Perplexed

Well, the semester ended for me last Friday, when I turned in my last (and largest) project, a full length play on a part of Reformation history. More on that later.

I'm starting to unwind from the semester and hope to resume normal posting — finally. It has been a very long haul over this past year. I've been drained and stressed to the max, and while being in seminary has been a genuine blessing, I am thankful for some time to rest.

This week has been perplexing for a number of reasons, but also restful. I'm starting to feel a bit like myself again, at least.

Merry Christmas!

If Our Hearts Were Never Broken

“If our hearts were never broken, the world would be flat.” — Unknown

I really like this quote, it adds something meaningful to the idea of brokenness. And to the extent that I have felt brokenness over the past few years, it's nice to think that it wasn't for naught but for the building up of interesting geology in life. The question is how does one climb the newly formed mountains when they appear? Perhaps the pain was necessary to place those beautiful summits into view, but that same pain makes me fearful of trying to hike up them. There is a destination I should like to reach, but up is the only way to get there. At times, a flat world doesn't sound so bad.

That's not to say that's what I want. The reward, I suspect, it much greater this way. But what if I should fail? How do I know I even should leave base camp? I feel like I have one foot out of the tent and I'm just looking to see if there is ground enough to plant the other foot. It's only a few words that need to be said; the question is if they are said, what will come of them. Are they necessarily succeed or fail completely type words, or is there a middle ground of a soft landing to hope for if they fail? Can one ever reach the top when paralyzed with questions of failure?

Well, no. Eventually it is time to take a leap of faith.

Friday Feast

This week's Feast:

Appetizer: What was the last game you purchased?
A game I bought when I bought a Wii a few months ago, but the name escapes me.

Soup: Name something in which you don’t believe.
The Oxfordian Shakespeare.

Salad: If you could choose a celebrity to be your boss, who would you pick?
Tough choice. Alive or dead? Let's stick with a theme: Shakespeare.

Main Course: What was a lesson you had to learn the hard way?
That exegetical notebooks are black holes that consume time in such a way that progress slows while the speed of time increases.

Dessert: Describe your idea of the perfect relaxation room.
No phones. Comfortable chairs, a good picture window and lots of nice books. Perhaps a fire burning in the fireplace. Snow falling gently outside.

The Future of Reading

Mark Pilgrim offers a simple, profound consideration of Amazon's Kindle TOS. It is well worth your time to read it.

Remember Me?

So, I only posted once during the whole month of November. Wow. I'm not sure I've been that light on posting since I really got going on this blog five or so years ago. This semester has been really hard for blogging. Part of it is workload — I've found the amount of work relatively intense with some deadline looming just ahead even more so than last semester (or during my time at Lindenwood). But, I think the hardest part of all has been the fact that I've been in class almost constantly since January. With Summer Greek in Exegesis, there was little time for a break and that left me tired going into this semester. If one goes into a semester tired, well, that doesn't bode well for feeling energetic at the end.

And so it is. I'm more ready for a break then I have ever been before. I really love being at Covenant, and love my classes. But I need a break really badly. I find I can't focus my energy into big bursts of productivity like I normally might at the end of the semester, so it is more of a struggle than usual to get done. Fortunately, I am on the home stretch.

• Prep and Del (1st semester of homiletics) “late term exam.” This was a comprehensive exam given two weeks ago. There isn't a final, so this was essentially the final exam.
• Pastoral and General Epistles exegesis paper. A 10 1/2 page paper on Hebrews 6:4-12 entitled “A Thorn in the Side of Perseverance?”
• My Covenant Theology hermeneutics paper, which was essentially like an exegesis paper minus the interaction with the original language. I did mine on Genesis 50:15-26 and its interactions with the problem of evil.
• The final Pastoral and General Epistles content exam, on the Book of Revelation and Michaels's IVP commentary on Revelation.

• Presbyterian History Project: I'm writing a play that should be approximately two hours in performance length on the interactions between David Cardinal Beaton and Protestant Reformer George Wishart. I still have several scenes to go and a number of revisions on existing scenes.
• Pastoral and General Epistles Exegetical Notebook, which has a collection of Greek passages to translate. I've finished a preliminary translation of 11 of the 14 passages, but I still need to add more exegetical questions and usage notes.
• Covenant Theology Oral Examination.
• Prep and Del Group Sermon Project. My group of six members will turn in a complete manuscript, but will not present it.

All of that will be in by December 14, if not earlier. Here's hoping I survive!

Don't Get Too Excited, I'm Still Here

The last few weeks have been hectic. I'm actually moving in slow motion because I've been running out of steam (a bit too early!), but I've had a lot of projects to work on, and more are on the way. I turned in my exegesis paper on the Hebrews 6 warning passage to my esteemed peer reviewers the other day. Then, I peer reviewed two other exegesis papers and survived my first (and, for this semester, only) comprehensive homiletics exam. Now I only have two more major papers to work on, one meditation and one group sermon to complete, two passages to memorize and one major oral examination to prepare for.

Not too much.

At any rate, this may be the longest gap in posting on asisiad I've had in two or three years, so I figured I should say something.

Reformation Day, CDXC

For the 490th Reformation Day, I have written OFB's annual Reformation Day piece, this year reflecting on how Reformation Day applies to everyone in the Church — not just Protestants — and not in the divisive way some people may think. If you missed it last year, you may also want to check out Ed Hurst's excellent piece on the same subject.

Is Prolegomena Permissible?

I was reading Covenant's own Dr. Michael Williams on the matter of systematic theology, and he covers a lot of very good ground. However he raises a question that I have struggled with for some time: should systematic theology burden Scripture with extra-scriptural prolegomena? That is not far from the problem Barth dealt with as he sought to have the Bible provide not just the answers, but also the questions for theology.

I would suggest that we must have prolegomena. We cannot come to the text tabla rosa, we will apply an interpretive framework to it. We bring our cultural and linguistic frameworks to the text; we bring our epistemological frameworks to the text; yes, we even bring our understanding of the text to the text. The hermeneutical spiral is what it is regardless of if we wished we could simply extract the text as we was meant to be known. I know Dr. Williams acknowledges this as well, and, for that matter, we have spent much of this semester in what appears to me to be the prolegomena of Covenant Theology, and so I am sure there is more to his position than what I have stated above. I need to talk to him on this subject perhaps, but I leave it to my readers for tonight: how do you deal with the tension between sola scriptura and the need for interpretive frameworks in reading that Scripture?

For me, I think, following Calvin and the Westminster Confession, I find it mostly helpful not to look solely to Scripture, but rather to place whatever I look at under the authority of Scripture. I would argue we must have extrabiblical assumptions, but that does not mean we abandon sola scriptura. What do you think?

It Came By FedEx...

…yes, Mac OS X 10.5 arrived at about 11:30 this morning. I'm getting ready to install it on one of my computers. Hopefully I will be good to go before the new OS even officially launches at 6:00 tonight!

Injured

Well, almost two weeks ago, I apparently injured my upper back and left arm. It wasn't very apparent at first, but really started to bug me after I participated in a few games of Wii Sports bowling (not surprising, since other than the lack of the heavy ball, one moves in precisely the same way as real bowling). I think the source may have been my purchase and subsequent carrying of the complete Catholic Encyclopedia (16 volumes), which I got for under $30 at a book sale at Covenant's library. It gradually got worse over the weekend before the last one and into last week, with the climax of pain somewhere between last Wednesday and Friday. Particularly since Wednesday or so, I've noticed typing irritated my upper arm and back, so I've been trying to spend my time on the reading I need to do with the plan of catching up on written — typed — things after a few more days. I think I'm slowly on the mend, finally. It hasn't been that bad, and I'm not writing this to complain, but merely to note the cause of my continued absence.

In the mean time, I have a post or two in my head for here and an article or two for OFB, but those will have to wait. I'll be back… (pun intended.)