Monday, May 09, 2005
Exam: Church History to 461 CE
I took the exam today. This is one the courses I enjoyed the most so
far, and one that in my opinion should be core rather than elective. It
is true that in the BD studies you have to sit at least one of the
three available Church history courses, but I would make this one
compulsory. I can't imagine a theology graduate not knowing (even in a
somewhat generic way) what happened to the Church in its first five
centuries of history.
I will shortly post some of the mini-summaries I wrote to review part of the material. Very rough things, but they were useful to me.
I kept on with the habit of entering a bookstore after exams; in this sense, it is good (for finances) that I'm done with the exams for this year. This time I came out of the bookstore with a copy of Gibbon, "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" (a classic I had been wanting to buy for quite some time), and MacCulloch, "Reformation". But to be honest, perhaps to offset the efforts of these last weeks preparing for the exams, I sense now the need to focus for a while less on academic readings and more on spirituality, so I won't probably start reading them tomorrow.
As usual, if I were able to sit exams also this year, I owe it a lot to my wife, Michela, and to my little daughter, Irene, who have allowed me to study even when they would have liked me to be more present with them. Grazie, famiglia.
Last year, about this time, I wrote about a possible study plan for this year. I have since then changed plans a bit, deciding to focus more on biblical languages and on related biblical studies, and out of the planned three or four exams I was able to sit only two. But, given my time constraints, that's not too bad, and the important thing for me is to keep on enjoying each and every moment of this degree.
We'll see what next year will bring. It will certainly see us returning, after 7 years spent between California and the Netherlands, to Italy; we are all looking forward to that. In terms of exams, I would like to take Christian Doctrine, New Testament with Greek Texts, and if at all possible Foundations of Biblical Hebrew.
I will shortly post some of the mini-summaries I wrote to review part of the material. Very rough things, but they were useful to me.
I kept on with the habit of entering a bookstore after exams; in this sense, it is good (for finances) that I'm done with the exams for this year. This time I came out of the bookstore with a copy of Gibbon, "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" (a classic I had been wanting to buy for quite some time), and MacCulloch, "Reformation". But to be honest, perhaps to offset the efforts of these last weeks preparing for the exams, I sense now the need to focus for a while less on academic readings and more on spirituality, so I won't probably start reading them tomorrow.
As usual, if I were able to sit exams also this year, I owe it a lot to my wife, Michela, and to my little daughter, Irene, who have allowed me to study even when they would have liked me to be more present with them. Grazie, famiglia.
Last year, about this time, I wrote about a possible study plan for this year. I have since then changed plans a bit, deciding to focus more on biblical languages and on related biblical studies, and out of the planned three or four exams I was able to sit only two. But, given my time constraints, that's not too bad, and the important thing for me is to keep on enjoying each and every moment of this degree.
We'll see what next year will bring. It will certainly see us returning, after 7 years spent between California and the Netherlands, to Italy; we are all looking forward to that. In terms of exams, I would like to take Christian Doctrine, New Testament with Greek Texts, and if at all possible Foundations of Biblical Hebrew.
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I entirely agree about the importance of knowing about the first half millenium, that's when all the key doctrines were developed. Failure to understand is dangerous! There are also so many writers worth a read...
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