# Biblical, Patristic, DDF, and Domain-Evidence Source Rule

**Status:** authoritative live repository policy

**Ownership:** this file owns source and claim-jurisdiction policy.
`source-chronology.md` is its date-and-public-anchor reference appendix, and
`ddf-coverage-process.md` exclusively owns the operational coverage workflow.

Use this rule for all Systems Theology books, revisions, and derivative modules in this repository. It governs two different tasks without collapsing them: the construction of Christian doctrine and the investigation of the one reality to which doctrinal, empirical, historical, philosophical, clinical, and pastoral claims refer.

No discipline receives universal authority over every kind of claim. Authority is proposition-specific. Original-language Scripture governs what the canonical texts affirm and remains the final norm for Christian confession. Empirical methods govern empirical descriptions; historical methods govern ordinary historical reconstruction; clinical evidence governs clinical claims; formal proof governs mathematical claims; and philosophical argument governs bridge premises and metaphysical inference. DDF integrates these contacts with one reality, but it may not redefine a specialist term, preselect an empirical result, or protect an empirically exposed inference from correction.

Companion chronology note: `docs/research/source-chronology.md`.
Coverage request process: `docs/research/ddf-coverage-process.md`.
Live request template: `docs/research/ddf-coverage-request-template.md`.

## Original-Language Priority

For biblical and doctrinal claims, the earliest governing source layer is not patristic. It is Scripture in its original languages.

Every major biblical or doctrinal claim should start with the Hebrew and Aramaic Old Testament and the Greek New Testament. That does not make DDF optional or secondary for Systems Theology. Biblical source analysis supplies the textual contact; DDF supplies the controlling Systems Theology interpretation, synthesis, and scope for derived doctrine. An empirical, historical, mathematical, philosophical, or clinical claim instead starts with the evidence and methods proper to that claim.

Use this rule:

1. Hebrew/Aramaic Old Testament first.
2. Greek New Testament first.
3. Textual witnesses and ancient versions next, especially Dead Sea Scrolls, Septuagint, early Greek New Testament witnesses, and major codices where relevant.
4. Apostolic and ante-Nicene patristic sources after biblical text work.
5. Nicene and later patristic sources as support.
6. DDF synthesis as the required interpretive control and scope gate for Systems Theology doctrine and derived modules.
7. Contemporary research engaged recursively within the synthesis while every empirical, historical, clinical, or technical conclusion remains established and revisable under the relevant discipline's own methods.

Do not build doctrine from English word studies. If a claim depends on a term, check the term in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek and name the limits of the claim.

## DDF Interpretive Control and Scope Gate

DDF is the core Systems Theology framework. Derived books should not independently relitigate DDF's foundational doctrinal judgments, and they should not develop new Systems Theology doctrine that DDF does not cover. This scope gate does not authorize a derived book to repeat an empirical error or to suppress a relevant finding. Factual correction returns to DDF and then propagates through the dependent books.

Use DDF in two ways:

1. **Interpretive control:** original-language biblical work and patristic witness become Systems Theology through DDF's account of God-given reality, human reception, channels, corruption, Christ, Spirit, Church, and new creation. Modern research retains its discipline-governed meaning when it enters that synthesis.
2. **Scope gate:** if DDF does not provide coverage for a new doctrinal topic, do not expand that topic as a Systems Theology claim or module. At most, record it as a possible future DDF expansion question. Ordinary factual description and correction do not require permission to remain true.

This means a source may be early, important, or interesting and still not belong in a derived book merely because it exists. Inclusion requires relevance and scope. A new doctrinal use additionally requires DDF coverage; a factual correction does not.

If a researcher or writer discovers a doctrinal topic or proposed Systems
Theology module outside DDF coverage, the derived project must stop that
doctrinal development and file a DDF coverage request. The writer may not solve
the theological gap inside the dependent book or module. Development may resume
only after the DDF maintainer or a formally designated review body records an
existing-coverage ruling, updates DDF, or rejects the topic as outside scope.

## Governing Order by Claim Type

For Christian confession and doctrine:

1. Scripture is the governing source and final norm.
2. Early patristic witness is received testimony to the Church's early reading, worship, confession, discipline, and defense of the faith.
3. DDF is the controlling Systems Theology lens and organizing architecture that integrates Scripture, patristic reception, embodied formation, and current ministry practice.
4. Contemporary research cannot generate doctrine, but it can expose factual error, constrain empirically exposed applications, and supply realities that doctrine must interpret honestly.

For empirical, historical, formal, clinical, and technical claims:

1. State the claim before theological interpretation.
2. Use the methods, primary evidence, uncertainty practices, and revision standards proper to the field.
3. Track distinctly, and examine in dialogue, durable observation, established theory, active model, frontier proposal, philosophical interpretation, and theological confession.
4. Name serious rivals and negative cases, not only examples that resemble DDF.
5. Allow the result to correct DDF's factual premises, categories, analogies, and bridge inferences.
6. Let local inquiry and whole-field synthesis question one another recursively; a final bridge earns force only if the local inquiry remains free to deepen, qualify, or contradict it.

DDF is core to Systems Theology. It does not remove the need for biblical exegesis, but it controls how biblical, patristic, and pastoral material becomes Systems Theology prose. Where DDF has spoken, derived books should treat DDF's interpretation as the project standard.

## Required Drafting Pattern

First classify the claim. A doctrinal claim and an empirical claim do not begin at the same source layer.

Every major doctrinal claim in a derived book should be drafted with this pattern:

1. Name the biblical anchor.
2. Confirm DDF coverage and DDF interpretive direction.
3. Ask how the early Church received or guarded that claim.
4. Use DDF to connect the claim to creation, human reception, formation channels, sin, Christ, Spirit, Church, and new creation.
5. Engage independently warranted current research, pastoral cases, psychology, sociology, leadership practice, or ministry design wherever the doctrine touches created reality, allowing those contacts to test empirical premises and applications while Scripture remains the norm of Christian confession.

Every major empirical, historical, clinical, or technical claim should be drafted with this pattern:

1. State the observable or reconstructable question without embedding the desired theological conclusion.
2. Name the relevant field, scale, method, primary evidence, and uncertainty.
3. Distinguish observation from model and established result from frontier proposal.
4. Test the result against serious rivals, counterexamples, and known failure conditions.
5. State what the evidence does and does not establish.
6. Form and test metaphysical and theological interpretations throughout the inquiry, including the DDF interpretation, but state the mature bridge only to the strength earned through iterative return between the evidence, negative cases, and the whole-field account.

### Reader-Facing Boundary Budget

The research record carries the full set of qualifications. The manuscript
does not need to recite that audit every time the argument advances.

- Give a claim cluster one clear inference boundary, then let the positive
  conclusion carry the section.
- Do not repeat the same denial in the body, quick takeaway, visual, and
  appendix. If the reader has already been told that resonance is not a
  technical prediction or laboratory proof, subsequent paragraphs should
  state what the convergence positively shows.
- Prefer a scoped positive sentence over a chain of `does not prove`, `does
  not settle`, `does not replace`, and `does not mean` clauses.
- Boundary control is not a license to remove a sound inference, historical
  context, scientific explanation, concrete analogy, or plain-language
  bridge. Preserve the material that lets the reader understand why the
  conclusion follows.
- Repeat a boundary only when a new inference risk appears or when repetition
  changes a high-stakes pastoral, clinical, legal, or safeguarding action.
- Keep detailed rival analysis, failure conditions, and source limitations in
  notes or research ledgers when they would interrupt ordinary reader flow.

Accuracy requires real limits. It does not require the manuscript to sound
anxious about every possible misreading.

If a doctrinal claim cannot be rooted in Scripture, it should be removed, reframed as prudential wisdom, or placed in a clearly marked leader note. Empirical and technical claims do not require a biblical prooftext; they require truthful evidence and an explicit account of why they matter to the book.

If a proposed doctrinal claim is not covered by DDF, do not develop it in these
books. File a DDF coverage request and wait for a recorded existing-coverage
ruling, DDF update, or rejection before using the topic.

If a claim conflicts with the early rule of faith, the creedal center of the Church, or the received witness to Christ, Trinity, incarnation, resurrection, sacrament, holiness, and communion, it should be rewritten.

## How To Use Early Patristic Sources

Patristic sources should not be used as decorative quotations. Use them to test continuity, not to create a second canon.

Use early patristic writing for:

- rule of faith and creedal grammar;
- Trinity and Christology;
- Scripture's public reading and interpretation;
- baptism, Eucharist, worship, prayer, fasting, and catechesis;
- church order, qualified leaders, discipline, and unity;
- martyrdom, suffering, endurance, and hope;
- heresy discernment and protection of the faithful;
- embodied holiness, family life, almsgiving, and formation.

Handle patristic sources with limits:

- Scripture corrects all later witness.
- Patristic agreement matters more than isolated prooftexts.
- Later denominational debates should not be smuggled into early sources.
- When a father is useful but disputed, name the use narrowly.
- Do not treat institutional claims as self-authenticating just because they sound ancient.

## Core Patristic Witnesses To Keep In View

These sources should be mapped across derived books as needed. Treat apostolic and ante-Nicene witnesses as the primary early patristic layer. Use Nicene and later patristic writers as support where Trinitarian, Christological, catechetical, sacramental, or formation clarity requires them.

- `Didache` - Two Ways, baptism, fasting, prayer, Eucharistic thanksgiving, teachers, prophets, and community order.
- `1 Clement` - humility, repentance, order, envy, leadership, and restoration after conflict.
- Ignatius of Antioch, especially `Smyrnaeans`, `Magnesians`, `Trallians`, and `Ephesians` - Christ's true flesh, Eucharist, unity, bishop-presbyter-deacon order, and the danger of schism and false teaching.
- Polycarp, `Philippians`, and `Martyrdom of Polycarp` - perseverance, imitation, pastoral exhortation, and faithful death.
- Justin Martyr, `First Apology` and `Dialogue with Trypho` - public witness, worship, baptism, Eucharist, Scripture, Logos, and Christian apologetic.
- Irenaeus, `Against Heresies` and `Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching` - rule of faith, recapitulation, embodied salvation, Scripture, creation, and anti-Gnostic protection.
- Tertullian, `Prescription Against Heretics`, `On Baptism`, and `On the Flesh of Christ` - public rule, baptism, embodied incarnation, and the limits of speculative novelty.
- Clement of Alexandria, `Paedagogus` - formation, discipline, desire, household instruction, and Christian habit, used carefully.
- Cyprian, `On the Unity of the Church` - unity, episcopal order, discipline, and the danger of over-identifying unity with institution.
- Athanasius, `On the Incarnation` - Nicene support for incarnation, restoration of the image, death defeated, and embodied salvation.
- Cyril of Jerusalem, `Catechetical Lectures` - Nicene support for catechesis, creed, baptism, Eucharist, and mystagogy.
- Basil of Caesarea, `On the Holy Spirit` - Nicene support for worship, Spirit, doxology, and received practice.
- Gregory of Nyssa, `The Great Catechism` and `Life of Moses` - Nicene support for catechesis, desire, formation, and growth in God.
- Augustine, `On Christian Doctrine`, `Confessions`, and `City of God` - late patristic support for Scripture, ordered love, confession, memory, city, worship, and pilgrimage.

## Book-Specific Controls

Do not duplicate book-specific source lists here. Each canonical book's
`notes/source-and-conclusion-ledger.md`, where present, owns its stable DDF
routes, source-language priorities, conclusion boundaries, and derivative
controls. DDF's substantial evidence records remain under
`books/divine-design-framework/research/`; *Rethinking Reality* localization and
alignment controls remain under its `notes/` directory.

## Final Test

Before a paragraph, module, or lesson is kept, ask:

1. What kind of claim is this, and which source or discipline has direct jurisdiction over it?
2. If it is biblical or doctrinal, is it governed by Scripture, continuous with the early rule of faith, and covered by DDF?
3. If it is empirical, historical, formal, clinical, or technical, has the local field been allowed to answer in its own terms and revise the synthesis?
4. Are observation, model, frontier proposal, metaphysical interpretation, theological confession, and pastoral application visibly distinguishable and brought into truthful dialogue?
5. If new doctrine is not covered by DDF, has a DDF coverage request been sent and resolved?
6. Can contrary evidence correct the factual premise, analogy, bridge, or application?
7. Does the paragraph name relevant negative cases rather than counting only supportive patterns?
8. Could a pastor, parent, theologian, scientist, clinician, or normal reader misuse it to bypass evidence, repentance, protection, doctrine, or embodied care?