cynicism and optimism on consensus

Jim West and Jim Davila have kindly responded to my previous post on consensus, producing an interesting juxtaposition of cynicism (Jim West) and optimism (Jim Davila) that I actually attempted to present in my original post. With Jim West, I feel the postmodern, existential angst-ridden, deconstructionist (yikes! probably not how he'd describe it!) pull toward cynicism regarding attempts to determine consensus or appeals to such consensus in scholarship. But along with Jim Davila, I recognize the inevitability and importance of such attempts to determine consensus or such appeals to consensus. I agree with much of what Jim Davila has said, and certainly recognize the necessity of (and the hard work of) knowing and engaging the scholarly "lay of the land" on a particular topic of study (I'm in the midst of that for my PhD!). I attempted to acknowledge these things toward the end of my original post.

I do find some delicious irony in Jim Davila's post: At least once he uses a "consensus statement" to respond to my questions: "I think most people measure consensus on the basis of..." Which leads to a further question: Can there be consensus on the issue of consensus? ;-)

UPDATE: Ed Cook at Ralph adds some helpful comments, distinguishing between a "hard consensus" and a "soft consensus."

UPDATE: Jim Davila has responded briefly to my discovery of irony and the question of consensus on consensus (which was very much tongue in cheek) in an update to his post here. Part of his response is this wonderful line, with which I am in full agreement as I navigate between optimism and cynicism myself: "Let us steer between the Scylla of overconfidence in our own theories and the Charybdis of nihilism."

UPDATE: Christopher Heard at Higgaion has responded to all this brouhaha with a post of his own, in defense of Jim West.