I'm a master's student in theology. AMA.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I go to Boston University School of Theology and will hopefully be graduating with my Master of Theological Studies degree in September.

[Mopsus]

How much crossover is there between theology and secular philosophy?

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

What job do you intend to get with your degree?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

How much crossover is there between theology and secular philosophy?

A lot. Theology and analytic philosophy only really cross over through Wittgenstein (sometimes), Lonergan (ish), and maybe a couple of other thinkers, but theologians, especially but not only left-leaning ones, draw quite a bit from Continental philosophy, and once you get back into the Early Modern period and especially the Middle Ages the line between philosophy and theology is very blurry. To my knowledge there aren't as many American philosophers who are sincerely interested in theological questions as there are American theologians who are sincerely interested in philosophical questions, mostly because of the limitations in terms of subject matter that the analytic tradition places on itself, but in other countries you get people like Gianni Vattimo and Jean-Luc Marion (whom I'm not necessarily endorsing by mentioning them).

What job do you intend to get with your degree?

I don't know.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     How do theologians regard extrabiblical texts that have contributed to the modern understanding of Christianity (eg The Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost)?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

     How do theologians regard extrabiblical texts that have contributed to the modern understanding of Christianity (eg The Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost)?

Generally they're valued insofar as they make implicit or allegorical theological statements. So, for example, a theologian might take Dante very seriously indeed in his implied analysis of how different sins contain their own consequences, or how earthly loves can point us to heavenly loves, but wouldn't feel any need to take seriously the idea that there are such-and-such a number of distinct circles of hell. I'm not as familiar with the reception of Milton but I'd imagine it's similar, as is the reception of modern religious novelists like Dostoyevsky or Waugh or Endō.

[Small L]

Oh man I've got a few:

Are there any obscure theological questions or issues most people haven't heard of that you feel strongly about and/or find really interesting?

I know your theology is pretty Catholic. Do you feel like an outlier in the theology school? Does that stuff even come up?

Favorite theologian?

Least favorite theologian?

If it's not too personal a question: How has studying theology affected your religious faith/practice?

Also, what was your major for undergrad?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Oh man I've got a few:

Are there any obscure theological questions or issues most people haven't heard of that you feel strongly about and/or find really interesting?

I feel very strongly about analogy of being (for) and presuppositional apologetics (against), am bored out of my skull and at times faintly repelled by the historical-critical method, read online comment threads complaining about liturgy for fun, and there are some nooks and crannies of missiology that I'm developing pretty specialized interests in, particularly regarding East Asia.

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OH yeah. BU is nominally Methodist, and about a third of the students in the School of Theology are interested in becoming Methodist pastors. Add in Holiness and Nazarene students, and it's more than half Wesleyan, with most of the rest being other kinds of Protestant; it also presupposes pretty thoroughgoing theological liberalism, although as I've pushed back against that I've found sympathy in places I wouldn't have expected. I'm the first student in the School of Theology to convert to Catholicism in about five years. When I first applied I was a convinced Episcopalian, but already quite High Church. But people seem to value my perspective and I've found common ground with other outlier students (a Jewish atheist, a Buddhist, and so forth).

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This is hard for me to answer.

A few years ago I would have said Simone Weil hands down, but her attitude towards Judaism bothers me more and more as time goes on (I don't know if the fact that she was from a Jewish family herself makes it more tolerable or less). I like von Balthasar but I don't know as much about him as I'd like; there's an Anglo-Catholic Mariologist called Sarah Jane Boss whom I've read a great book by called Empress and Handmaid: On Nature and Gender in the Cult of the Virgin Mary, but I'm not familiar with the rest of her body of work. Tolkien-as-theologian feels like kind of a cheat answer, as do O'Connor-as-theologian and Christina-Rossetti-as-theologian. Among pre-Moderns it's much easier to pick favorites--I'm very fond of the Cappadocian Fathers and Julian of Norwich (although in both cases I'm probably on the more orthodox/conservative end of the spectra of people who are fans of them), and I can get pretty defensive of Augustine although he certainly isn't perfect. My favorite theologian who couldn't in any meaningful sense be called "Catholic" is probably C.S. Lewis, as banal an answer as that may be, and my favorite non-Christian religious thinker (a superlative which obviously should not be taken as an endorsement) is a thirteenth-century Japanese monk named Ippen Shōnin; there's also a lot I admire about Yeshayahu Leibowitz, although the fact that he held ag-esque views on Israel despite living there for most of his life is not a good look.

But, just looking at who's the most heavily represented on my shelf, on some level it's still probably Weil, which I'm not entirely comfortable with.

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I don't understand the appeal of John Duns Scotus or Adrienne von Speyr. I suspect there are some Reformed, Evangelical, and ultra-liberal theologians I'd probably like less, but I don't really interact with those schools of thought enough to be able to put names to them.

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I'm actually often annoyed by how little my inner life has changed; I've been in a very stubborn patch of spiritual dryness for several years now. But it's helped me come to peace with that and accept that it doesn't make me A Bad Christian. It's also convinced me of the absolute necessity of weekly or more-than-weekly Mass attendance and daily or more-than-daily prayer, in some sense not in spite but because of the fact that I don't feel much subjective spiritual gain from those practices.

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Japanese Language and Literature. The work I'm actually submitting to people and am in principle Here To Work On has to do with receptions of Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular in Japanese art, literature, and media.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

What specifically do you find objectionable in theological liberalism?

What is the rough gender ratio of the school? I imagine it's majority male for obvious reasons, but how big is that majority?

[Zioneer]

My faith, Mormonism, doesn't really have theologians in the same way other churches have. Did you cover Mormonism at all in your studies, and if so, how did you approach it?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What specifically do you find objectionable in theological liberalism?

There's no there there. I actually have a fairly high opinion of people like Schleiermacher and even Bultmann who are manifestly working within some sort of definite religious framework, even if it's an unorthodox one, and are willing to defend at least the principle of the primacy of the demands of faith over other kinds of demands, but I have a hard time reading sentences like "John Shelby Spong (1931–), Episcopalian bishop and very prolific author of books such as A New Christianity for a New World, in which he wrote of his rejection of historical religious and Christian beliefs such as Theism (a traditional conception of God as an existent being), the afterlife, miracles, and the Resurrection" or "Matthew Fox (b. 1940), former Roman Catholic priest of the Order of Preachers; currently an American Episcopalian priest and theologian, noted for his synthesis of liberal Christian theology with New Age concepts in his ideas of 'creation spirituality', 'original blessing', and seminal work on the 'Cosmic Christ'; founder of Creation Spirituality" without concluding that these people are making up whatever the hell they feel like to suit preexisting commitments to non-religious or extra-religious ideas.

Content-wise the issue is that it has too low a view of God's grandeur and power over creation. All the other problems I have with it come from that.

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It's about even, since almost nobody here is seeking ordination in a denomination that doesn't ordain women. Even a lot of Catholic schools of theology these days are about even because they have degree programs for people who want to do things like academic theology or spiritual counseling or canon law, and interest in doing religious work other than the priesthood skews female.

My faith, Mormonism, doesn't really have theologians in the same way other churches have. Did you cover Mormonism at all in your studies, and if so, how did you approach it?

We didn't really cover Mormonism, no. I wish we had.

[DC Al Fine]

Why did you choose a Wesleyanish institution if you were a high church Episcopalian when applying?

What specifically do you find faintly repelling about the historical critical method?

The other outlier students seem more outlierish than you. I.e. they aren't Christian. Why are they there, and do you have any observations about how they interact with the material?

[JA]

Has studying theology strengthened your faith in God and an afterlife? If so, what theological arguments or concepts have really helped strengthen your faith?

What do you think of other religions, such as Islam and Buddhism?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

What types of people are you in school with? Why do others want to study religion? Why would an atheist make it their discipline? What do they intend to do with their degrees? What are their own backgrounds that allow them to engage in this field?

[Small L]

Thanks for answering my questions, Nathan! I enjoyed reading your responses. A few of those names were totally new to me.

[Greatest I am]

One of my favorite scholars is Bart Ehrman.

He began as a believer but the more he learned, the less he believed.

Has that been your experience?

Regards
DL

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Why did you choose a Wesleyanish institution if you were a high church Episcopalian when applying?

Because I wanted to stay within New England and the Episcopal-oriented divinity schools in New England are/were all hot messes except for Yale, where I didn't finish my application to in time.

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The same thing I find repelling about theological liberalism in general--it subordinates Biblical interpretation to concerns that are fundamentally not theological in character. One doesn't need to entirely abdicate scholarly concern with the material to avoid this; I'm a big fan of Brevard Childs's canonical criticism.

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Many of them are on the chaplaincy track, which at BU isn't really specifically Christian any more. They do have a hard time with some of the material in the core classes, which teach about the Bible and Christian history at some length (and generally well, managing to give sympathetic treatments to both medieval Catholicism and the Reformation!), but it's taught in such a way that you don't really have to have much background knowledge to pick it up (although there's a certain professor who simultaneously seems to assume that we're all here to rebel against the conservative Evangelical background that she has and that we thus all must have, right?).

Has studying theology strengthened your faith in God and an afterlife? If so, what theological arguments or concepts have really helped strengthen your faith?

It hasn't really; as I said in a previous answer, there's been very little change to my inner life since I've been here. Reading the accounts of other believers who have gone through periods of spiritual dryness has, however, made me more adamant about sticking with it anyway.

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There are some I like more and find more interesting than others. I have a lot of interest in Buddhism, partly because of what I studied in undergrad, but I don't think it's compatible with Christianity the way a lot of people think it is or wish it would be. I'm very fond of certain strains of Jewish thought. I don't know nearly as much as I'd like to about other religions, including Islam.

What types of people are you in school with? Why do others want to study religion? Why would an atheist make it their discipline? What do they intend to do with their degrees? What are their own backgrounds that allow them to engage in this field?

Honestly, the only answer I can think of that addresses all of this is "it takes all kinds". My classmates are everything from devout Pentecostals to people one step up from Greatest I am. They're studying it for reasons ranging from personal enrichment to career goals (ministry, chaplaincy, academia) to just having a really strong interest in it for whatever reason. I imagine an atheist would make it their discipline for the same reason that I do a lot of study of Buddhism--interest in systems of thought other than one's own and desire to understand what makes other people tick. Backgrounds are mostly in the humanities but there are also quite a few people who are doing this as a second career; I know one guy who was some sort of tech venture capitalist and decided to study religion after realizing that a lot of what he was doing was unethical. One of my good friends was a roadie, of all things.

One of my favorite scholars is Bart Ehrman.

He began as a believer but the more he learned, the less he believed.

Has that been your experience?

Regards
DL

No. It has not.

[Greatest I am]

My type of faith, that man is above God, was also bolstered by studying Gnostic Christianity as well as the Jewish Karaite religion.

I see Jesus as saying with his, --- And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: ---

http://biblehub.com/mark/2-27.htm

 -- as fitting nicely with the notion that religions and Gods were created for man and not man for them.

Thoughts?

Regards
DL

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

My type of faith, that man is above God, was also bolstered by studying Gnostic Christianity as well as the Jewish Karaite religion.

I see Jesus as saying with his, --- And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: ---

http://biblehub.com/mark/2-27.htm

 -- as fitting nicely with the notion that religions and Gods were created for man and not man for them.

Thoughts?

Regards
DL

God is our Creator and Lord. Jesus can set norms for Sabbath observance because Jesus is God. The verse quoted does not mean "do whatever you feel like".

[Greatest I am]

My type of faith, that man is above God, was also bolstered by studying Gnostic Christianity as well as the Jewish Karaite religion.

I see Jesus as saying with his, --- And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: ---

http://biblehub.com/mark/2-27.htm

 -- as fitting nicely with the notion that religions and Gods were created for man and not man for them.

Thoughts?

Regards
DL

God is our Creator and Lord. Jesus can set norms for Sabbath observance because Jesus is God. The verse quoted does not mean "do whatever you feel like".

If Jesus is God, then he could not have died.

No one said that the quote meant to do whatever you like.


Regards
DL

[Mopsus]

What are the irreconcilable differences between Buddhism and Christianity?

Do any of those differences make one religion better than the other (in your opinion)?

[Greatest I am]

What are the irreconcilable differences between Buddhism and Christianity?

Do any of those differences make one religion better than the other (in your opinion)?

If I may.

To a Buddhist, like the Karaite Jews and Gnostic Christians, man is greater than God. We recognize that Gods are man made.

To Christians, God made man and is thus above us.

-------

To us, God is to serve us and Jesus indicated that as he said he came to serve.

To Christians and Islam, idol worshiping cults, we are to serve the Gods.

That goes against what Jesus taught.

--------

To us, God never condemned his perfect works. We just look for that perfection in the spark of God within us.

Deuteronomy 32:4 He is the Rock, his work is perfect:

To Christians, we have always been imperfect and in need of a savior.

---------

Christians see God as a loser because Eden was screwed up, the rest of creation was also screwed up and God had to use genocide to reboot and even that got screwed up so he had to send Jesus to die instead of just forgiving us outright.

We we see God as a winner who never had to kill anyone.

--------

Those are the main things.

Regards
DL

[Blue3]

What exactly is the Holy Spirit, and why does it seem to be so underrated when compared to the Father and the Son?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

If Jesus is God, then he could not have died.

You don't have even the most basic understanding of Christianity.

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You're very welcome.

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It's a very common interpretation of the verse among armchair liberal theologians.

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Excuse me?

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 Leave me alone, you pompous creep.

If I may.

You may not. This is my AMA and the question was directed to me. Make your own thread.

What are the irreconcilable differences between Buddhism and Christianity?

The most important differences imo are reincarnation, which Christianity (in all but a few forms) denies and Buddhism (in all but its most modernist forms) affirms, and the Buddhist model of an eternally existent and ever-recrudescent cosmos as opposed to the Christian model of a God Who creates ex nihilo from a definite beginning point. My position is that the traditional Buddhist refusal to speculate on the exact state of someone who has entered parinirvana means that it's not as irreconcilable with the Christian goal of eternal life in God as a lot of commentators think, but most scholars would probably disagree with me on that.

Greatest I am's answer is disjointed babbling, as usual.

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Christianity is the one I've committed to, for a number of personal reasons, but if I hadn't already done that I might have a hard time deciding on one over the other. Both have their more convincing and less convincing points, and both have produced fascinating interpretative and artistic traditions.

What exactly is the Holy Spirit, and why does it seem to be so underrated when compared to the Father and the Son?

Well. I haven't been able to devote nearly as much attention to pneumatology while I've been here as I initially wanted to, so this is probably going to be in some way very wrong, but here goes:

The Holy Spirit is the force (but a personal force) of God through Whose power creation and the sacraments are effected. It would be wildly heretical to outright conflate Him with Bergson's élan vital but we could tentatively and very loosely describe Him as a sort of élan vital who in fact can, as Lewis put it, "delay the senility of the sun or reverse the second law of thermodynamics". (This is why gender-neutral modifications of the Trinitarian formula like "Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit" are, while well-intended, theologically inappropriate; all three Persons of the Trinity participate in the creation and sustenance of the world). He's underrated (outside Pentecostalism) because He's much more abstracted and generally doesn't speak in His own words (the Nicene Creed tells us that He has "spoken through the prophets").

[Mopsus]

How closely does the Fallen World (as described in the Bible) resemble Samsara (as described in Buddhism)? Just in Genesis 3, we have men being chained to the earth, which absorbs their life force and spits it back out at them; women being chained to childbirth, by which they continue the existence of the human race only at the expense of their own well being; and both their descendants being cursed to bruise the head of the serpent which bites at their heels, which is almost an image of the ouroboros.

Of course, if you go back far enough, you have a world created, not out of nothing, but out of watery chaos, which could even imply previous cosmic incarnations.

Sorry if this isn't the sort of post you wanted in this thread, I've just been thinking about this a lot recently.