Day 9, Summit Semester
Even though today is Saturday, it’s a class day because of Bauman’s schedule. We’ll have Mondays as a weekend day for field trips or just hanging out.
We continued our discussion of the different political groups and Medieval culture, as well as beginning the epic poem of Beowulf.
In Theology, we looked at reasons why the Early Church was persecuted, as well as reasons why they survived. While I have always loved Galatians 4:4, which states that: “when the time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law that we might have the full rights as sons…” But I had never realized just how much went into the “time fully coming.” I knew about the Roman roads, the Greek language, the Pax Romana that allowed safe travel throughout the empire, but I never realized the full extent of these things.
There have only been 67 years since the Pax Romana in which there has not been war in some part of Europe. The fact that the Gospel was first carried and established in times of peace when travel and missionary work was relatively unhindered is remarkable. Along the same lines, roads during this period were the best in terms of safety and speed that Europe would have until the railroads arrived in the mid 1800s. Even the fall of Jerusalem forced the Church to spread and scatter farther than it naturally would have gone. Greek and Roman philosophers were also coming to the conclusion that only one god could exist, not the pantheon of gods that were traditionally revered, so the people were prepared and looking for the real God. Pretty amazing stuff.
After class, we had our first movie night. We watched The Dark Knight and then discussed the philosophical themes of justice, chance, chaos, and pure evil. It was considered by many the most epic movie of the year but completely snubbed at the academy awards. One critic made the comment that it was an extremely conservative film, because if a person like the Joker exists, pure evil and anarchy just because he is, not because of the system or circumstances, it destroys the liberal philosophy of the inherent goodness of man and the fact that evil comes from the system, not the depraved human heart. Interesting stuff….
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