Back In the Saddle

A week-and-a-half ago I dove back into school for the Spring semester. The semester started full-bore, reminding me that I must be crazy to go to seminary while working full-time, married, and attempting to maintain any semblance of ministry. I keep answering those Publisher's Clearing House emails in the hopes that I can quit my job and do school full-time, but something tells me that I'm not going to win. :^)

I'm taking 4th semester Greek: Introduction to Exegesis. This semester we'll be translating the book of Ephesians (twice), writing a verse-by-verse commentary of a passage, two exegetical papers, and a handful of other written assignments designed to teach us how to do exegesis in the Epistles. We're using Grant Osbornes, The Hermeneutical Spiral as our main textbook.

I'm also taking Intertestimental History, which hasn't started yet, and Gospels. Gospels look like it's going to be a good class. My prof (Charlie Baylis) seems committed to making sure we understand how to interpret narrative literature in the Bible. This is important because so many pastors from schools like mine treat passages of the gospels like they would epistolary literature. The take individual pericopes and treat them as simply propositional, drawing principles without regard to the disctinctives of narrative or the place of the pericope in the overall narrative flow of the gospel (or of the whole of Scripture for that matter).

This semester promises to be a lot of work. I hope I can pop in here more that I was allowed to this past week!