(no subject)

I have nothing very much to say about AC Grayling's proposed "New College of the Humanities", except that it sounds like a colossal rip-off* that won't get you anything you couldn't have got cheaper at the various colleges of the University of London, other than a extra few lectures by a bunch of ego-mad media dons, so I will merely record my amusement at Boris Johnson's take on the matter:

London's mayor, Boris Johnson, backed Grayling's idea, saying "it fully deserves to succeed and to be imitated".

It prompted him, Johnson added, to recall his own idea of founding "Reject's College, Oxbridge", which would be "aimed squarely at the wrathful parents – many of them Oxbridge graduates – who simply could not understand how their own offspring could rack up three A-stars and grade 8 bassoon, and yet find themselves turned down".


* Of students, and also of the University of London's investment in developing courses and syllabuses (with public money, one might add).

(no subject)

I was having great difficulty motivating myself to revise for my last exam (tomorrow) until I reminded myself that, actually, I do like theology, and in particular I like doctrine, and I get to read and engage with stuff I really like (or, in the case of Schleiermacher, like arguing with). I have babbled of my love for Aquinas before, but The Confessions is a great text too, and I have a good deal of fondness for Barth despite the fact that he was dead wrong to reject the analogia entis*)

Actually, I realised in the exam yesterday that despite my bitching about the OT - largely the result of being overwhelmed with Too Many Texts - I really love that too. I still don't like the method of approaching texts that Biblical Studies tends to default to, but writing about, say, Ezekiel is just fun. And remind me - or don't, perhaps - to tell you sometime why the Holiness Code (Lev 17-26) is not dull superstitious legalism but, despite some attitudes that we would rightly challenge today, a brilliant piece of theology and a new vision for the people of God. Whoever compiled it was a genius, seriously.

Incidentally, I recently found a clever fic about the Deuteronomist, the composition of the 'book of the law', and the Josian reform, which has clearly been written by someone who knows their Biblical scholarship. I do love the AO3...


* A pity, because I think his theological account of creation would be much more convincing if he could tie it up with revelation, which a proper understanding of the analogia entis allows; creation is a kind of revelation too.