M.Div.

Beginning in September 2010, I have been in the accelerated Master of Divinity program at Queen's School of Religion in Kingston, Ontario.

Below you can see course list sorted by category. My class work can be viewed by subject area or by individual classes. Not all courses have work listed, either because I am still completing the course or because the type of work for the course is not conducive for public sharing on the Internet.

 

Women in Religious Traditions

 

This paper is also available in PDF form.

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                The majority of human history has been a story of patriarchy.  In the grand scheme of civilized history, the years of the feminist movement have been short, and the societies influenced by that movement are still catching up in some important ways.  By comparison, the world’s religions are much older than feminism.  For that reason, we often see a lot of troubling things in the texts and in contemporary expressions of major religions which most outside of them would argue are demeaning to women.  Even more than society in general, most religions are still working to catch up in matters of gender equality.  To do so will require challenging not only traditional behaviour but also traditional theology which has in many cases deeply ingrained specific gender roles.

Image-Bearers of God

This paper is also available in PDF form.

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                What does Genesis 1:26-27 mean when it says that human beings are created in the image of God?  To the best of my knowledge, there are no other Scriptural texts directly referring to this phrase “the image of God” so it really is a speculative enterprise despite that it has the potential to shape our view of ourselves and each other in so many ways.

The Evolution of God

 

This paper is also available in PDF form.

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                In this week’s readings I was particularly interested in the discussion of how the idea of God has evolved over the centuries.  Earlier this summer, I read the book The Evolution of God by Robert Wright and it really challenged my thinking about the “unchanging” nature of God.  From what I’ve studied, which isn’t a lot but also more than just that one book and this week’s readings, there is really no doubt of this concept of the idea of God changing in fairly significant ways over the past 4000 years.  The most drastic may be the well-established shift from monolatry to monotheism after the Babylonian Exile.  Since these shifts are undeniable to any honest scholar, it leaves a few options for the Christian theologian.

The Tension of Revelation and Mystery

 

This paper is also available in PDF form.

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                Even before doing the readings for this week, I have been pondering over the tension between knowing about God and acknowledging how much we don’t know about God.  I think most people naturally gravitate towards one or the other.  For me the past few years, it has been more of the former, and then occasionally I am swept up in some new thought or new experience or new way of looking at a biblical text – a revelation, you could say – and I am reminded of just how much I don’t know. 

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