Talk:Oriental Orthodox Churches

OK, I sent you an email about this, but you prefer this page instead.

Which is better? This:

"A centenarian is a term that refers to a living person who is at least 100 years old."

or this:

"A centenarian is a living person who is at least 100 years old."

?

A centenarian is not a term; a centenarian is a person. (Believe it or not, the article titled centenarian actually did at one time begin by saying a "centenarian is a term that refers to ...".)

Other than that issue, I think if you want to explain what Oriental Orthodoxy is, it is better to mention the schism of AD 451 than to say the Oriental Orthodox churches are older than the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, since that is not true. -- Mike Hardy

(Occasionally, of course, it is appropriate to say a certain word is a term that refers to something. In those cases, since one is referring to the term, rather than using the term to refer to something else, one should italicize it, saying "Oriental Orthodoxy" refers to ...".)

Sorry: I didn't get any e-mails. I don't provide an e-mail to Wikipedia, so it would be better if the site didn't offer to let you reach me that way. I take your point about reference to the thing versus the term for the thing, but as you point out, I didn't add the word "term" to my choice of phrasing, so obviously it's easier for me to accomodate your reasonable point about italics. The age controversy is one I hadn't thought of. I was thinking, and I think I'm still thinking, that the problem doesn't come up with proper wording. I mean I presume the "Roman Catholic Church" does aquiesce to the name "Roman Catholic Church," even if it likes to say "the Church" in in-house documents. When did the need for such a name arise? Later than the need for "Armenian Apostolic," that is for sure. I think if we were to go all the way to accomodate your deference to the beliefs of practitioners, we might not even want to say the Armenian Church was created ever. I mean, the first Armenian christians no doubt thought of themselves as Christians, not Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Christians. Same goes for fundamentalists, I suppose. I'll look at the wording again. I suspect we can call some churches older without being inflammatory, but maybe I'll side with you and want just to talk about the time of divergence, which is what one has to do with species in biology. 168... 02:22 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I looked at my version again. I remember now I went with "refers" because there is no easy-to-describe single thing that is "Oriental Orthodoxy." Also, the earlier version misused "comprise." Although I concede your age issue, when I look at the particular phrasing I used, I don't see it as raising the problem. It's understood that all Christian traditions go back to Christ and so in that sense they're all equally old. I think it's also understood that no sect is practicing christianity like Peter or even exactly as Constantine practiced it, and that all the traditions have made changes many times. I think readers will understand that the age in question is the age of the necessity of the concept of the thing (e.g. the "Roman Catholic Church"). Of course, that's just my opinion. 168... 02:42 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)