Controversy

A controversy is a contentious dispute, a disagreement in opinions over which parties are actively arguing. Controversies can range from private disputes between two individuals to large-scale social upheavals. Controversies in mathematics and the sciences are generally eventually solved. It is the nature of controversies in the humanities that they cannot generally be conclusively settled and may be accompanied by the disruption of peace and even quarreling. In some cases, this may be because the two sides to a dispute differ so much in their "givens" that in effect they are not having the same argument. In other cases, culture moves on, and the subject of the controversy becomes quaint in retrospect and increasingly irrelevant.

In early Christianity

Many of the early Christian writers, among them Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Jerome, were famed as "controversialists"; they wrote works against perceived heresy or heretical individuals, works whose titles begin "Adversus..." such as Irenaeus' Adversus haeresis. The Christian writers inherited from the classical rhetors the conviction that controversial confrontations, even over trivial matters, were a demonstration of intellectual superiority.

Related Topics:
Christian - Irenaeus - Athanasius - Jerome - Heresy - Rhetor

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