Direct Answer
They would need to stop treating commentaries, Bible dictionaries, and popular explanations as final authorities and instead use them, at most, as guides toward primary sources. Their teaching and decision-making would need to be grounded in firsthand evidence rather than repeated summaries or assumptions.
Support from Transcript
- Bercot says, “Never stop until you have gone to the primary sources,” applying the legal-research principle to Christian history. - He explains that secondary sources should mainly help locate the “actual” authorities, not replace them. - He warns that even expert legal sources can be “full of errors.” - He says religious sources face added problems from “preconceived theological viewpoints.” - He criticizes Christian works based on other derivative works, calling them tertiary or quaternary sources. - He says reliance on such material is like relying on “hearsay,” which is “never a very good basis for discovering truth.”
Discussion Follow-ups
In practice, this would require more patience, more verification, and less dependence on credentials or repetition. The transcript’s standard is simple but demanding: go back to the original sources whenever seeking historic Christian truth.