Paper Progress

I did not expect to start writing my last paper for the term yesterday.  I thought I would read/scan a few more books and then start.  But yesterday morning during my walk, I had an idea for how to start, so I did.  And then I kept going.

I'm far from done, but I have time; it's not due until Saturday.  I'm in that phase of writing where I'm scared to go back to read what I've written, for fear that it's all gobbledygook.  Of course, I've been writing long enough that I know that even if it is gobbledygook, I can revise it into something workable.  And it's rarely all gobbledygook.

A few weeks ago, on a Monday walk, I had an idea for how to organize my final paper for Systematic Theology, and I came home and got right to work.  And it turned out to be very good--I got an A.  I looked at four church doctrines:  Soteriology, Ecclesiology, Eschatology, and Creation.  I did look at them somewhat systematically, using texts from the Bible and from theologians to help understand a new approach.

My last paper, the one I'm currently writing, is for the Environmental History of Christianity (EHC) class.  I'm looking at some of those church doctrines as being part of what got us to this climate crisis.  I'm trying not to repeat what I wrote for my Systematic Theology class, and when I was writing for Systematic Theology, I was also trying not to go too far into the topic that I planned to write for the EHC class.

Often my scholarly writing does not delight me in the way that poetry writing does.  But last night, I created this paragraph, which had inspired the kind of reaction that I usually only get when writing fiction or poetry:

How different our lives would be if we had a faith focused on the beginning of Christ’s life, not his death and resurrection. In some ways, the incarnation is more miraculous than the resurrection. A God who creates a cosmos out of chaos would find resurrecting a body to be ridiculously easy. But a God who chooses to come and experience human life alongside of us? That’s rare enough to be a miracle.

I liked the way it sounded, the repetition of c (cosmos, chaos) and r (resurrecting, ridiculously).  I was surprised by the idea:  resurrection is easy for God, but going through a human life is much more miraculous.

I've read enough to know how the idea in this paragraph borders on heresy, or maybe it's outright heresy, the idea that incarnation is more important than resurrection.  I will likely keep the paragraph in the essay.  It fits with what I'm trying to say.

I'm intrigued to continue with this writing.  Will I find more surprises?