First Day of Class

Although I missed the early morning class I wanted to sample, on sacramental character (my 5th choice backup, due to its inconvenient timing and more dry-sounding content), the evening class on God and the poets was a good selection, and likely will be for the term to come.  Dr. Martin would probably get on splendidly with the professor of this class, Father Murray.  Father Murray is also a Dominican, which is my usual preference when it comes down to which set of friars to pick (hopefully the Franciscan TORs here are not reading!)

The professor is quite engaging and interesting, and happens to be teaching a class that I probably need more than the others, since poetic expression and imagination is less my suit than the two big cores of theology, dogma and morals.  But it's easy to see his point that since God opts to use poetry to approach man in the Scripture and also in the person of Jesus - via parables, for example - instead of simply leaving a to-do list, that it's important not to overlook this dimension.  The good Dominican sees this as a weakness in scholasticism - hard to argue, despite what little I know of it - but he's not selling St. Thomas short, as he plans to include some poetry from the founder of the order as we move on.

This class should be fairly relaxed, as most of it appears to be poetry and the corresponding reaction to it.  I should enjoy it though, since I haven't taken the time to enjoy poetry much in recent years, to say nothing of the great Christian patrimony of such works.

The other planned-upon courses for this semester are:

The Divisions of the Virtues in St. Thomas Aquinas (drab-sounding, but I haven't had much chance for Thomistic study elsewhere...)

Man, Image of God (holding on as 4th choice, mainly for time convenience)

The Humanity of the Medieval Mystics (this should be good)