Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Country Music/Exegetical Head Ache/Fragmentation

I'm posting this from an internet cafe (there's no coffee and the computers are slow motion) near the seminary. One thing I like about Baguio City is the music; they love country songs here. Hmmmm....country songs are spiritual. They mention a lot of Jesus and the Father and the Holy Ghost and all those stuffs about the relationship of a broken heart and faith and family relationships and faith...and the three part voice harmony, slide guitar, the narrations, the poems ...I'll ask my pirate friend to burn me a CD of country essentials. (Suspend bio-ethics...err...I mean techno ethics for a while. We all know who the real pirates are.)
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When one gets older one starts to appreciate slower, gentler, sweeter, and emotional music. Why, I even missed Johnny Mathis and his version of "Misty". (Mathis was one of my father's favorite singer, that's why.)
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This is day 2 of my historical (big word), theological (bigger word), and exegetical (not only the biggest word so far, but also the most exotic one) study of the Corinthians correspondence (or the 1 and 2 Corinthians). I am supposed to write a paper, but just like one of those days when I can’t get my head to think and write, what I am inclined to do is to write about how I feel and what I think and why can’t I think and all those stuffs that is supposed to jumpstart my head into thinking that the class that I’m attending is a condensed class that will tackle a one term subject into a two week period accelerated class, so this means that I have no time to meander needlessly and write about inane things because I don’t have the time. I need to write four papers, plus a final paper in a period of two weeks. The problem is the papers are formal papers.

But, how does one write an exegetical paper?

So…the via dolorosa has begun. I’ll try my best to write an intelligible paper, that’s how far I can go. I just hope that my grammar will not kill my professor.

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Fragmentation of Theology and Spirituality

“The long history of human intellectual engagement is more often told in fragmentation than synthesis. The case of Christian theology may serve as an example. The modern period has seen the emergence of both a distinction and separation within western Christian thinking between the two disciplines of ‘theology’ and ‘spirituality’. It is a development which owes much to both social and academic pressures—such as the professionalization of the disciplines, the demand for detachment on the part of academically ‘neutral’ theologians, and the general trend towards diversification within the academy. Yet it has not always been so. For writers such as Evagrius, such distinction was impossible: theology and prayers belonged together, and as a matter of both theory and fact could not be separated.


Alister E. McGrath’s A Scientific Theology: Nature p. 28

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