The Never Ending Arts Degree

I’m pretty sure we never got any feedback on the first assignment but did get comments on the second. Nonetheless, I passed with a distinction, was irrationally annoyed, and so ended up with an MA and a bad mood. This should have been the end of my academic adventures, but turned out not to be so.

There is in fact still a link to this subject at ACU from 2011, but it has not been updated in years and has no content so it is probably dead.

This assignment was on Hebrew Pastoral in Song of Songs and Isaiah. It appears I wanted to use a lot of comparisons to English literature rather than engage the Hebrew on it own merits.

The course materials say there were two assignments of 2000 words, worth 40% each but I find that in fact the first assignment was shorter.

It was on:

Discuss the poetic language and structure in Psalm 27.1-6.

I had the gall to reference my own article in the AEJT! I think I was not enjoying the technical aspects of interpreting Hebrew poetry, but did not realise they were needed.

This was the last module in my Coursework MA in Theology at ACU, and I recall I had been looking forward to it for some years leading up to Semester Two 2006.

As it happens, and as I have often found, I was somewhat disappointed by this course, while those of which I had low expectations generally left me pleasantly surprised. The material in the modules was the least extensive for the whole course, and when published had no lecturer noted, so whoever they got to cover was not responsible for the course materials. I don’t recall a lot of involvement from the university at all in this course, but the assignments were marked by Johann Ferreira, about whom I knew nothing at the time.

His CV shows he knew a lot about Hebrew, about which I, of course, knew nothing. I had one undergraduate unit on Old Testament to my credit but I did have a BA majoring in English along with an honours year disguised as a Postgraduate diploma, so I though I knew about literature.

I suspect he must have been prevailed upon to take on this unloved unit, as with his reformed background, he was unlikely to be an ACU lecturer long term. I also recall feeling at the time that, looking at his comments, he knew a lot about Hebrew and very little about poetry, which was probably unfair.

The structure of the unit was::

1 Attempting to define Hebrew poetry.

2 The Literary Languages of the Bible and Literary Forms.

3 Using Language Imaginatively.

4 Images and Parallelism

5 Poetic Thoughts as a Whole as Expressions of Religious Thought.

6 Explicating Biblical Poetry.

7 Analysing Biblical Symbols.

8 Studies in Biblical Symbolism.

The text was Interpreting Hebrew Poetry by David Peterson, which I either did not buy, out of character for me, or have misplaced. The usual reason I did not buy a text was that it was not actually available, and then I’d usually find a way to copy it.

There were two assignments and discussion board participation.

I found some of my contributions to that.

Dr Casey was kind enough to give me a high distinction for this course. I’m not sure everyone at a Catholic University would be so indulgent.

Rereading this rather breathless rush of an essay, there is my usual challenge to orthodoxy, but still little I would disagree with.

I had got to my last year of my MA (Theol) at ACU by 2006 and first semester meant some real work in the field of, surprise, theology.

The course was run by Dr. Damien Casey, who I believe is still a theology lecturer at ACU and is based in Canberra. With his interest in pluralism, he must have had an interesting time as the catholic academic world in Australia became less open minded. By the way if you see an interesting article in his publications that was published in the AEJT, don’t bother looking for it at ACU, as the whole journal appears to have been disappeared. Luckily, it is archived at TROVE.

He gave as five modules:

1 Theological method

2 The Christological Process

3 Salvation

4 Incarnation: Contemporary discussions

5 The Trinity and Christian Life

We are still in 2006 in the era prior to online tutorials, so we received his excellent course modules, supplied recommended readings and suggested texts. In other words we did a lot of reading. Much use in those days was made discussion boards and participation in that was 30% of the mark.

I have no record that I can find of my participation, but as I got a good mark I must have got involved.

The rest of the assessment was a single research essay.

I note that I was also running CaFE program at St Edwards, Daisy Hill that semester. The fellowship – I remember wine and cheese being prominent – was great. I wasn’t a fan of some of the program material. Like Alpha, the suggestion was that we had answers. Years later I ran the much better course, “Living the Questions” that suggested otherwise but it wasn’t an issue – which should be a no brainer for a church of ritual and mystery. We indeed had a most indulgent priest at the time.

Topic: Referring to the works of representative writers from the period of the fourth to the sixth century, survey the developments in liturgy in this period.

Those running the course gave me a high distinction.

The task was to “choose two patristic writers who made a significant contribution to early Christianity. What introduction to Christianity does the writing of each author prvide? Compare their works in respect of language and thelogy. Assess their likely effectiveness in preaching Chrustianity to pagans or expounding belief to fellow Christian. How radical was the Christian message for the society of the Roman Empire?”

Quite a lot of assistance there, but also a lot for 2000 words.

I did this unit on the Church Fathers at ACU back in second semester 2005. I suppose the current equivalent there now is THCT313.

I was already 44 years old and working as a GP and as a Medical Advisor at DVA, so I should have been busy enough without all this going on.

The course was co-ordinated by Bronwen Neil. She now works at Macquarie University and has had a most impressive academic career.

The text was How to Read the Church Fathers by Adalbert Hamman, which was out of print so we were given a link to download a copy from the library. I’m pretty sure I have got a real copy somewhere – I must look for it.

We were given the usual extensive lecture notes for twelve modules and a bibliography. This was still prior to any real time online contact so, while everything was done on line, it was all written work. There was a discussion board and participation on that amounted to 20% of the assessment, which was filled out with two 2000 word assignments.

The Modules were:

1 The Birth of Christian Literature

2 The Apologists and the Meeting of Faith and Culture

3 Irenaeus and the Development of Heresy

4 Alexandrian Christianity

5 African Christianity and a Balance Sheet of the Church to this Point

6 The Conversion of Constantine

7 Factors and Figures within Fourth Century Christianity

8 The Christian Latin West and its Literature

9 Augustine’s Impact on the Christian World

10 The Christian Church After Theodosius

11 Issues Facing the Fifth Centruy Church

12 The End of the Ancient World: Gregory the Great

Unusually, I have many of my submissions to the discussion board.

We had a choice of Reconciliation, Anointing, Marriage or Orders as a sacrament to write about.

Having chosen Anointing, an obvious pick for a medical doctor, my question was:

Comment on the theology of Anointing in the light of developments in sacramental theology, liturgical change, historical events, and current issues.

They gave me a HD for the unit and rereading the essay I am pretty happy with it.

This blog is so that I can put together what memories of I have of my prolonged hobby of higher education. However, with packing and moving over the years, I have lost some of the material that would make this more interesting for me. I have made a point of finding out more about lecturers with whom I had little contact, but in this case I can’t find who they were and memory fails me. Considering that this was a course run in semester two 2005, it is remarkable that ACU has erased all memory of it from their site. This is a pity, as this was a very well presented course that was very useful to my outlook on the Church. It also meant that later on when I did my Grad Cert in Liturgy, I only needed three units and so was the first ever graduate from that course. It was assessed with a single assignment of 4000 words worth 90%, so I assume the other 10% was from participation in the discussion board.

The modules were:

Sacramentality

Sacrament as symbol

Jesus as sacrament of encounter

Church as sacramental symbol

History of the Sacraments

Church teaching on the sacraments

Sacraments of Initiation (2 modules)

The Eucharist

There were exercises for each module with prompts for a discussion board. This was still the era of online study without online tutorials, so recourse was had to recommended readings and the discussion board.

I found a few responses for the discussion board that I kept.