Talk:Discernment (Christianity)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 29 August 2018 and 7 December 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Pat Oleary.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 19:34, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Changed header to secular
The term is used outside of Christianity, and I wanted to keep the Christian information on the page, but I secularized the header so someone looking up the term isn't bogged down with theological perspectives, and gets the wrong idea that someone using the term is always appealing to divine authority rather than, say, plain judgments of reason. The scope of the term as a virtue, alone, exceeds a religious context, but I feel that all the virtues deserve those religious contexts in their articles. Thanks. 72.196.107.243 (talk) 21:56, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Not only Religious Context
http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=discernment shows a more comprehensive (wordly) definition. However, as a definition it doesn't belong in Wikipedia but may belong in Wiktionary. (I added this sub-heading after I noticed that the most-recent entries were inserted above the earlier entries. Additional argument is below. (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Discernment&action=submit#Begin_with_a_reference)

Kernel.package (talk) 01:31, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Not only Christian Context
http://www.google.ca/dictionary?q=discernment&langpair=en|en&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ysT-TODTD8adnAf6wsH0CQ&ved=0CBcQmwMoAA shows that it is for also non christian contexts, it should be moved into a Christian_discernment page — Preceding unsigned comment added by ProIntel (talk • contribs) 23:39, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Jesuits infobox
Can someone please tell me why there is a box for the Jesuits on this page? Discernment is by no means limited to the Jesuit order. I feel that unless there is a reason, it should be removed ASAP. --Entoaggie09 03:31, 11 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Update: Jesuit infobox removed. --Entoaggie09 22:24, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
 * That jesuit template or tag. --PLA y Grande Covián (talk) 13:43, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

discernment is a keen sense of moral insight, questionable to itself; discernment: creating concern, "disregard of concern" not incorporating concern, where otherwise "imperative to a just or fair conclusion"; involving more than one person’s thought, or judgments, raising immorality into the objective EXAMPLE: Creating discern as a substitute for concern; implying "without immorality" there would be "no morality", by observing the later over the obvious, "discern" an attempmt to disolve acknowledgement by means of lack of concern, implicated,."to cancel or displace". February 27, 2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by James Westra67.183.238.173 (talk) 05:02, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Communication with angels?
I'm concerned with this bit: "The Creator willed that there should be communication between angels and men..." Where in Scripture does this appear? I know there are religious beliefs that encourage men to communicate with angels but this belief, to my knowledge, is foreign to the Christian faith. If Scripture or Christian doctrine cannot be supplied to support this statement, I believe it should be removed from the article. --Selderane (talk) 05:39, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Selderane just because you don't know how to test the spirits (Angels) Does not mean that we can not speak to them. God said that in the last days that He would poor Him spirit out upon all men (women) this is a fact and I think if someone wants to learn to speak to angels should not be stopped just because you think its wrong and not found in the Bible. God has more to offer than just whats in His word. Look what happend to prayer in schools because of 1 women. Lightbreaer (talk) 01:39, 8 November 2009 (UTC)lightbearer

Begin with a reference
If we begin with a reference rather than an opinion we are more likely to reach an objective conclusion than a subjective conclusion. That is, if the term is included in Wikipedia, at all. In my opinion it does not belong here. Wiktionary has a definition, though. An appropriate title for this article might be "Religious Discernment". As such it may be properly be discussed, say for its contribution to philosophy and/or ethics.

Princeton's online site, http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=discernment is a good reference. Wiktionary's is here: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/discernment.

Two examples, each of which shows usage in a non-religious context, follow.

1. When mining social network information for security-related intelligence it is important to discern which information may have an alternate (encoded) meaning from information that clearly does not. Then, perhaps one can discern meaning in terms of security.

2. I can visually discern this shade of blue, rgb(00,00,FF) from this shade of blue rgb(00,00,FD). Can you?

Kernel.package (talk) 01:18, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Catholic bias in external links
This isn't only Christian, as others pointed out, but even within Christianity, it's very far from being only a Catholic thing... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.82.168.179 (talk) 01:53, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Borderline page status
I made several edits to improve scope, but even after my edits this page is awfully borderline as a proper page topic. It would likely be better to model this page after the judgement page (itself no beauty) which is structured as a quasi-disambiguation page. Here, the Christian subpage alone is notable. While no other sense of discernment is notable in itself, it doesn't hurt for this page to direct people to the general topics of perception, psychology, or morality if the narrow Christian sense is not what they seek. I suspect that's too much to do in the header of the Christian subpage, so it might as well be here. &mdash; MaxEnt 10:41, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Suited for disambiguation
Like the others have stated, discernment is more than a Christian term. Maybe this is suited to be a disambiguation page that also points to Viveka and Vitarka-vicāra. All we need is a specific term for the Christian discernment.198.2.80.218 (talk) 02:41, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Content relating to Christianity.
I have removed it all, since the article presents precisely zero evidence that 'discernment' is in any shape or form the monopoly of one faith - or that it has anything to do with faith whatsoever. I would strongly advise against restoring what appears to have been article hijacking, and a blatant violation of WP:NPOV policy, without prior discussion centred on what sources (on 'discernment' rather than on 'discernment in Christianity') have to say on the subject. Wikipedia is not a platform for evangelism. If 'discernment in Christianity' is a legitimate subject for an article (which would have of course to be demonstrated through appropriate sources) it should be discussed in an article entitled thus. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:10, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Not a Single Bible Verse
Does this "gift of discernment" get mentioned even once in the entire bible? Hear this phrase within a Christian context, and finally got around to looking it up to see where it's mentioned in the Bible, and this article has zero biblical references. Other posts are taking issue with the idea that "discernment" is not an exclusively Christian characteristic, and this article indicates that there is NO biblical connection between Christianity and discernment.2603:8081:3A00:30DF:2094:92C8:27CB:9601 (talk) 22:58, 29 February 2024 (UTC)