Integrity

Editorial Standards

A study library is only as good as its apparatus. These are the rules that govern what appears here and how it is marked.

Four levels of textual authority

Scripture: Canonical text, always identified by book, chapter and verse together with the translation used. Never paraphrased silently and never generated.
Primary-source quotation: Words of a Father or historical document, quoted from a named translation and edition, with work, book, chapter, section and paragraph where available.
Scholarly interpretation: Argument drawn from historical or theological scholarship, attributed to the scholar or tradition making it, with the point of disagreement stated where one exists.
Editorial commentary: Our own framing, summary or guidance for readers. Visibly marked as editorial and never presented as the voice of a source.

Practice

No fabricated sources

We do not publish invented patristic quotations, reconstructed sayings, unsourced attributions, or machine-generated theological prose presented as a primary source. If a quotation cannot be traced to a text and edition, it is not published.

Translation and rights

Each reading records its translator, edition, source location and rights status: public domain, Creative Commons, licensed, in-copyright excerpt, or rights unverified. Readings with unverified rights are not published as full texts.

Contested questions

Where authorship, dating, or theological interpretation is disputed, the dispute is described rather than resolved by assertion. Spurious and dubia works are labelled as such.

Corrections

Substantive corrections are made in place and the article records its revision date. We do not silently alter published arguments.

Placeholder material

Structural placeholders used while the library is being built — including Scripture text awaiting import — are explicitly marked in the interface and are never styled to resemble finished source text.