Referenced Books:
Yaghjian, Writing Theology Well, Pt. 2, chp. 5 Meeks, Christ is the Question, Chapters 1-3, p.1-82 An insight I had from the reading this week is how the evolution of knowledge and particularly the evolving view of knowledge of the “self” influenced theologians in their attempts to write a biography of the historical Jesus Christ. This connects to the learning objective “Be able to define in a clear and accurate way what "epistemology" and "hermeneutics" mean and describe how these two disciplines shape and influence theological methodologies”. Epistemology is the study of knowledge, and particularly for this paper, we’ll focus on the knowledge of the self and knowledge of the scripture, the latter being Hermeneutics. A Modern Theologian attempting to write their biography of Jesus Christ is dealing with many contexts: historical knowledge, archaeological evidence, cultural influences, and personal biases. When writing about a person, we must be working with a model of “self”, and even that is a concept that has changed over time. An insight from the reading that confirmed the complexity is well put by Nietzsche: “There are no facts; there are only interpretations.” Meeks specifically references four “distortions” in knowledge of the self: literalism, cognitivism, privatism, and romanticism. The ways that we define ourselves absolutely influence how we would write about Jesus. How literally do we read the Bible? Do we need archeological or historical proof of Jesus? Do we rely on prior belief and doctrine as dictated to us in structuring our faith? How does our, in a friend’s words, “rugged individualism” affect our view of self as dictated by American society? How do our feelings about ourselves influence the way we view, and then author a text on the self of Jesus Christ? I find it fascinating to explore these questions and I’m excited to take “Intro to Spiritual and Personal Formation” to delve deeper and discover my own influences and biases.
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Books Referenced: Yaghjian, Writing Theology Well, Pt. 1, chps. 3-4 Brettler, How to Read the Jewish Bible, chapters 15-17, 21-23 An insight I had from the reading this week is how complex the analysis of prophecy can be and the ways in which prophecy was delivered and supported through additional action by the prophets. The division of types of Israelite prophecy, classical versus nonclassical, quite surprised me. I was most familiar with the characteristics of the “nonclassical” prophets such as Elijah, and had always assumed that all of the prophets had, to varying degrees, performed in the ways ascribed to the nonclassical, including knowing secret information, inducing prophecy, and working miracles. I had not previously considered how the audience (e.g. the king) would impact the tools used (e.g. short, prose style, delivered on fixed occasions for payment, supported by the performance of miracles and “unusual actions”). Learning more about the rhetoric of theological writing alongside learning about the prophetic and apocalyptic contents of the Bible helped me to better understand how the various prophets developed their messages, or more accurately, how the authors of the Bible chose to write it in order to persuade or argue the points they were trying to make. This connects to the learning objective “Be able to demonstrate a working vocabulary of primary theological and religious concepts,..” as I feel I have a much better technical understanding of the vocabulary of rhetoric and the terminology used around prophecy. I am excited to delve deeper into the ancient Mesopotamian omen texts. I’m curious to see the connections between the protasis and apodosis, and compare them to more recent “new age” spiritual omens to see if any of the different phenomena used in ancient times are still in use today, knowing that some things, such as the objects of sacrifice have changed over time and based on cultural norms.  Books referenced: Yaghjian, Writing Theology Well, Pt. 1, chapters 1-2 Brettler, How to Read the Jewish Bible, chapters 1-4, 6-8 An insight I had from the above mentioned reading is how the context of the reader or audience of a theological text matters just as much as the context of the original author, translators, copy makers, and teachers that bring a theological text to an audience. This insight relates to the learning outcome “Be able to describe what "context" means (understanding) and then evaluate how context influences the doing and the reading/interpreting of theology”. The context of every person along that chain of authors, translators, interpreters, and readers has an impact on what is transmitted because each person who touches that text exists in a context: the intersection of culture, politics, scientific discovery, ecological climate, world events, and innumerable other lenses through which they understand the world. An insight from the reading that surprised me was the number of places where one text alone is being processed and potentially changed. I had considered the contexts of the original author and the current reader being incongruous and requiring analysis to better understand the text, but had not considered the impact of all of the hands that brought that text from one to the other. One translator may have a cultural understanding that another translator lacks, so the text that comes through may have missed cultural, political or other contextual references that result in a text with a very different meaning than the original author intended. I am excited to delve deeper into learning what scholars have already discovered and documented to provide a better understanding of the texts for the context in which we live. Learning more about the theological lenses through which we view scripture and create theology is also exciting as I had not known about the creation of theology that focuses through a particular contextual lens. (e.g. disability theology)  |
AuthorHi I'm Root a student at United Theological Seminary training to be an Interfaith Chaplain. ArchivesCategories |
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