It appears I forgot to title my last blog (a terrible oversight – positively newbie like) so I make amends by titling this one and promising to title for ever more.
I had a dissertation meeting today at the university which went fine. Basically just my lecture (gosh don’t you hate sentences that start with “Basically…”) going through what we had to do, when we had to do it and to what kind of standard. I am reading up on medieval English Church history, specifically the pilgrimages of Margery Kempe and whether we can say there was a ‘usual’ English pilgrimage. I’m sure this sounds exciting to you all.
After that I had a bit of a gap so I went to the library (always fun) and read my Christology reading on the Virgin Birth. This was reading that I had done the day previous (honest, Dr. Crisp!) but had decided to go over again because I am secretly a dedicated theologian. The lecture was fine, standard first hour of him going over what is what re the virgin birth followed by an hour seminar in which students from various religious and atheist backgrounds thrashed out theories and all insisted they were correct (me included).
The problem with debating the virgin birth of course is that you have to firstly believe that it happened. There are naturally dozens of scientific and logical arguments as to why the birth of a human (and remember the bible claims that Jesus was indeed human) cannot occur through means of one parent. However, one must also look at the bible in context and remember that this is supposed to be miraculous. Scientific issues aside, I think we can all agree that if God does exist, he can do whatever the hell he wants (and you can shove your zygotes and gametes up your arse).
This was followed by a slightly more enjoyable debate about the significance of the virgin birth and whether it is theologically important that Jesus was borne of a virgin woman. I won’t bore you any longer.
Alexandra is coming over for the weekend so I am obviously looking forward to that. We’re off to Bath tomorrow for the day, followed by a night out for a uni friend’s birthday. On Saturday (just in case you’re monitoring our movements) we’ll be in theatre (cultural!) and on Sunday both she and I will be on a train heading for Wales (her to Cardiff, me to home).
More soon.
Ben
No more posts? Awwww