Is editing out theology the thrust of the site's new direction?

Question

Recently an answer was edited with only a revision history of "per https://hermeneutics.meta.stackexchange.com/a/777/208". The link is to the top-voted answer to What kind of site do we ultimately want to have? The revision replaced:

This is the essence of sin. The mourning in the passage is a true repentance over sin as a result of grace shown in the Yeshua the Messiah (see verse 10; compare John 19:37, Revelation 1:7).

with:

Christians see a parallel here with later rejection of Jesus's claim of this status (see verse 10; compare John 19:37, Revelation 1:7).

And removed:

The mystery not yet revealed in this passage, though, is that because Christ will mediate in all three roles, those who were wicked will be righteous, and they will stand with him in his offices.

In my opinion, these edits violate the guidelines for editing:

Respect the author's voice and content. This is partly covered in the top point, but I'll be a bit more explicit about certain points here. People may write as they wish to write - while as a site we focus on content, as a community there are people behind every post. People usually do not like to speak in a voice that is not theirs. So as long as it isn't actively interfering with the goal of the post, there isn't a need to change things.

An edit better fitting the guideline would have been to insert "Christians believe..." rather than remove the beliefs that the editor disagrees with.

Answer 1

After some thought that I've come to this conclusion:

It's basically a good edit but a bit insensitive in execution.

By 'good' I mean in keeping with the tougher enforcement of 'show your work' envisaged in the other meta post.

The emotive question is this: was the edit motivated by the desire to edit out the Christian aspect of a post or was it motivated by the desire to edit out the bits of the post that simply do not show their work.

I do not think the edit was anything less than a honest attempt to action the philosophy of the proposal on meta.

Anyone else is free to improve the post again: my hope is that all the users of the site could unite around an approach I've taken on my own post here. Instead of removing the content that is furthest divorced from the immediate context, I've moved some of it to footnotes, and in my own opinion, I've improved the answer as a result (it's not a compromise on my part: I prefer the end result).

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_{as an aside, I really don't think any "Christians believe…" or "Christians see a parallel…" language is desirable here. I'm interested in Kazark's working, up from the quoted text: what Christian's do or don't believe is a historical fact further divorced from the text and not at all interesting in this exegesis context unless the actual thinking of those Christians is elaborated/quoted}

Answer 2

Even 'showing your work' requires a set of assumptions about a common starting point. Without common ground, there is no foundation to build work upon. This is why I've repeatedly argued for a pseudo-neutrality that is a well-defined starting point - assumed common ground, if you will. Without this, who's to say whose assumptions don't need to be defended/explained/qualified versus whose do?

I think chasing a goal of 'showing your work' without an explicit list of acceptable (and unacceptable) assumptions brought to the text is futile. Bringing assumptions to the text is unavoidable. Choosing which will be tolerated will avoid a silent rule by majority opinion. We're chasing a pipe dream without such definitions.

So to answer the question, "Is editing out theology the thrust of the site's new direction?" It depends. What theology? Even an atheistic-skeptic approach to the text as a piece of literature rather than scripture is an assertion of theology, even if only implied. Will we allow Jewish assumptions when discussing the Hebrew Bible but require Christians to defend their connections to the New Testament? Will we make evangelical Christian theology acceptable for New Testament exegesis and require all others to define their 'deviations'? Or will we approach the text as literature and require a defense of any religious interpretations (which some might argue is actually theological atheism or agnosticism)? Again, claiming that we're 'showing work' building up from some Utopian ideal of neutrality is futile. We need to lay a foundation before we'll ever be able to assess whether work is being shown in a satisfactory way.