Essay topic:

The Sermon on the Mount (Matt 4:24-7:29; cf Luke 6:17-7:1) as Evangelion.

I have what is a late draft in very faint draft printing that refused to scan so I typed it out.

It is a great example of a floundering student struggling to come up with anything that might get close to 3000 words.

I have been reminded that in amongst all this out third child was born and was pretty unwell for some time so I may have had other things on my mind.

There is an argument in there somewhere under the incoherence, but a 5 was generous.  Luckily he didn’t give the essays back, the comments would not have been fun to read.

Sermon on the Mount

After the genial style of Dr Ian Gillman this subject in second semester 1992 was a return to the formidable Professor Michael Lattke.  I had done two external subjects of his but this was the first time I met the man.

Again, I must have been leaving work early on Wednesdays to attend lectures at the University of Queensland. My recollection was that I was one of the few attendees not training or already in ministry. Lattke took no nonsense from Christians who were used to their own interpretation of scripture. If they suggested anything other than what was there he would say “I do not see that in the text” and that was it.

This was my last religion subject at UQ and meant I completed a major in the rules of the day. It was also the last course that I used my strange two disk (no hard drive) computer with a dot matrix printer and Webster’s word processor.

I was rather out of my depth here and his assessment methods exposed that rather well. I doubt he trusted undergraduates to work and so we had a mid semester exam, which I did poorly in, an essay and a viva.

Now I had done vivas in my medical course, which were pretty terrifying, but Lattke’s amazing office with floor to ceiling books and his no nonsense questioning were something else entirely. He called it an academic conversation. It is a great technique to find out what people have absorbed in a course and I suspect far too labour intensive for use these days. He told me I was a solid 5 (out of 7) student and that is what he gave me overall.

The second essay topic was thus:

Protestant- Roman Catholic relationships were marked by deep antagonism until the 1960’s.” Discuss this claim with respect to Australia.

I suggested that the antagonism was from the clergy and church leaders with much cooperation and respect between the laity of each church.

This is the marked copy with his generous comments.

RE215 – Australia

I got a 7 (out of 7) rating overall for the subject.

The essay topic I chose was:

Investigate the truth of the claim that “revivalism” has been at one time both the most invigorating and the most disruptive force in American Protestantism.

I suggested it was more disruptive than invigorating.

I couldn’t find the essay I submitted but this is late draft with a few corrections. I also have a word count written in with each hundred words noted. Such was the world before automated word counts.

RE215 – America

After six years slowly doing an external studies BA part-time at the University of Queensland, external studies ended and I became an internal student to finish my degree. Just as I had been fortunate enough to be just outside Brisbane to qualify as external, I was fortunate to be not too far out such that I could attend classes now that external studies had ceased to be. It has just struck me how the concept of needing to be outside a city to do external studies seems odd now, when so many people study online due to time factors rather than distance.

I chose this course with Dr Ian Gillman who had supervised my last external course. So from 4-6pm on Wednesdays in first semester 1992, I left General Practice behind and attended actual lectures again with actual other students. The timing suggests a shift from external study to evening classes. I have no recollection when the tutorials were held.

He let us choose to have 2 assignments for assessment, rather than an exam, along with a mark for tutorial participation. The texts were Ahlstrom’s “The Religious History of the American People” and Breward’s “Australia – ‘The Most Godless Place Under Heaven’?” I still have both books and have since picked up some of the recommended reference books he suggested over the years.

The loss of external studies meant the excellent lecture notes and study guides were replaced by notes and actual participation. There was a fair bit a material given to us at the tutorials. I found this all very interesting, especially the American section. I always though the Great Awakening would have made a good board game.

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