I’m taking Acts and Paul with Professor Gaffin, who is a wonderful professor. Since I’m currently brain dead, I was fearful that I wouldn’t be able to keep my mind focused enough to understand what was being said. But my fears were groundless and in fact the opposite happened, a lot of what he said triggered memories and I realized that I knew something about the Bible 🙂
This was the first time I was able to check my finals and I was disappointed to learn that I kind of bombed them. Bummer! I did get a B on my Gospels’ paper which was OK, I didn’t expect anything great. I have to start working on these papers earlier since I would do such a better job if I could think about the passage and the research longer. The work piles up though and it’s hard to research when you are studying for Greek and Hebrew quizzes. I was looking forward to doing a better job this semester but we don’t have to do an exegetical paper. There will be three tests and a digest. That’s it. One of the tests will be a Greek test. All of Galatians and two passages from Acts. It seems like a lot but it could be worse. I’m just happy that I won’t have weekly tests.
Here are the books that I will be reading parts of this semester:
Biblical Theology by G. Vos
Theology of the New Testament by R. Bultmann
The Message of Acts by D. E. Johnson
Perspectives on Pentecost by R. B. Gaiffin, Jr.
The Holy Spirit by S. B. Ferguson
New Testament History by F. F. Bruce
New Testament Introduction by D. Guthrie
The New Testament: An Introduction to Its History and Literature by J. G. Machen
The Pauline Eschatology by G. Vos
When the Time Had Fully Come by H. Ridderbos
Paul: An Outline of His Theology by H. Ridderbos
Dictionary of Paul and His Letters by S. J. Hafemann
We only have to read parts of the books but added together it will be a lot. We only have to digest one of the books, Bruce’s “New Testament History,” chapters 16-30. I will post it to the blog when I finish it (yes, I will).
I was sadden by the death of Professor Groves on Monday. He was such a wonderful Christian, so warm, gentle and caring. When I took Hebrew we used his study guide as a supplement to the grammar book we were using and it showed such a sense of humor that I was looking forward to taking a class with him. Unfortunately, I never got the chance. You can get a sense of the man from the memories of the commenters here.