I hope many of you got the chance to read the comments offered by Mr. Wallace by following the link found below the previous post. The handful of comments that have been sent into this blog are all public so when you find yourself with free time and are disappointed to find no new postings from me feel free to scour the archived posts looking for comments that others have left via a link under each previous post of mine. Or, for a more rewarding experience, go to http://www.websudoku.com and try to solve an "Evil" puzzle without using scratch paper or pencil marks (you might want to turn off the timer, it’s just frustrating). Also, if you ever want to send comments that are not public, I have an e-mail address published under my profile. If you’d like to write comments for everyone to see except me, you’re on your own.
This weekend I have the great pleasure of dog sitting for a Seminary VP way out in Washington Township. Out here only 25 miles from PTS my truck has found its home amidst the gravel driveways and winding country roads. The Ram really blends in out here; he's not much of a city truck.
The dogs are Great Danes. Two of them, and yes, both can put their paws on my 6 foot high shoulders without a wisp of effort. They share a common trait with our Brittany Spaniel back home in that they never learned to bark at the door to get inside instead choosing to scratch and whimper. The difference is that Sophie's scratch marks on the door don't go above my knees and the ones on this house don't go below them, the highest reaching my eye level. When the dogs want to be let out of their crates they don't bark like a small dog asking for amnesty, they bark with a vigor as to warn you that you better have your foot on the door when you unlatch it because their hind legs are braced against the rear of the cage and an unlatched gate won't stop until it's buried in your thigh. Freed, they are nice as can be, each blissfully unaware of their massive strength being happy to sleep on the couch with a head the length of a size 18 shoe resting in your lap. When you meet dogs this size you first wonder who let the ponies out of the stable but before long you start to feel like a smaller pet just wouldn't count. Still each time they walk around the corner into the room you have to marvel that their snouts reach halfway up the doorframe.
Finals are over for my second term having passed without circumstance. Having been delayed in the airports I was able to have my first exam moved from Tuesday to Wednesday there by creating the perfect 4-day schedule for three tests: day off, afternoon test, morning short quiz, morning language exam. So then without any structural complains to file with my audience I guess I'm left with nothing to talk about. Well, other than things that I've learned.
Starting with Church history. Dr. Partee gave an exam very well structured to the purposes of the class he was teaching. Since it was intended to be a survey class covering a range of topics in an introductory way he went away from the Sunquist model (asking highly specialized questions about very specific instances and giving you the exact questions so that you are expected to prepare detailed answers and regurgitate them during the exam period into a blue book) and instead choose to give basic structures of questions with the option to answer fewer questions with more detail or more questions with fewer details. He even allows you to write your own question and answer it. So the person who is highly interested in some particular aspect of the reformation is able to prepare an essay and regurgitate it, but those who sought a more general picture could write as many as eight 250-word discussions of topics that he chose. There were also 10 figures/events listed for recognition to cover other minor things that didn’t apply to the essays. It’s a very appropriate means of testing, I was pleased. I actually prepared a question based on a minor character named Michael Servetus who was not mentioned in the lectures. It turned out he was the only non-lecture-based character listed on the recognition sheet so my essay would have been less impressive and I wrote on Partee’s seven suggested discussions. (Don’t bother re-reading this until it makes sense, you can still enjoy the rest of the post as much as you usually would.) Servetus might be better known for his medical contributions than his theological ones but it was his anti-Trinitarian, pseudo-Unitarian theology that got him killed. His demeanor was not kind, so hostile that he made an enemy even of the ultra-concessive Philip Melanchthon. Perhaps his elevated conceit is what made him such a celebrated surgeon? At any rate, he shows up on the theological radar because some people believe Calvin was directly responsible for his execution. I understand that these things were handled differently in 1553, but it would be nice to think that the top mind of the protestant reformation would have been the last to light a match under someone with so much to offer the study of the relationship between the pulmonary and circulatory systems. You’d think, as tempting as it might have been to whack a Spaniard, he would have been immersed in Scripture enough to know execution by burning is not merciful. There was a Time magazing cover story in 1947 depicting Calvin as a dangerous viciously ascetic French-Swiss Torquemada based solely upon his alleged role in this incident. I’ve heard that each US president gets to have one person secretly killed, no questions asked. I wonder if that’s what the city fathers of Geneva proposed to John Calvin. “Come on, Jean, just this one guy, it’ll be the last violent thing we Swiss ever do… some people are just predestined to be consumed by fire for spouting nonsense about adult baptism.” If this was going to be the tone of my essay, better that I didn’t write it.
Segue from history to New Testament: It’s interesting to note why few other theological minds of the reformation hated the Book of James as much as Martin Luther. Luther only liked Paul’s view of faith and works. He said James was not based upon the foundation of Scripture. But his seems like a knee-jerk reaction (like the UAE port ownership dispute of his day) because a closer look reveals that James is really in agreement with Paul, they just use the terms in different ways. Paul talks about works of the law, things like keeping the Sabbath and getting circumcised and says they are not necessary for salvation under the new covenant. James clarifies what should be obvious: Paul did not intend for there to be no more works and no more law. The drive of the Christian to serve is a defining trait of his conversion so faith without works (i.e. faith with no intention of service or with disrespect for civil law) is dead. Also James talks about faith as something more than intellectual consent to a creed, an important nuance that might not be made plain in Paul’s letters.
I’m not sure if James/Paul scholarship can be proved from the Greek so no segue for this paragraph. The Greek final was as expected but because there is no use in talking about nuance when I can’t even express the alphabet in this forum, I will offer a non-academic discussion of the exam. The course is determined from a 1000 point score, 500 of the points available on the final exam. There was some complicated system introduced this year for weighing the scores on the midterm and final in order to give folks who under-performed on the midterm a chance at redemption. (Its almost hard feel good about a high grade in some courses because of the great mercies of the faculty. I say almost.) And in addition we were given the option of bringing a 3x5 note card to the final crammed with as much information as can be hand-written on to it. If you opted to forgo the card, there was a 15 point bonus. So, to me, the clear strategy is to build a card with everything you can fit onto it and study it to see what you can and cannot remember. I did this and decided that I’d just take the 3% bonus and accept the risk of mis-translating an obscure aorist passive form or misspelling a word in a paradigm. It will be interesting to see how this plays out because over half of my Greek section and all the people in the other class opted to use the card. There were about 8 people who took the points. Here’s the kicker: Dr. Gagnon never told us before the test that he would be putting other bonus questions on it, so conceivably those who used a card have a better shot at nailing the bonus anyway as well as exceeding the cardless on the rest of the exam. Also, all the folks who took the points were the same who traditionally score very well anyway, one girl in particular who has put up high-90% figures for each test so there is a potential for a 103% score. The only real blog-related result of all this is that once again I made a decision that I thought was the obvious best way to go (not just for those who are gifted at memorization, but because it’s better to take the points than take the chance that your card improves your score by more than 15) and the majority of my colleagues chose differently.
The real sob story coming out of that test was the numerous folks who took Sunquist for church history this term. They had his brutal final on Thursday from 6-9 PM and Gagnon’s brutal final Friday at 9 AM. No good. Also, I would count them unfortunate because they likely learned far more about the Jesuit missionaries in Asia and colonial expansion than they did about John Calvin. Something I view as a disadvantage.
Stay tuned for an entry in the coming days about Catholic scholar and Yale professor Luke Timothy Johnson. I’m working on a paper about his understanding of experience and faith. Along the way I’ll most certainly have to cut out many accidental sentences of personal bias and animas and paste them into a blog entry.
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This weekend I have the great pleasure of dog sitting for a Seminary VP way out in Washington Township. Out here only 25 miles from PTS my truck has found its home amidst the gravel driveways and winding country roads. The Ram really blends in out here; he's not much of a city truck.
The dogs are Great Danes. Two of them, and yes, both can put their paws on my 6 foot high shoulders without a wisp of effort. They share a common trait with our Brittany Spaniel back home in that they never learned to bark at the door to get inside instead choosing to scratch and whimper. The difference is that Sophie's scratch marks on the door don't go above my knees and the ones on this house don't go below them, the highest reaching my eye level. When the dogs want to be let out of their crates they don't bark like a small dog asking for amnesty, they bark with a vigor as to warn you that you better have your foot on the door when you unlatch it because their hind legs are braced against the rear of the cage and an unlatched gate won't stop until it's buried in your thigh. Freed, they are nice as can be, each blissfully unaware of their massive strength being happy to sleep on the couch with a head the length of a size 18 shoe resting in your lap. When you meet dogs this size you first wonder who let the ponies out of the stable but before long you start to feel like a smaller pet just wouldn't count. Still each time they walk around the corner into the room you have to marvel that their snouts reach halfway up the doorframe.
Finals are over for my second term having passed without circumstance. Having been delayed in the airports I was able to have my first exam moved from Tuesday to Wednesday there by creating the perfect 4-day schedule for three tests: day off, afternoon test, morning short quiz, morning language exam. So then without any structural complains to file with my audience I guess I'm left with nothing to talk about. Well, other than things that I've learned.
Starting with Church history. Dr. Partee gave an exam very well structured to the purposes of the class he was teaching. Since it was intended to be a survey class covering a range of topics in an introductory way he went away from the Sunquist model (asking highly specialized questions about very specific instances and giving you the exact questions so that you are expected to prepare detailed answers and regurgitate them during the exam period into a blue book) and instead choose to give basic structures of questions with the option to answer fewer questions with more detail or more questions with fewer details. He even allows you to write your own question and answer it. So the person who is highly interested in some particular aspect of the reformation is able to prepare an essay and regurgitate it, but those who sought a more general picture could write as many as eight 250-word discussions of topics that he chose. There were also 10 figures/events listed for recognition to cover other minor things that didn’t apply to the essays. It’s a very appropriate means of testing, I was pleased. I actually prepared a question based on a minor character named Michael Servetus who was not mentioned in the lectures. It turned out he was the only non-lecture-based character listed on the recognition sheet so my essay would have been less impressive and I wrote on Partee’s seven suggested discussions. (Don’t bother re-reading this until it makes sense, you can still enjoy the rest of the post as much as you usually would.) Servetus might be better known for his medical contributions than his theological ones but it was his anti-Trinitarian, pseudo-Unitarian theology that got him killed. His demeanor was not kind, so hostile that he made an enemy even of the ultra-concessive Philip Melanchthon. Perhaps his elevated conceit is what made him such a celebrated surgeon? At any rate, he shows up on the theological radar because some people believe Calvin was directly responsible for his execution. I understand that these things were handled differently in 1553, but it would be nice to think that the top mind of the protestant reformation would have been the last to light a match under someone with so much to offer the study of the relationship between the pulmonary and circulatory systems. You’d think, as tempting as it might have been to whack a Spaniard, he would have been immersed in Scripture enough to know execution by burning is not merciful. There was a Time magazing cover story in 1947 depicting Calvin as a dangerous viciously ascetic French-Swiss Torquemada based solely upon his alleged role in this incident. I’ve heard that each US president gets to have one person secretly killed, no questions asked. I wonder if that’s what the city fathers of Geneva proposed to John Calvin. “Come on, Jean, just this one guy, it’ll be the last violent thing we Swiss ever do… some people are just predestined to be consumed by fire for spouting nonsense about adult baptism.” If this was going to be the tone of my essay, better that I didn’t write it.
Segue from history to New Testament: It’s interesting to note why few other theological minds of the reformation hated the Book of James as much as Martin Luther. Luther only liked Paul’s view of faith and works. He said James was not based upon the foundation of Scripture. But his seems like a knee-jerk reaction (like the UAE port ownership dispute of his day) because a closer look reveals that James is really in agreement with Paul, they just use the terms in different ways. Paul talks about works of the law, things like keeping the Sabbath and getting circumcised and says they are not necessary for salvation under the new covenant. James clarifies what should be obvious: Paul did not intend for there to be no more works and no more law. The drive of the Christian to serve is a defining trait of his conversion so faith without works (i.e. faith with no intention of service or with disrespect for civil law) is dead. Also James talks about faith as something more than intellectual consent to a creed, an important nuance that might not be made plain in Paul’s letters.
I’m not sure if James/Paul scholarship can be proved from the Greek so no segue for this paragraph. The Greek final was as expected but because there is no use in talking about nuance when I can’t even express the alphabet in this forum, I will offer a non-academic discussion of the exam. The course is determined from a 1000 point score, 500 of the points available on the final exam. There was some complicated system introduced this year for weighing the scores on the midterm and final in order to give folks who under-performed on the midterm a chance at redemption. (Its almost hard feel good about a high grade in some courses because of the great mercies of the faculty. I say almost.) And in addition we were given the option of bringing a 3x5 note card to the final crammed with as much information as can be hand-written on to it. If you opted to forgo the card, there was a 15 point bonus. So, to me, the clear strategy is to build a card with everything you can fit onto it and study it to see what you can and cannot remember. I did this and decided that I’d just take the 3% bonus and accept the risk of mis-translating an obscure aorist passive form or misspelling a word in a paradigm. It will be interesting to see how this plays out because over half of my Greek section and all the people in the other class opted to use the card. There were about 8 people who took the points. Here’s the kicker: Dr. Gagnon never told us before the test that he would be putting other bonus questions on it, so conceivably those who used a card have a better shot at nailing the bonus anyway as well as exceeding the cardless on the rest of the exam. Also, all the folks who took the points were the same who traditionally score very well anyway, one girl in particular who has put up high-90% figures for each test so there is a potential for a 103% score. The only real blog-related result of all this is that once again I made a decision that I thought was the obvious best way to go (not just for those who are gifted at memorization, but because it’s better to take the points than take the chance that your card improves your score by more than 15) and the majority of my colleagues chose differently.
The real sob story coming out of that test was the numerous folks who took Sunquist for church history this term. They had his brutal final on Thursday from 6-9 PM and Gagnon’s brutal final Friday at 9 AM. No good. Also, I would count them unfortunate because they likely learned far more about the Jesuit missionaries in Asia and colonial expansion than they did about John Calvin. Something I view as a disadvantage.
Stay tuned for an entry in the coming days about Catholic scholar and Yale professor Luke Timothy Johnson. I’m working on a paper about his understanding of experience and faith. Along the way I’ll most certainly have to cut out many accidental sentences of personal bias and animas and paste them into a blog entry.
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1 Comments:
Instead of editing the post I thought I'd put this correction in a comment: LT Johnson is actually a professor at Emory. His PhD is from Yale.
Apologies to anyone who was misled.
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