Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Respect to the Catholics

You've sometimes got to hand it to the Roman Catholics...

I'm doing a theology degree at a secular university which has some Catholic (and some Protestant) bits attached. Today I went to a class which was meant to be part of an 8 class series covering modern theology, given by a Catholic visiting fellow at the university. And what was he using as his only text for the 8 week course?

The Roman Catholic Catechism.

By comparison, a parallel class was spending the first week thinking about Bultmann (who I'd characterise as an atheist existentialist desperately trying to be a Christian without giving up the atheism or the existentialism).

Now I'm not sure I'd have the guts even to consider basing an 8 week theology course in a secular university on the 39 Articles, or the UCCF DB, or the Westminster Confession, or the C of E catechism, unless it was specifically specified as the subject for the course.

Whether it's wise to do so or not is a completely different question. But respect to the Catholics for having the guts to try...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

There can be no harm, one feels in spending a bit of time on those things. I can't help feeling a bit more knowledge of the 39 articles and the Westmnister confession would help avoid so many pitfalls.
Here at OakHill, I've found Mike Ovey's liberal usage of both documents helpful and refreshing to the soul!

It will no doubt be helpful for you to have a working knowledge of the RC catechism.