Thursday, December 11, 2008

Christmas Break Reading List

Christmas Break Reading List:

The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton
A housemate gave me this for Secret Santa! I'm excited to read it; more Chestertonian fiction!

The seven letters of St. Ignatius to the early early Church
Un-academic reading related to my term paper. I hope it proves edifying.

Out of the Depths: Women's Experience of Evil and Salvation by Ivone Gebara
This is something that some of my friends had to read for a Theological Perspectives course this semester; I'm interested in Gebara's work, so I'm going to try and tackle this.

Are there any glaring omissions from this list? Please let me know. One caveat, though. If anyone in the Lower/Porter family adds anything over 200 pages to this list, and I accept it, and hasn't read Orthodoxy by Chesterton yet, adding said thing automatically adds it to their reading list for the Break, meaning I'm expecting them to have it read by January 14 or so, just as I'll expect me to have read their book by that time. I'm throwing that out partly as a challenge to the people in my extended family who don't think they can take the Chestertonian heat, when I'm fairly certain deep-down inside they're well and able.

Finals.

Early Church History final complete.

Partial Differential Equations
final survived, so far as I can tell. Update: I now have Professor confirmation and I-looked-at-my-test confirmation to confirm that I've survived not only the final but also the class.

Christian Personal Values
final optional, and I already had a straight A in the class. So no point in taking it.

Real Analysis I
final complete, or at the least I've used up all the time allotted in my professor's guidelines. Update: This appears to have gone fairly well and the problem that I did correctly that I was most worried about has been somewhat confirmed to have gone correctly via discussion with a classmate; this is as opposed to the one problem that I know for sure I did wrong.

Update: Religion and Science is done. Turned in. I'm probably going to bug my professor via e-mail to see about turning a bunch of stuff in to his online drop-box, because I haven't done that all semester. I'm pretty sure he and I both won't get in trouble for my not doing it; this is a just-in-case measure.

Classes ought to be survived, though I'm going to have to make some time to do some math over the break. I just am.

Theological thoughts: How do you people feel about the notion of God's self-emptying as applied to the process of creation? That is, in creation, God gives up some portion of the divine attribute of omnipotence? Update at 10:00 AM: I did write about this for the final, and it was interesting. I kind of like the voluntary-restriction-of-"omni" tack, but I wish people gave more credence to neo-Thomistic thought. In particular I wish the foreknowledge/foreordination distinction got more respect; you'd think it would from Christian theologians, considering Calvinists and Arminians have been arguing over whether it exists for years; oddly enough, in not acknowledging it so much, or in making it practically pointless, more modern theologians are siding with the Calvinists. Sigh.

Musical thoughts: "A Taste of Honey" is an awesome song. I'm not actually listening to the Herb Alpert version either; this is The Harry James Orchestra, apparently. And it's still awesome. Update: I've decided this song ought to be danced to.

Update in Placement: I did get some sleep, not entirely on purpose or entirely on accident.
Update: I'm going to go turn in a couple of finals and then get to relax, maybe sleep more. Good day and God bless.