Joseph45
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Posts posted by Joseph45
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I know this is going to sound crazy, but one of my OT professors, who did his doctoral work at a Top Tier program, said that in many regards he would have preferred to do his doctoral work at an evangelical school because it would have given him a broader education (admittedly, he was/is evangelical). This is because at the Top Tier program, they only considered one set of data, and did not even consider (nevermind take seriously) any other sets of data.
At many of the evangelical institutions he is familiar with, however (including the one at which he taught), they considered multiple sets of data and took them seriously. Thus, not only do they do serious work from an "inerrancy" perspective (though I hesitate to use the term because it means different things to different people), but they take seriously the work done by those who do not believe in inerrancy. This, again, makes for a "broader" education in his opinion.
I know this sounds laughable to those who find the evangelical approach absurdly untenable, and the "inerrancy" bias the chiefest among biases (which I disagree with), but his take was one I found enlightening.
You should probably know that I started my education at a school committed to inerrancy. I'm now at a "top tier" program. I disagree strongly.
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I think you're using the "we all have biases" strategy to effectively render all scholarship just subjective opinions. It's starting to sound very similar to me to like the people who deny climate change, evolution, heck, even the moon-landing. At a certain point, you can always disavow all scholarship by saying that "those people have biases." Climate change science= they're all just liberals who hate America; evolution= all a bunch of atheist who hate the bible.
Yep, we all have biases, but there's a difference between rigorous scholarship and knowing what the answer is before even looking at the text.
One more example to show what I mean. If you're committed to inerrancy, you're committed to a whole lot of things when studying Luke-Acts. If you're not committed to inerrancy, you're really not committed to anything when studying Luke-Acts. You don't have to believe every historical detail is inaccurate, you don't have to believe it was written late, you don't have to believe anything. You can even be open to its theological claims being true. It's a much better model of scholarship, biases and all, than an a priori commitment to dogma (which again, is different than biases).
And really, since we're talking about doctoral programs, I think you've provided a very excellent argument for why those places shouldn't be taken seriously. If it's all just biases, why study the text? The anti-intellectualism prevalent throughout most inerrancy wings of the church is not coincidence. They have it right. They already know what they believe, and not amount of scholarship is going to change their minds.
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"We're all biased in how we approach our work . . . We need the differing opinions in the academy, even if we disagree with them - it's how we all grow."
I also think there's a danger in the implicit assumption that, if we all have biases, then the bias towards inerrancy is just one bias among many. For one, there's probably a worthwhile difference between commitment to certain dogma and biases, but even if there's not, it's not as if by holding to inerrancy replaces another would-be bias, thus making us all equal in our quantity of biases. More importantly, places that hold to inerrancy are typically very opposed to a commitment to diversity. Not that sexual preference or gender are the only types of bias one can have, but those places are usually very straight male places.
All of which is to say, I think it's very disingenuous to claim that a commitment to inerrancy is just (a) one bias among many (
somehow offsets another would-be bias, and © that places that hold such views are otherwise very diverse and committed to multiple viewpoints. -
Rankings are always subjective, but data is a little more objective. Auburn Theological Seminary in NY has studied which graduate programs in theology (broadly speaking) have contributed the most faculty to theological schools in North America. The linked document (from 2010) lists the top 20+ programs and notes which offer full funding and which don't, how that impacts admissions, denominational affiliation, etc. Included are the big names anyone would expect: Harvard, Chicago, Yale, Duke, Vanderbildt, Toronto School of Theology, GTU, Claremont, Union Seminary, Boston University. Several evangelical programs are also included. It's a good and useful read. It doesn't attempt to rank the programs but basically states that these are the programs that lead and have led to the most academic teaching positions (in theological schools). http://www.auburnseminary.org/sites/default/files/Report%20on%20a%20Study%20of%20Doctoral%20Programs_0.pdf
Honest question, does the study take into account that some programs graduate more people than others? (i.e., a school's placement rate is much more important for a prospective student than the percentage of the scholars who came from that school).
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"If some scholar interprets the material and concludes "Jesus was divine" and another concludes differently - who cares?"
First, I'm kind of interested in how the "who cares" line is your primary rhetorical strategy for backing you position that starting out with a commitment to inerrancy doesn't affect one's scholarship more than any other bias that all of us hold in one way or the other. The answer, of course, is just about everybody in RELS cares. They know scholarship is dramatically affected by those types of commitments.
Secondly, the line I quote above is a very different type of thing that insisting from the start that "I won't go anywhere unless they hold inerrancy of Scripture." There's a difference between deciding something after study and deciding what a condition of your outcomes before you begin studying.
That doesn't mean I don't think we all have biases, but I do think there's a difference between self-consciously committing to a bias before one starts a PhD program and self-consciously being committed to listening to various arguments, even if one can never fully overcome one's own biases. The latter position may, at times, appear to be similar to the first position, for many holding the latter view won't entertain certain types of fundamentalist arguments. They won't entertain those views, however, not because of an a priori commiment, but because there has already been a lot of scholarship done on those questions.
For example, I don't really take people seriously who hold that Moses wrote the Penteteuch, but that's not because I'm really opposed to the idea. I don't care. I don't take those people seriously because there has already been a lot of scholarship on that question. And pretty much all of the scholar who aren't a priori committed to the position that Moses wrote the entire Penteteuch have shown (pretty decisively) that it's ridiculous to think Moses wrote the Penteteuch. The only people disagreeing with this are the people who refuse to study anywhere that doesn't make their faculty sign statements about exactly what type of conclusions their scholarship can come to. You can say "bias" "bias" "bias" all you want, but I don't take those people seriously, and nobody else does except for them.
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"So if a person wants to approach Egyptology trying to validate their worship of Isis, why should we care?"
But if that person wouldn't study anywhere that didn't agree that Isis is divine (and divine in very specific ways), would you really take that person's scholarship that seriously?
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Horrible advice, eh? Tell that to Robert Pippin at UChicago. Sure, read a survey or two, but know you're reading little more than a superficial, oversimplified gloss. Your advice is admittedly the norm, which is why many struggle to understand what on earth they think they're reading. I'll state it again for the OP, know Kant's conception of reason inside and out, and any subsequent authors will make much more sense. I'd rather know Kant and nothing whatsoever about 20th century figures because they pale in comparison. Arriving to the 20th century without the proper foundation (Kant) is pointless.
I'm sure that for some people, just starting with Kant after college would work great. And I also understand that this would be the ideal way to go about things. Nevertheless, I still think the most paidagogically useful strategy is to combine scattered primary readings with some overviews and secondary conversations.
On the one hand, think this is just pretty obvious, you yourself have already asserted that he (now) needs to read and understand the Confessions and the Meditations--even while insisting that certain types of readings need to be given for those texts (or, at least the Confessions). (And, of course, soon somebody will come along and say that he needs to become versed in Neo-Platonism, etc. before he reads the Confessions). There is no end to this line of advice.
Again, maybe for some people a pure, ascetical experience of sequentially reading one seminal text after the other (before starting a masters program!) would actually work. And I'm sure it would be fantastic if it did. But I think gaining some familiarity with what's at stake in reading Kant (for later thinkers as well as for today's conversations) would actually be very helpful when reading Kant. Again, I think you've already essentially admitted this point in principal by insisting that he must avoid (at least) one way of reading the Confessions. (And, of course, we haven't even gotten into language games--where people start declaring that you can't read Augustine unless you know Latin).
I also think the idea of reading these texts in such ways (as an individual mind meeting another mind, as insisting on understanding lines of influence) reflects problematic ideological positions produced by and in these texts themselves. But that's another conversation.
In the end, I guess I think reading this texts back and forth, and yes, even in conversation with secondary scholarship, is a very productive paedagogical strategy. By reading and not understanding, and, sure, even misunderstanding some later thinkers, his/her reading of Kant will be more productive, and then, so too, will his/her readings of later thinkers become better when s/he returns to them. And this is what everyone actually does. Maybe Pippen leads seminars at Chicago were nobody is allowed in who hasn't read and mastered all the relevant previous thinkers, where no mention of later thinkers or secondary scholarship is mentioned, where the texts are read in their original languages, and where no conversation is held about the text, because other minds only corrupt one's own pure, individual reading of the thinker, but I have my doubts.
It's maybe not ideal, and certainly not pure, but it's practical. It also doesn't get one stuck in one line of scholarship that ignores the Jewish thinking s/he has expressed an interest in.
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Thanks, this helps, kinda.... I'm wondering though, as a more general question now, how much should one reasonably expect oneself to achieve over the course of a masters and phd program. Is it that important to have everything figured out or to be well on on your way in a promising intellectual direction with a good foundation for it. Sometimes I feel that there is a tendency to associate a certain finality with the learning achieved at the postgraduate level with little consideration for this as a lifelong process. I look at some of the scholars I most respect, and a number of them were fairly young when they got done with the PhD and took years before they finally got stuff sorted in their head and started publishing really valuable stuff.
On a separate note, I'm considering working on Royce as a philosphical theologian balancing his theologians concerns and concepts with a particular metaphysical and logical commitment, so I'd like my preparation to lead to that. I also thought Bowie's introduction to German philosophy might be helpful. Nick Adams at Edinburgh also wrote a brief introduction to Kant for theologians that I am considering beginning with.
I'm not really sure if this is a helpful quesiton to ask yourself, because I don't know what it would mean to really answer it, but please know that nobody has everything figured out--and the few that think they do are particularly shallow intellectually.
And it's a tempting, but damning mistake to think your dissertation will be your magnum opus, or a significant contribution to the field. That's one major reason some people never finish their dissertation, because they're waiting for it to be great.
The more you know though, the better. Generally, you want to be able to converse widely in your subfield; you won't be an expert, but you want to understand what other people are doing and thinking. Simultaneously, you'll want to find a figure or two that you know inside and out, all while understanding how your figure fits into the larger, subfield-wide conversation.
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I'd be sure to solidly understand Kant's first Critique (a monumental task) before tackling nearly any post-Kantian text. Otherwise, you'll be spinning wheels. Many jump right into the likes of Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud without first understanding Kant. As a result, they grossly misread these later birds and have never even heard of the more critical post-Kantians (e.g., Hamann, Fichte, Jacobi, and especially Reinhold). Avoid secondary sources, too.
I've got to admit, I think this is horrible advice for someone starting a masters program.
You'll never get to the 20th century under this model--which, if you do want to focus on German Protestants in the 18th and 19th centuries, is fine, but I recommend getting the lay of the land a bit before dedicating yourself to Kant. Read some secondary surveys, get some of the basics down, and get a feel for what really excites you, and dive into that literature. Beaware that there's always someone anterior that you need to be aware of, but also know that there's never an end to that game.
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And in general I would agree with that, but I am a little curious - is there any reason for faculty to encourage this other than a purely altruistic desire to help a student? Where I am currently enrolled, the faculty tends to promote student achievements and I sometimes wonder if it's in the best interests of the students, or if it helps to make the school look good, sometime at at the expense of the students.
I'm sorry if I came across as terse.
A faculty member gains very little benefit from having a student publish, and no benefit if that publication isn't good or isn't in a good journal. Faculty don't benefit much if their students succeed, but they gain much more by them succeeding than by encouraging students to publish something they shouldn't, somewhere that they shouldn't.
Unless you have reason to believe these professors are especially horrible people and are seeking to torpedo your career out of spite, trust that they're suggesting what's best for you--especially if they're willing to help you revise it.
- Macrina and seroteamavi
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Thanks for posting this. I have a question though: I've had two faculty members encourage me to revise papers and submit for publication, and I'm a ThM student. Is there any reason for faculty to encourage publications? And, I suppose: should I go for it? They both offered to work with me on the revisions and I wouldn't send anything anywhere until I was happy with it. Good idea? Or no?
I love marXian and his comments, but, honestly, value the advice of the professors who know you and your work over anonymous posters on an online forum. Seriously, do what your professors recommend you to do.
- seroteamavi, mdiv2014 and dr. t
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Talk to your advisor. S/he will tell you whether to publish and where it would be good to do so.
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I would suggest starting with Theory for Religious Studies by William E. Deal and Timothy K. Beal. They discuss 29 figures, all of whom are big names and would be good to recognize. Then, pick 2-3 three of the people you found most interesting/potentially helpful and read their most influential works. (And just know going into them that they might be really hard to read by yourself before you're versed in the broader theory discussions, but you have to start somewhere).
You can't read everybody (and some of this stuff is slow going), but it is good to be familiar with the big names. Thus, the intro book. On the other hand, you shouldn't just be surface, and you really need to find 2-3ish people who you really know well and use, thus my recommendation for getting your hands dirty with a few thinkers that you found interesting in the book.
Alternately, if you want to get a sense of what's being taught in intro to religious theory and method courses, just do some google searches for such syllabi. The AAR and SBL both have syllabus projects, where professor share syllabi, so that might be the place to start. Some schools also post syllabi (e.g., Syracuse).
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"on the comment about facing realities and criticisms from others, I have a sense that on this forum that people are well aware what it is like out there but being supportive and helpful."
For what it's worth, I strongly disagree with this statement. Most people on this forum are applying to PhD programs, or maybe in their first year. I'm not sure if anybody has actually applied for a job. There's a lot of people who are sure that things will just work out for them, because they don't need to teach at a prestigious school.
I'm probably pathetic (and definitely a procrastinator), but I"m actually ABD and will be on the job market in the fall, which means I have enough friends who have applied for jobs that I really get why the SBL forum people might have really dissuaded you. I mean, I know multiple people in Duke NT and Duke Theology, for example, who are on the job market for multiple years. And it's not because they're interested in getting a top job. They're happy to teach at a small school. And it's not that they don't have extremely impressive CVs. It's just the nature of the job market.
With that said, my advice to almost everybody on here is that you shouldn't do the PhD unless you're in at a legitmately top program. There are some amazing students and professors at the Indianas, Marquettes, Syracuses of the world, but getting a job out of those places is not fun. Getting paper accepted at conferences is harder, gettting external (and usually internal) funding is harder, getting key external readers is harder, etc.
I'll also echo the above post in encouraging you to go to a program that will set you up well for admittance into a top RELS PhD program. You sound very read for someone at your stage, but you'll really develop those interest in a good program that focuses on your topic (as opposed to a interdisciplinary program at this stage). All of which is to say in the nicest way possible, you're at a great point for where you're at, but when I read your interest I didn't mistake you for a current PhD student.
Finally, you mentioned that you're 25. You are young now, but think about what it'll be like when you've spend 2-3 years in a masters degree, and then 5-6 getting a PhD and can't get a job. Whether you have kids by that time or not, it's no fun to be unemployed in your mid-thirties, with little job prospects, and spent about a decade breaking even (at best) financially.
I won't be the guy who says you shouldn't do this, but don't take the idealism of this forum for reality. We're all idealists here.
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I think the main thing to keep in mind is that it's not as hard to get into Duke, Yale, Harvard Div schools as one would think. It sounds like you could write a pretty good personal statement and would have a couple of strong rec letters, so I think it's very possible to get accepted into one of those programs.
The advangtage of going to one of those three (or similar places) is, first of all, they have a lot of money (Yale and Harvard more than Duke). They're probably way more affordable than what you think, and certainly more affordable than many less prestigious programs.
Secondly, they give you a chance to impress important people. You certainly don't need to go to one of those schools to get into a top PhD program (and I'm guessing most of the people who go to those schools with dreams of glory don't end up getting into top programs), but you'd be surprised how many people at top programs come from one of those three. You sound like you're much more up to speed on the scholarship than many people who enter those programs would be, so you would have the chance to set yourself apart.
By the way, you wouldn't have to finish an M.Div before applying to PhD programs. You could apply after a year or two (if you think your application is ready) and see what happens.
The downside, however, to going to one of those (or similar) large div programs, is that you're not going to get much personal attention. You'll be fighting other students for professors' attention, and that's no fun.
Anyway, there's my two cents.
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Don't get me wrong, being a TA is not a replacement for any of the other elements of a good application, fit being foremost among them. I will say that in each of my acceptance calls, my being a TA was commented on positively - was this the deciding factor? Probably not, but I do think it helped. Further, while doctoral programs don't particularly care whether you are going to be a good TA, the job that you might apply for after your doctoral program will. You'll gain some during the course of your PhD, but why not have some more, and in a different kind of environment?
Note also that I would very much not suggest doing this if it is going to affect your academic performance negatively. I mentioned this in the first post as well. So, as with most things on this forum, you'll get both sides of the coin, and strong opinions that one side is much shinier than the other. This is one of them, as are those responding above. I think that you get the pros and cons set out pretty well, so have fun deciding!
You obviously have first hand experience here, so I'm obviously being stupid disagreeing with you, but it still seems odd to me that PhD programs (good ones at least) would really care about this. And while some jobs care about your teaching credentials, I really really don't think it would matter if you TA'ed as a masters student or not--especially because getting such jobs aren't really due to one's skill as a teacher.
Anyway, like I said, I'm happy to admit that you know more about this than I do. I just can't think that your experience is very normal though, But maybe that's just because I'm stupid.
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Anyone hear any word from Penn RS? Nothing on the results section. Kinda strange. eh?
Penn takes very few students most years (2-3), so it's probably just that the people who were offered don't frequent this site.
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In my humble opinion, if it helps you get to know a professor that you really want to know better, and possibly get a rec from, that's fine, but I have my doubts about whether it's really that helpful.
Apparently some posters above were helped with rec letters after TAing, but I have to think that poster is the exception. These letters oftentimes won't actually help much, because the professor can't speak to your ability as a student. Doctoral programs, for better or worse, just do not care about whether you are or will be a good TA.
More importantly, nobody's going to see that you were a TA and think that you'll be a good match for their program. Other things, such as grades, rec letters, and GRE scores will let them know that you're intelligent, but what really matters is whether you fit. Being a TA won't overcome bad grades, rec letters or GRE scores, and it won't make you a fit. On the other hand, being a TA often does take up a lot of time, time which you could be spending on classwork, impressing your referees, and on your applications.
Sorry for being negative, but that's my honest opinion. Exceptions aside (i.e., a rare chance to get to interact with an important prof in your field), it's probably not worth it.
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Not that I'm saying others on this forum haven't already said, but I think what really helped me is when I went from approaching the application with the aim of making myself look really smart/accomplished, and instead spend time thinking about how you would actually read these things if you're a professor.
Unlike undergrad, most of them aren't just trying to admit the best students. They want to hear a bit about your interest and aims and think "That sounds interesting . . . that's someone I'd be interested in talking to and advising for the next 5-6 years . . . I can see how they complement my work . ." You need the grades and GRE scores for the Dean's office to let them accept you, but they're thinking of working with you for the next 5-6 years. Rec letters are important, but I think only to a certain point.
Anyway, my two cents.
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Thanks Joseph45. That's great advice! I hadn't thought of asking for an extension. I always feel like the school's decisions are set in stone. Good idea.
I remember feeling the exact same way when somebody recommended that to me. "Wait, I can do that?!!" I can't promise that it'll work for you, but it was great advice for me.
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I had a similar situation the year I was accepted. I think it's fine if you're just honest with them. Tell them you haven't heard back from everybody, and you want to make sure you understand all of your options before you make any final decisions. Tell them they they're very high on your list of course (i.e., you're not waitlisting them), and then perhaps ask for an extension. That's what I did and the school was very understanding and let me have the extra time to decide. All of that is to say, I'd advise against accepting the offer with the possibility of retracting it. Instead, ask for an extension.
So... I'm in a bit of a quandary. I've received one acceptance so far and one rejection, still waiting to hear on 8 other schools but judging by what others have heard, I'm probably rejected (or at least not accepted in first round of offers) by at least 3 of those others. The school I've been accepted at requires me to respond by Feb. 24th, which seems really early to me. Does anyone have experience with accepting an offer and then retracting that acceptance if a more appealing offer comes in later? I've emailed the school to find out the consequences but haven't heard back and time is running out. I know no one can speak to the specifics of this school, but has anyone had a similar experience? What happened? Thanks gang
Top tier, 2nd tier . . . according to who?
in Religion
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That's why inerrancy is a completely useless category. I can hold that the Bible in errant, but that doesn't preclude me from believing that the four canonical gospels, and, let's say, the book of Romans, were written ironically, and were meant to be taken as jokes. Their irony and their humor is without error.
Of course, we all know that wouldn't be an acceptable position to inerrantists, because the category is actually a cover for certain types of readings of the text.