Advent Bounties 2015

Question

With Advent now underway in much of the Western Church, I am inspired by this post to start a bounty challenge. (My apologies to those who follow a different calendar.)

I personally will be offering one bounty for each week of advent (see my answer below). If others are interested in participating, they are encouraged to do so, using whatever criteria they prefer. (The 2013 Advent bounties, linked above, were awarded to existing high quality content.) If you would like to participate, simply add an answer answer describing your criteria with links to your chosen winners.

Answer 1

Thanks for reviving this. I'll follow your lead, but with a different focus: rewarding existing, overlooked answers that deal skillfully with difficult, technical subjects.

• Week 1: What was at issue in the Clark-Van Til controversy?
  • This is about as "inside baseball" as it gets, but the current answer clarifies a debate that still ripples through Reformed circles.
• Week 2: In modern times, what would happen to a Roman Catholic monk if he were to violate his monastic vows?
  • In-depth analysis, with references, of a challenging issue.
• Week 3: What does Paul mean by “Love believes all things?”
  • Answer provides a scholarly and different analysis than other answers.
• Week 4: Did the Jews think it was immoral to have leprosy?
  • Valuable analysis of OT, NT, and other sources on this question.

Answer 2

Gonna spread some love, (don't need to get to 20000 rep ever anyway). I'm gonna find questions I like tagged biblical-basis and catholicism that I think need better answers.

• Week 1: In Catholicism, what is the proper order of the sacraments of initiation and what are the summary arguments in support of this order?

  This question is not answered yet and always perplexed me as to how something so fundemental as the order in which the sacraments of initiation have been swapped.

update I like both the answers on there, gonna have to just let them split the bounty.

• Week 2: What is the biblical basis for the Immaculate Conception?

  This is the top of the list and incidentally, I've got the top voted answer. However, I like Mr S's answer quite a bit more and it so far hasn't gotten any love.

• Week 3: Where did the "theology" behind the Cherry tree carol come from?

  The question I asked about the Cherry Tree Carol, has a pretty good answer. What I'd like to still know is how 17th or 18th century Scotsmen became so well acquainted with the Gospel of pseudo-Matthew (kinda betting they didn't call it that back then)

• Week 4: According to Catholicism, what does 'come upon thee' and 'overshadow thee' mean?

• Week 4.B: Do Calvinists rejoice in the destruction of sinners? (there might be hats here too)

Answer 3

My criteria will be questions that are fairly important to Christianity (i.e. that many people are interested in), but don't yet have a good answer. Thus, the hope is that the site will gain some new, high-quality content, in addition to offering our regulars a chance to increase their reputation.

Week 1: In which year was Christ born? (50 pts)

• I thought I'd start this off with a season-appropriate question. Although this question was posed back in 2011, and received plenty of upvotes, none of the existing answers are all that good. Specifically, all answers are short and primarily provide a link to an external resource with little original content.

  • I ended up awarded the bounty to an existing answer since only one new answer was offered and it didn't add much.

Week 2: What is the origin of the Catholic apocrypha? (100 pts)

• Existing answers are OK. However, one is mostly quotes of other sources and the other is very brief. Neither answer covers the origins of the books in sufficient details, IMO.

  • Bounty awarded to AthanasiusOfAlex's new answer for thoroughly answering the question. This is exactly the kind of high quality new content I was hoping this contest would motivate.

Week 3: What is significant about the torn curtain? (150 pts)

• Despite a huge number of up votes and views, the existing answers are lacking both in details and referencing. A good answer should thoroughly explain why the tearing of the curtain is significant, not just state a reason, and also explain the centurion's remark (which is not touched on by any existing answer).

  • Bounty awarded to James Shewey for his excellent new answer. This thoroughly referenced answer might be too long for some tastes, but is exactly what I wanted to see. It's a nice complement to existing brief explanation (i.e. the accepted answer) for those who want to go more in depth.

Week 4: Who first distinguished between the inerrancy of the Bible and the inerrancy of the original autographs? (200 pts)

• Compared to my other offerings, this is a pretty recent question. However, it is of great interest to me personally and apparently a lot of other people based on the high number of votes and views it has received in its brief time on the site.
  
  I'm not looking for a definitive answer (i.e. proof no earlier authors wrote about the subject), but instead just a well-researched one.

  • I forgot to hit the "award bounty" button, so James Shewey's excellent answer was auto awarded the bounty. Mr. Bultitude and Dick Harfield also had nice answers; any of the three were potentially worthy of the bounty.

Answer 4

Seeing as we have bounties for existing questions which need better answers, and bounties to reward great answers, I will offer some bounties on new questions. I hope that these questions will have some wide interest. The bounties will be added a couple of days after the questions. If anyone has ideas for a question, or is planning to ask one they think will have wide interest, message me on Chat.

• What is the basis for believing that the wrath of God is not an accommodation?
• What basis is there for defining sin as “rebellion”?