I finally picked a thesis topic. It is harder than one might think. You have to think of a relevant topic where you think you can say something new. In the field of New Testament / Early Christianities, that is pretty difficult to find.

After much hand-wringing, I have decided to do a socio-historical analysis of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Most of the studies of the document have been thematic, or narrative criticism, trying to get at the theological points the author wanted to convey. I’ll try to take this a step further and look at the social and historical location of both the author and the community he wrote to in the Gospel of Thomas. Specifically, I’ll look at connections and departures from a the Lucan community and the connection to the second Zeno school.

Anyway, I fell a million times better having a concrete direction to go in.

This is the second post in my response to Henry Thomas’ post asking what Grace was. My first post tried to look at how Catholic theologians looked at grace. Like that post, this one draws off of Gareth Reese’s book, New Testament Epistles:Romans.

In a nutshell, in Reformed theology, grace is something that God does to a person to save him or her. However, there are several distinctions that need to be made in regards how the process of a human receiving God’s grace works out.

The first distinction that needs to be made is between Common grace and Special grace. Common Grace is something that God grants to all persons. It refers to the blessings and favor that God shows mankind. Outworkings of this type of grace are to be found in our good deeds, our art, our philosophy, among other things. This grace allows humans to live in harmony to each other. It needs to be noted that this grace does not affect human’s need to be saved; it is merely a blessing, or favor that God shows us out of His love for us. Calvin saw our depravity as something that completely affected humans and due to this, we could do nothing correctly. In addition to this, saving grace was particular to the elect. Still, humans did, on occasion do good works and build great societies. Therefore, there must be some action on God’s part that allows humans to do these things. Common grace is the answer.

Next there is Special Grace. This grace only affects the “elect”. Special grace has several attributes, it is:

• Prevenient – allows one to want to respond to God, without this, no human on earth even wants to seek God.
• Efficacious – the grace that is given works, it cannot fail. If God gives one this grace, the grace produces the effect it was intended to effect.
• Irresistible - the giving of the grace cannot be rejected.
• Sufficient – the grace is enough, it is adequate for the believer. Those that are called and do not believe are therefore not given this grace, they are merely called.

There is no synergism, or co-operation here. The act is done completely and solely by God. The person who is elected is a passive recipient to this grace. Grace precedes belief. Grace enables one to believe. Reformed theologians find evidence of this in the lines of Ephesians 2:8: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” They see this as evidence that 1) Grace comes before and is a causal agent in the belief of the elect and 2)that absolutely nothing can be done on a human’s part or that would be a work that saved a person.

Soon I need to come up with ideas for my thesis, ultimately picking a topic by the end of the semester. Here is a list of things I am kicking around along with my interests.

• Anything on the formulation of cannon in religion
• Anything on early Christianities and the level of doctrinal and actual laity difference.
• Heresy creation / Polemics over the years and their effect on the laity.
  • By Proto-Orthodox Christians
  • By Church fathers / Opposing bishops in church councils
  • By the Catholic Church
  • By the Leaders of Protestantism
  • In America by anti-Mormon leaders
  • By Modern Evangelical leaders
• The Relation of Philosophy and Science as the background of the formulations of Christianity
  • Utilization of Philosophies by Christians and the resulting sythesis
  • As philosophies and science change - the impact on the formulations of Christianity
  • Infancy Gospel of Thomas and Zeno
• Religion and Heisenburg’s Uncertainty Principle
  • Comparison between behaviors of similar scale in the movement of atoms and the religious patterns in Christianity
  • Use this as a structuralist view of religion
  • Show how large events with large populations of people can be predicted/modeled/described generally and historically
  • As you refine the picture, the ability to be predicted/modeled/described generally and historically declines with the scale
  • Set the limits of historical knowledge and embrace them as to limit errors in history and judgment
• Disconnect between denomination and the members

Those are some of the things that I have been interested in, but I know that my thesis will need to have a very specific question about a very specific group. We will see how it goes.

I recently finished up my first semester after taking a break between college and grad school. The following is a list of things that I wish I would have done the previous semester.

1. Always turn in a rough draft. Instructor feedback is of almost unlimited value. It gives one a chance to test out one’s ideas on the instructor and will eliminate possible crazy theories.
2. Beware the first paper back. I had not written a formal paper in well over a year and half when I turn my first one in. I had not even had to think about proper writing style outside of a few letters I had to write to customers. As a result of this, my first paper was rife with minor errors in grammar and tone.
3. Learn to skim and speed read. You will get more reading assigned the first semester than you did all of undergrad. The last few pages of chapters are usually your friend. If you must dig deep into the text (and you will need to a lot), skim-speed read the whole book first and then revisit sections that need more depth.
4. Don’t loose your life - physical and social. Take time to blow off steam and engage in something besides your school work. Doing this will help with not being burnt out after half a semester.
5. Grades don’t equal self-worth. The difference between a B+ and an A- (and even an A- to an A) would make all the difference in my self esteem for weeks when I got a grade back. Don’t let grades effect your work or your life. Be happy when you get good grades, use disappointing grades as a challenge, instead of a lessening as your worth as a person.
6. Recognize that you don’t know everything. Just about everything you learned in undergrad will turn out to be wrong or an over-generalization.
7. Turn hardships into a challenge.
8. Don’t procrastinate. Getting and early and prolonged start on big projects will save you from having those weekends from Hell. During finals weeks I started an 18 page paper the day before it was due. I turned it in 6 hours before it was due, at seven am. Only thing was, I had not gone to bed that night. Early and prolonged starts allow you to get things done early, which allows you to turn in papers early, which allows for instructor feedback, which makes your papers better, which makes your grades better, which makes your chances of being successful overall better.
9. Schedule, Schedule, Schedule. There will be too much to do - unless you schedule it well. Then there will be just enough time to get everything done without ruining your life or your stomach lining.

PHDcomics

“Augustine wrote volumes because he could not write succinctly.”

- Me, expressing frustration in my reading assignment

In my Postcolonial Comparative Religion class we had to write a maximum two page response of our impressions of the book along with questions that arose durring the reading. I could seriously write ten fold about what I read in Postcolonialism, A very Short Introduction by R.J.C. Young. So that is shy this is so short and underdeveloped.

This week’s reading was my first taste of the postcolonial. As a westerner, on top of that, as a white male westerner, the issues brought up have not affected me. Since they don’t affect me, I have not thought on them. In reading the work a swirl of issues flooded around me. Many of them centered on basic assumptions about things, the others flowed from the outworking of those assumptions. Like the book suggests, they are hard to put in an eloquently structured form. Here are some of them. |inline

… you think to yourself, “Alright, I only have one whole book and sixty pages of another book to finish and I will have all my reading done for the week.”

I think that is hillarious. As a new grad student in religious studies, I am feeling that way all over.

As part of my class on Augustine, I have to do a one-page relfection on the reading for that week. This week’s reading is books 1-5 of the Confessions. This was my reflection for this week.

An interesting topic that I would like to know more about Augustine’s worldview is his view of God. I do not want to inquire about the religious aspects of God. Augustine makes very clear in passages such as 1:11 that describe God’s holiness, goodness, mercy, and wisdom. Instead what I would pick Augustine’s brain about is the metaphysical aspects of God, such as his views on the problems of omnipresence, pantheism, free will, necessary simplicity and God’s relation to time.

Augustine at once maintains that God is separate from His creation and is present everywhere in it. Being everywhere would seem to imply that God pervades through everything. This idea of God pervading through everything sounds a lot like pantheism, which is impossible since Augustine says that God is separate from His creation. I am not sure how he would reconcile those two ideas.

From what I can tell, Augustine seems to have God being completely outside time, holding to “B Time”. This is into contrast to “A Time” where God is contained within the same time that His creation is in. One first encounters God relationship to time in 1:9, “You are before the beginning of the ages, and prior to everything that can be said to be `before’.” The phrase, “before the beginning of the ages”, puts God at least in sequential order to creation, but still allows for God to be within the realm of time. The last part of the sentence implies that God has existed before there was a time to speak of. If this is so, how is it possible for God to intervene within the realm of time?

Furthermore, Augustine seems to be very concerned with freewill as a necessary component of salvation and in the human condition. At the same time, God is very active within history and within each individual’s life. This is evidenced by the constant God’s prodding and positioning of things in his life that ultimately lead to Augustine’s conversion at Milan. If God is actively manipulating events, how can one say that they have chosen something of their own metaphysical free will?

Lastly, I wonder how Augustine would reply to the idea that in order to be perfect, God must be simple. In order to be simple He must be unchangeable. But if God does hear prayers and decides to act on them, then He must have changed His mind and as such is not simple and therefore not perfect.

Cross posted at the Theology for the Masses and Hundiejo.com