Week 4 - No progress but at least the conference paper is written

Maximum number of words: 80,000
Words typed so far: 8,881
Words typed this week: 0
Days I managed to write this week: 0

All right so no progress this week and yes the triskele is exactly in the same state as last week. However I have actually managed to get the conference paper written and out to proof readers. It is however only 1847 words which would make it the shortest I have written to date. On the other hand I had a personal maximum of 2000 words for the paper as I only have twenty minutes to present and I don't want to go over.

Thesis wise it was an interesting exercise. If I had had a full paper and not a short one I would have made more of the ambivalence the tradition actually has towards theologians. On the one hand the Reformed traditions respects them highly, it is the aim of many to be one. On the other hand it also keeps a very strong belief in its right to ignore them if it so chooses. Some of this is because of the belief that any theology is situated historically both in times and place and is trying to meet the needs of the church at that time and place. So you end up with interesting questions as to what extent Predestination isn't a creation of Calvin's brain but rather a product of Dutch Nationalism in the seventeenth Century. According to scholars Calvin seems to have shown reluctance towards voicing the doctrine only although it is the natural conclusion to his thought.

The other thing is I am pretty sure the idea that doctrine is temporarily related to faith (the only eternally relevant text is the Bible) goes back at least as far as Calvin, now I can find him when he says that the church councils are subject to the judgement of Christians but I want to find where he says that his writing is not final.

Anyway its back to arguing about writing as an analytic tool next week. I am being clear that the churches that appear in my written texts are factions heavily based on real churches but not identical with, at least in part because of the demands of the written text but also because it is my presentation of them, and in creating it I have also misrepresented, there is the "other" between what I write and what reality is.