Long post about my life
For those of you that don't already know (and I'm assuming that you all already know), I now live in Spokane. I'm going to Gonzaga University, a Jesuit college (in the humanistic tradition, apparently), to get an MA in religious studies.
I started the semester in the two pre-requisite classes, RELI 501 and 502. The first was a survey of the Bible and the second a survey of Christian theology. I dropped both of them after a week because I decided that I didn't need them. The other students had no background in religious studies whatsoever, which is a far cry from where I'm at. So, now I'm in two different classes: Johannine Literature and Contemporary Trends in Theology. The former is on the Gospel and three Epistles of the New Testament attributed to St John the Apostle. So far I like it, although the workload right now is very light (yes, that's right, I want more homework).
The other class is topical and this semester it's on creation and evolution. It's taught by a Jesuit priest, who is also the advisor for religious studies. Now, you might be thinking that that means that it's about creationism versus evolution, but it's not about that at all. We're basically working under the assumption that evolutionary biology is true, with the main question being how this affects our Christian belief that God is our Creator, providentially guiding the universe. Right now we're reading a book called Deeper than Darwin. I'm going to finish it tomorrow.
It seems to me that it is actually a book of philosophy rather than theology, which kind of frustrates me because I'm much more interested in learning theology than philosophy (if I weren't, I'd study philosophy!). But the real problem, I think, is that the book really isn't Christian, although it's written by a Catholic theologian. (This particular theologian is John Haught and not Roger Haight, as I originally thought. Haight was recently given the theological smackdown by the CDF.) It virtually never mentions Jesus Christ, and when it does it does not do so in the context of him being a Divine Person. Furthermore, it talks about God in the most broad ways. The author is apparently trying to speak for "religion" as such, and not just Christianity. I personally think that this is a bad idea doomed to failure from the start. I do, however, very strongly agree with the author's central thesis that evolutionary materialism, as espoused by people like that arch-pagan Dr Richard Dawkins, is a philosophy that is unjustly masquerading as science. I also, based on hearing murmur000's thoughts on the matter, agree with the correlary that intelligent design theory does the same thing. The author thinks that rather than adopting either of these erroneous approaches, the best thing to do is to accept evolutionary biology as science and then integrate that into one's theology. I personally would probably fall closer, however, into the fourth camp that the author identifies which is where one basically ignores evolution as being a matter for science and does not really incorporate it in any substantial way into one's theology. I take this position primarily because I believe that true theology must be based on only one source: divine revelation. Science enters into the equation secondarily and with the qualification that we must always remember that science is made by human beings, and is therefore fallible, where revelation is given by God, who is infallible. I'll probably write more about this class later.
Anyway, regarding things other than school, I'm living in a house owned by The Ministry Institute at Gonzaga. It used to be a seminary for non-traditional seminarians, but now houses a variety of people. One of my housemates is a priest from Rwanda named Fr Cyprian. Another guy named George recently moved out, which was no big loss to me since he pretty much just kept to himself and spent hours on end in front of the TV in the living room watching C-Span. Now that he's gone, another guy from upstairs comes down a lot and watches C-Span. Perhaps somewhere in the fine print of our lease was something about how we need to watch a certain minimum number of hours of C-Span every month. If so, I guess that I'll probably have to take a shift soon. Some other dude lives upstairs whom I've barely ever seen and who told me that he was probably moving out soon. However, it appears that someone knew has just moved in upstairs, though I've yet to meet him.
I don't have a job yet, but I'm hoping to become a certified catechist through the diocese. In theory, I'll be getting all the information I need about that in the mail tomorrow. If that looks like something that will take a while to do, I will probably try to find a job at the school somewhere. I'm not too worried about working right now because I'm getting a huge loan. That's not to say that I'm not gonna get a job, though. I am. I'm just taking my time about it.
In eleven days, I'm going with Andy and Rob (of robandjodi fame) to Seattle to see murmur000 and play in the "Ravnica: City of Guilds" pre-release tournament, which he has mentioned already. I was glad to have rallied up the troops since the cost of gas prohibits going to Seattle by myself. For some reason, I'm very interested in Magic again. I've started playing Online with 9th Edition and today finally organized all my cards (which go back to "Invasion," which was released in the fall of 2000). I went to the card shop today (Merlyn's) and bought a giant shoebox ala Caleb from the olden days. It's big enough to store all my cards through "Fifth Dawn," as well as my basic land. The rest of my cards, which is just "Champions of Kamigawa" and "Betrayers of Kamigawa" right now are in a separate half-giant shoebox that I bought. Apparently I don't have any "Saviors of Kamigawa" cards at all. I guess that I hadn't realized until just now that I had virtually quit Magic this year, something I hadn't done since way back when when I sold all my childhood cards.
Speaking of Magic, this may interest Andy, Rob, and Dave: I'm thinking of buying some packs of 9th Edition, "Darksteel," and "Saviors of Kamigawa" to round out my collection. I would get at least four of each, which would be enough for us to draft them the weekend we go to Seattle. It would be an interesting draft, I think, to use 9th Ed as the base, "Darksteel" as the first expansion and "Saviors" as the second, don't y'all think?
Fin