Otter's Rock

If you are a science fiction fan of any religion who gets annoyed at the dismissive way a lot of science fiction often treats religion, this fic is for you. It is Christian, but focuses mainly on the Doctor's reaction to events, not on events themselves, so it should be enjoyable for everyone.

Title: Correlation and Causality
Characters: One, Three, Susan.
Spoilers: inspired by a throw-away line in Planet of the Dead, but no spoilers for the episode.
Rating: U, gen.
Words: 740.
Summary: Ten seems quite confident that he knows what happened that first Easter. But it wouldn't be the first time the Doctor's exaggerated how close he was to historical events, or that he's leaped to conclusions...
Vaguely inspired by Spike's comment in Buffy about how more people remember being at the Crucifixion than can possibly have been there.
Warnings: Um, results from slight irritation with RTD's attempts to do theology? I nearly called it "Happy Easter, emo Time Lord", but decided not to.

For those of you non-seminarians out there, "systematic theology" is where you take one central theme/belief/focus and turn it into a logically consistent overarching "system" of theology, where everything works and fits together. (Yeah. It works a lot better in the classroom than it does in real life, which doesn't normally fit into coherent and consistent systems, but it's still a good exercise because it forces you to clarify and examine your ideas about God, about humankind, about creation, etc.) To give you an example, one of the books we're reading for the class is called "The Apostles' Creed" by Pahnenburg, and it's a whole book exploring the meaning of the Apostles' Creed and what it means to us today in light of modern questions, all laid out logically and in order (he spends 15 pages on the first two words, "I believe," and goes on from there).

But the class isn't just about reading other peoples' theologies, it's about helping us develop our own system. So we're supposed to take apart the Nicene Creed and write three one-page papers of how we interpret it, one for each article (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). Obviously, one could write much more than a single page, but that would take too long to go over in class and the idea is to get us thinking, not to get us the answers, so one page it is. For those of you curious about my beliefs: here we go.

( The Nicene Creed )

( Here's my interpretation of the first article. )

It's Valentine's Day, so:

According to the Super Hero Dating Quiz, my ideal match is Beast, from X-Men (aka Hank McCoy, he's the big furry blue doctor), with Spider-Man and Madman (who I'd never heard of, but is apparently a member of the Superhero group the Atomics (whom I had never heard of), published by a comic publisher named Image, (whom I had also never heard of). And apparently if I were a guy, my ideal match would be Ms. Marvel (I think I've heard of her), with Moira MacTaggert (definitely never heard of) and Kitty Pryde (Shadowcat) of the X-Men (the little girl who can walk through walls).

Today was also a day of horrible weather here in Gettysburg; we had a lot of snow last night, but temperatures that fluctuated today. So there was a little bit of snow melting, then freezing, with more snow coming down today. And, guess what? The road through campus belongs to the Feds as part of the battlefield, so the local government can't plow it and the park service never gets around to it. Which means it's up to our very own maintenance guys to clear, in addition to the sidewalks and things. One of the guys has worked here for 42 years, and he said that while they've had more snow at once many times, today's combination of snow, slush, and ice was the hardest to clear that he can recall. Lovely. Watching big tractors with incredibly heavy chains sliding across the road they're trying to clear is an interesting experience. Particularly when one is walking next to the road, and is in fact abreast of said tractor when it starts to slide.

I sure hope things get better before Sunday; I have to drive to church early in the morning (unless they cancel church). Still, about 90% of the drive is on Route 30, which is one of the main highways through this part of PA and as such is one of the first to be cleared, or so I am assured by the last student to be assigned to my parish.

A few years ago the Episcopal Church of the USA and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (of which I am a member) entered into a very close fellowship such that Episcopalian priests can serve in Lutheran congregations and Lutheran pastors can serve in Episcopalian parishes. (I can't speak to how it was received in the ECUSA, but in the ELCA it was accompanied by much angst, much of which was due to the way in which it was handled on our end.) Anyway, as part of this agreement the ECUSA became the first non-Lutheran church body in the world to accept the Augsburg Confession as part of its theological belief system, and the ELCA agreed to teach the Book of Common Prayer (the Anglican equivalent to the Augsburg Confession) in its seminaries. So today's Worship class was an introduction to it. One of the main functions of the BCP, apparently, is to serve as a "glue" to hold different theological factions within the church together. So that no matter what you believe, you can pray the prayers and participate in the worship service with a clear heart (this requires a certain ... blandness to the language and a bit of what Luther would have described as "pussy-footing").

This is, needless to say, very different from the way that Lutherans have historically approached, well, anything. Our professor quoted an Anglican friend of his: "Anglicans will court heresy in order to prevent schism. Lutherans will court schism in order to prevent heresy." And, having had a course in Luther and Lutheranism in college which included a unit on 19th Century American Lutheranism, and at one point having been so foolish as to try to diagram out on paper the intertwinings of various Lutheran church bodies as they went through successive schisms and mergers, my response was: "Lutherans are willing to do more than court schism, we'll marry it!"

As promised, here's my take on creation and evolution. (Keep in mind that I haven't even begun seminary yet, so it's not like I've spent a huge amount of time studying the question or anything.)  It is taken from an exchange on forum.gateworld.net, in which GateGypsy asked the following questions:

( Read more... )

That's my take on the whole creation/evolution debate.  I hope this has been helpful to anyone who reads it.

I just finished reading Boundary by Eric Flint and Ryk Spoor. It's a sci-fi story set about mid-21st century, with Bug-Eyed Monsters, trips to Mars, and paleontologists. Lots of fun. You can read the first half or so at The Fifth Imperium. As the book is now in stores, the snippets are in the Inactive Collection. It's really good, and I enjoyed it. It's not a Great Work of Literature, but it is a very fun read and it does have substance to it. For those of you Baen fans out there, here's a shocker:( Spoiler )

For a classic that's fun to read, I'd suggest the Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. They're a series of letters written by a demon to his nephew, full of advice on how to tempt the guy the nephew has been assigned to tempt. The book is snarky, interesting, and to teh point. If you don't see yourself in it somewhere, you're not looking. And it's fun to see things from the Devil's point of view, sometimes. I reread it regularly. Actually, I'd reccommend just about anything by C.S. Lewis. His novels are a lot of fun, and his theology is both interesting and accessible. (Not something one can always count on in theology or philosophy.)

I'm also reading Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, which is a manual on how a Christian fellowship community should live. It's the first thing of his I've ever read (shocking for a Lutheran on her way to seminary, I know, but there you have it). Don't know if I'd reccommend it. It's very dry, and more theoretical than practical (which is odd for a manual on how to live together), and I'm not sure if I agree with all of his points. For those of you who have never heard of him, Bonhoeffer was perhaps the great Lutheran theologian of the 20th century. He was martyred by the Nazis on July 20th, 1944. His most famous work is The Cost of Discipleship.