Old Papers

I've been cleaning up my basement, and in the process I came across a pile of old papers I had written in and after seminary. While the scholarship is obviously dated, I found that much of what I wrote 20 years ago still stands up pretty well today. Were I to cover the same subjects now, I would not be embarrassed to start with what I wrote back then.

Perhaps more intriguing is looking back at how I approached the various subjects. These papers were for the most part assignments for classes I took in seminary and graduate school, so there is some obvious "academic speak" in them. I found some details were incorrect, and I think that was largely due to the time pressure of school, along with some inexperience in certain fields. Interestingly, the exegetical work done for a few papers in OT and NT studies has held up well; I doubt that much would change if I rewrote those today.

I especially found my writing for church history fascinating. Some short papers written as responses/reactions to questions involving different eras of church history demonstrated (at least to me) my interest in the earliest years of the church. The roots of my love of the patristic period were already beginning to form then. It would not be until a course in patristics a couple of years later that my interest would grow, but seeing my academic roots was a stimulating experience.

I was pleased to find my magnum opus among those old papers. (Yes, my tongue is firmly in my cheek.) I wrote a paper for Patristics on baptismal doctrine and liturgy in the writing of the Apostolic Fathers, which I later expanded for a graduate school application. Although the work was done on translations of the texts, I believe I did justice to the topic, and I would not be embarrassed to have someone read that paper now.

Recalling the work that went into that paper, I think that I have a lot to do to match it with my current project, another visit with patristic theology. Rather than discouraging me, I find that reading my old work encourages me to look ahead, to study harder, and to attempt to do just as well in explicating and discussing another subject.

Often when we go to school, we labor for days, weeks, or months on a subject, only to have the paper read by a professor or a committee, graded, and forgotten. It was like a visit to my past to read these old works, and to recall much of what went into their production. I hope to use what I learned then to help me as a scholar now.