (Gavin Ortlund + Stephen De Young).
- #16111:32:44upheld Stephen De Young epainos: clarification (+1)
The council upheld the call: Stephen De Young earned 1 point.
“Well, what do you what do you mean by advocate?”
Diogenes: Faced with a demand to name an advocate of icon veneration before 500 AD, he asks what would count instead of guessing, and Ortlund supplies the standard ("Says anything remotely positive about it").- Aristotle uphold: On the record: S3 has consistently engaged Ortlund's historical claims about icon veneration with counter-evidence and argument rather than evasion, and this momentary request for definition before answering a freshly posed challenge is consistent with, not a departure from, that engaged posture. De Young has, throughout the debate, engaged directly with Ortlund's historical challenges rather than stonewalling (offering counter-evidence like the Jerusalem Talmud passage, discussing Eusebius's reliability, etc.), and here, faced with an ambiguous term ("advocate") in a fresh historical challenge, he asks what would satisfy it before answering rather than assuming and possibly answering the wrong question — this is a clean instance of the clarification move, followed immediately by his own substantive answer, not a stall or dodge.
- Socrates uphold: Read blind, found "clarification". Rather than assuming what Gavin meant by "advocate" and answering a straw version of the question, De Young pauses to pin down the term ("someone who expressly describes that particular practice and says this is good...?") before giving his substantive answer that no explicit defense was needed for an unchallenged general practice.
- Plato uphold: On the record: S3's position throughout has been that early textual silence/opposition on a topic does not establish absence of the underlying practice (he made this move earlier regarding late-attested traditions and the Theotokos); asking what counts as "advocate" here is consistent with, not a departure from, that standing analytical approach. De Young asks for the meaning of "advocate" rather than assuming a definition, and having received Ortlund's clarified standard ("says anything remotely positive about it"), he goes on to actually answer it ("I don't think there was a need for that if it was the general practice"). This is a legitimate request for a definition followed by an answer, not evasion.
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