Samplings

Hmm.

Apparently my last non-holiday post drove and/or scared off what little readership I had remaining (or most of it, at any rate). Or maybe it just wasn't as interesting as I thought it was. *shrugs* At any rate, I contemplated giving up this blog, but decided not to since it provides some diversion (and autobiographical function) for me, even if there isn't an outside audience.

However, on the assumption that some of you might still be reading this anyway, I'm going to offer a small sampling of the copious quantities of work that have conspired to keep me from updating with any regularity. They may or may not interest you, but at least it's evidence that I'm accomplishing something in this silly grad program of mine.

First up, from New Testament Survey: One-sentence Book Summaries! (the culminations of the "detailed analyses" I mentioned in previous posts)
The Gospel of John: "When Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God, came to earth with the authority and glory of the Father, his teachings and miraculous deeds—which demonstrated both his divine nature and the truth of his message—elicited hostility from the Jewish authorities that culminated in his arrest and crucifixion, after which he rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples, fulfilling the Scriptures and confirming that faith in him is the only means of salvation."

The Acts of the Apostles: "After Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, the Holy Spirit empowers Jesus’ followers to spread the good news about Him—that repentance and faith in Him lead to salvation—starting in Jerusalem and expanding to Judea, Samaria, and the whole Roman world, both Jews and Gentiles, through preaching and miraculous deeds, overcoming Jewish and pagan opposition and baptizing new believers into the community of faith."


Next, from Theology 2: an excerpt from my paper "The Dwellers in Deep Heaven: Angelology in C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy”
"The eldila’s otherworldly nature is mirrored by the descriptions of them throughout the series. Though the words and sentences themselves tend to be fairly simple, the concepts they express are foreign to our experience and therefore hard to understand. For example, Lewis refers to the eldila as 'hypersomatic beings,' for though they have bodies, they neither breed nor die, and their bodies are of a different kind than the corporeal bodies with which we are familiar. Though we can grasp this idea to some extent, what does it mean to be 'hypersomatic'? What would such a being be like? The answer is both simple and nearly unfathomable."


Finally: I haven't actually produced anything except notes and a mid-term in Metaphysics (though there's a paper due later this month. Yikes.). So instead you get a few amusing quotes from the prof. :-)
“I want you to learn to be puzzled by things you take for granted.”
“I hope Zeus isn’t in your mind, because if he is, you’re going to need a neck brace.”
“Being shouldn’t be a Guiness.”
“You could be an abstract object--like the Kansas City Chiefs’ offensive line--but not be a universal, thank God.”

Food for thought, eh?