Well for example Socrates had a liking for beautiful youths but what made him a moral example was his self control. Few would claim to be wise and show no control over their urges either hetero/homosexual. Again my point is that we make an inference over the value of a doctrine by the acts of the prophet or sage.
So you are saying that truths are discovered in our acting out and not in our words? I could buy in to that. After all the parsing of the intricacies of language, it finally comes down to how we act our words out that makes the dfference.
More like “words can lie” or “talk is cheap”. Whatever we say becomes suspect if I don’t practice what I preach. I can tell a person that X is bad for them, but if I do it and not even avoid it, then how likely are we, as human beings, to believe him or her?
I am not saying that it makes sense in a logical sense but that that is how we are made, that we follow examples, that we learn even by imitation…and so often we learn not what we are told but what we see and we expect more of our so-called teachers the more their teaching demands of us.
Likely, in Paul’s case, this teacher tried and was successful at compelling his audience by the example he himself set. And those who were unimpressed were accussed NOT of being unable to follow a line of argument more than that they were unable to follow a moral example.
More or less, yes.
That has been my primary point from the beginning, and that is why I brought up Churchill back a few pages ago as an example of such discourse being rather normal for philosophical dispensations from a leader to their followers.
And that in looking backwards upon such instances, as non-inherent followers, the arguments are a bit difficult to inherently accept considering the lack of agreed and familiar axioms socially.