Basics 2: Study

I have now completed two weeks of classes and am beginning to get the hang of things. It has been a little odd to find myself plunked back into the classroom; in some cases in actual wooden school desks I remember from elementary school. (The church is nothing if not willing to reduce and reuse). I’ve spent so much time as a professional with a career that to be sort of a blank slate again feels out of alignment with who I have been for so long.

But I’m not complaining, getting to dedicate myself full time to reading, thinking, commenting, and discussing things that previously I could only occasionally talk about with a few people is very, very stimulating. I’m taking six classes: Introduction to the Old Testament, History of Christianity, Introduction to Anglicanism, a systematic theology course called Suffering and the Human Person, Fundamentals of Worship, and Fundamentals of Music. This would be completely insane if not for the fact that the last two courses are one-credit courses and I’m auditing them. The remainder I’m taking pass/fail.

This load makes me run around a lot, quite literally. CDSP is part of the Graduate Theological Union (GTU), a consortium of seminaries all in the Bay Area. I can take classes at any of them, and I am. I’m taking Old Testament (OT) from the Lutheran seminary located after a 10 minute drive to the top of the Berkeley Hills. My course on suffering is taught by a professor at the Jesuit seminary (though it meets on the CDSP campus). I study most often in the GTU library, across from CDSP, where it is quiet and you can spot the occasional napping monk.

I have several days that are wild and crazy. Mondays I’m in class nearly all day, with Anglicanism meeting from 2 to 5 p.m. I’m finding a 3-hour lecture in the afternoon to be a bit brutal. Tuesday mornings consist of what I have termed Mr. Toad’s Wild Berkeley Ride up to OT with the Lutherans at 8 am and then bolting out the back of the class and riding the brakes downhill to CDSP for Fundamentals of Worship 10 minutes after OT ends.

In the midst of the load there have already been a few wonderful moments of insight. My course on suffering has caused me to abandon my hope of solving the dilemma of “theodicy,” or, how can it be that if A: God is all-powerful, and B: all-loving, then C: evil and suffering still exists. The prof came right out on the first day and said that the only way to “solve” this intellectual dilemma is to “fudge” one of the three propositions. He then proceeded to show us how many fancy theological concepts (with Latin names and everything!) were basically ways of fudging one or another of those points. I was a great relief to realize that no one else, after thousands of years, had solved that problem! It’s not so bad to be back in the classroom.