Just for fun I’m posting the exam with the notes I made during the ten minute perusal.

RE113 Exam

I did well enough for a 6 (out of 7) for the whole subject.

This assignment was to choose a prominent Christian thinker and analyse “the theological concerns and attitudes and conclusions of the author surveyed, together with a brief consideration of these concerns … for people today.

I chose Marsilius of Padua.

The lecturer helpfully noted:

Marsilius [AD1275-1342], a radical critic of much of the teaching and institutional  forms of the church of his day, and in many ways a herald for the secular, pluralist society of own day.

I probably picked him because he sounded a bit of a ratbag – my favourite sort of Christian thinker.

RE113 Marsilius of Padua

The first assignment offered a choice of three areas to report on our reading of primary sources.

I chose:

Identify and discuss the significant agreements and differences between the creed on Nicea and those who sought to modify this … What do these reveal about the course of the debate in the fourth century.

Rather than wrangle OCR, the print out is OK as a pdf image including comments from the lecturer. I was happy enough with the feedback, although he rightly pointed out an over reliance on secondary sources.

RE113 Nicea

I did this subject in second semester 1991 and it was the last external subject I did in my BA at UQ. I can’t remember when the news came that the federal government was reforming external studies and only some universities would continue to provide that form of study. After this subject I had only 4 units left to get a BA and it seemed unfair that UQ would not be one of the universities continuing with external studies. These days nearly everything is available online, but in the pre-internet days I suppose it was hard to justify the expense. I would have to find away to finish my degree internally.

Rev Dr Ian Gillman took this course and though I didn’t meet him until the following year as an internal student, it was obvious that he was an absolute gem of a man. He had been head of the Department for Studies in Religion but I think he was nearing retirement when he took this course so I am not sure if he was in charge at the time.

I have his book “Many Faith’s One Nation” that I picked up years later. He died in 2005 aged 78 years – see his obituary.

This covers Christian thought to just before the Reformation and External Studies provided the usual excellent lecture notes and course readings.

It was assessed by two assignments and an examination. I note there were study groups offered but I did not take up the offer, nor do I recall attending the vacation school. I find it impressive how much was covered and how little I recall.

The second 3000 word assignment was on the topic:

What image of Peter is presented by Paul’s (authentic) letters and by the Gospel of John (including Chapter 21)?

I found this an interesting topic but it appeared I didn’t have as much spare time as with the other assignment and there is less evidence of preparation. I still got a 6 (out of 7) overall.

The essay was not returned as was often the case for the second assignment of a course in those days.

I kept a latish draft (that was printed in draft) and is too faint for OCR. It has both my wife’s exasperated notes and corrections along with my own. It comes up reasonably well as an image in pdf and may surprise those who never submitted an essay on an early word processor, or even had to print one out for that matter. I think I still was using my odd laptop computer with 2 disk drives and no hard drive and am printing to a trusty dot matrix printer. There is a fair bit proper formatting possible with indents and changing from double to single spacing, so it had a degree of sophistication for 1991.

Peter in Paul and John