For a while now I’ve been mulling over what to do for my final year dissertation. We have the option of writing a 15,000 word project on a chosen question and I’m pretty much decided on how to go with this but I still have a couple of other thoughts. I’d love to hear from any of you what you think I should be doing. Do please read through my suggested options and then vote and comment as you see fit.
Possible project ideas
- Controls on typology in Old Testament narrative (with Samson as a case-study). There are a number of figures in Old Testament narrative that serve a typological purpose, that is the events of their life mirror events and facets of the Incarnation. So, for example, Samson’s birth is announced by an angel, he is a Nazirite, he is the leader of his people but rejected by them and also hangs out with the wrong sort of people, he is arrested by his own countrymen and handed over to their pagan overlords and, finally, defeats the enemies of God’s people in his own death. However, there is very little control stated in the New Testament for this sort of thing so how does one go about deciding whether such a typological reading is legitimate or not? This is currently my favoured option.
- The Voice of Creation. Certain texts in scripture (i.e. Psalm 19; Rom. 1:18-20, 10:18; Col. 1:23 etc.) suggest that there is a universal declaration of the gospel in, through and to the Creation. What does this declaration and voice look like?
- Authority in the Anglican Church. The history of the Anglican Reformation in the sixteenth century is undoubtedly Reformed Evangelical, as only a brief reading of the Articles or other writings of those early Reformers will demonstrate. To what extent did they understand this position to be authoritative and to what extent is it still authoritative within Anglicanism today?
So, a bunch of different options, which should also give you an indication of how varied my interests are. Do please take the time to vote in the poll and make additional comments. I would really appreciate your thoughts in this matter.
edit: I’m stuffed if I can work out how to make a poll work. Please do just comment 🙂
controls on typology. that is my vote.
I vote for #2, but that was probably obvious 🙂
not obvious at all!! why #2?
Samson gets my vote
Hi David.
I think the Samson one is interesting.
You will be working at a much higher level, but I like what I read in Hays and Duvall’s Grasping God’s Word about narrative and how you are sposed to figure out the author’s point of view when he doesn’t say “Now Samson was a bad guy.” [I don’t think they were referring specifially to Sambo, btw.]
They point out that a knowledge of Deuteronomy is often presupposed in later OT books. [I’m assuming it wasn’t written years later after the exile, of course.]
My vote: 1 AND 3 (Yes, that proves I’m an Anglican)
I like 1, but it’s hard to know how much of a satisfactory conclusion you will come to, so it may be a little disheartening? I reckon your interests and passion for historic Anglicanism would make 3 work – and I’d certainly be interested in your answers. You might want to explore some of the new stuff that’s coming out on Richard Hooker, for example?
Lionel