School is over, and it never felt so good.
This was one of the most difficult semesters I have had throughout my scholastic career. Even at Olivet, the graduate level is significantly more strenuous than the undergraduate. Multiple factors play in: getting married, three jobs, paying bills, and making time for people around me. Not to mention I didn't hardly exercise or eat right, this semester took a toll on my "gauges" as Prof. Wine would say.
Regardless of how difficult it may have been, I learned a whole heck of a lot.
1. The Bible (specifically the New Testament, even more specifically Paul, and even more than that the letters that we actually know without question that Paul wrote) greatly utilizes the various inventions of rhetoric. I had a class with Troy Martin, who I am convinced knows just about everything there is to know about Paul and his letters, on the uses of rhetoric in Paul's letters. By seeing his different usages of rhetorical proofs (logos, ethos, pathos) and other various rhetorical devices in Paul's letters, I will never read them the same again. Also, I am now aware of the variegated rhetorical situations we face daily. People are very good at using rhetoric, and they can also be very manipulative.
2. I am not an open theist. It seemed appealing at first, but the evidence I've found leads me to believe that open theism's nature is reactionary to a specific strand of the Christian faith, and I just don't know that I need to "go there" in order to have a proper understanding of God. I do not, however, think that it is necessarily outside of the trajectory of faith. It is based more off a philosophical presupposition (God's relation to time and the created order) than a theological assertion (God has to be x in order to do y). This does not mean that I am closed to learning more about or investigating more fully the concept of open theism--just right now I am content with being a good old fashion Arminian.
3. Studying ethics is interesting. I still am unsure of how I would even define ethics; where they come from and how they derive I still have no conclusion. It was interesting this semester, however, to see the changes and different forms of ethics throughout the 20th century. What I have found to be the defining era of the 20th century was WW2. I'm sure few would disagree with that. How the incredibly diverse aspects of that war play into the different views of ethics is astounding. Even still, the best metaphor to describe the ethics throughout the 20th century would be a pendulum. It is easy to see how one ethicist reacted against another ethicist, and then back again, and so forth. Really interesting.
This is just a tip of the iceberg of things I learned. I hope the process continues where I am able to continue to build on the different things I know.
Now I just might watch some TV for a while.
