Systematic Theology and Church History

A few thoughts about my seminary Systematic Theology class and how it weaves throughout the week.  

--Much of the class circles back to the Nicene Creed, and each Sunday when we say the Apostles Creed, I think about the other creeds that have shaped Church policy and history.

--Our class has spent more time than you can imagine thinking about the word "begotten" and what that means.

--I continue to be annoyed by the idea that Mary was simply a vessel for Jesus.  If her DNA didn't matter, why bring the Divine into the world this way?

--And why do I focus on Mary's DNA?  Why is that aspect so much more important to me than other aspects of the incarnation?

--We are reading a lot of Jurgen Moltmann, and I do have to wonder if he's the best systematic theologian to focus on.  Is he representative?  If so, no wonder so many people find theology incomprehensible.

--But then, when I'm reading him, I occasionally find a chunk that stays with me.  This week it was the part in The Way of Jesus Christ where he talks about martyrdom, both the historic kind (Bishops Polycarp and Ignatius) and three that were more recent (Schneider, Bonhoeffer, and Romero).  Moltmann claims that our current time, we're seeing "a wave of martyrdom such as has been seen in hardly any other century" (p. 197).  I've continued to think about that claim.  Do we have more Christian martyrs in the 20th century, and now the 21st, than in most other centuries?

--Moltmann talks about the killings happening in Latin America and notes that in these situations, it's Christians killing other Christians, unlike past martyrdoms.

--And then my brain goes to what I was writing a year ago, about Perpetua and Felicity and their martyrdom for Church History.  I claimed that the earliest Christians championed martyrdom as a way of making the inevitable martyrdoms more palatable:  "Why does the Church glorify martyrdom? Perhaps the Church glorifies martyrdom because it is powerless to stop it."

--My Church History professor HATED that paper.  So far, it's the lowest grade I've gotten on a piece of grad school writing (both currently and for my MA and PhD in English).  Happily, I was able to pull my grade up.

--I just reread parts of that paper, and I still don't agree with my professor's assessment.  But he did make valid points, so it wasn't worth arguing with him.  The paper didn't do all that he wanted it to do.