Trip to Buford
Today a group of us took a short field trip to the ancient town of Buford to check out a cathedral that has parts that date back to the year 600 A.D. and to take a walk through the English countryside to a town that was completely wiped out by the plague. The only thing remaining today is the town church, which has been restored to its original form.

This is the cathedral at Buford, which has been added on to many times in its history. It started out as a small Saxon church and as the years went by, many generous benefactors who wished to show their piety, built chapel additions to the church after they died.


The view of the other half of the cathedral pictured above.

No, this isn't the chocolate river from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but it does serve as evidence to how muddy our hike through the country side was going to be.

This is a picture of part of the right of way passage that we used to get to the church in the abandoned village. This is a right of way passage, which is part of a complex web of walking paths that are all over England. They are a tradition dating back to medieval times, when people would use these paths as their only way to get from one town to the next. Many of these path go straight through people's property or farm fields and make it real easy to explore the countryside.


This is the church that is the only remaining building in the deserted medieval town.

A few interesting pictures...

This is Holy Trinity Church, where CS. Lewis attended Sunday services.


This is the grave of C.S. Lewis and his wife Joy which can be found in the church graveyard.


This is a view from the grounds of Blenheim Palace, where Sir Winston Churchill spent his childhood. The lake was created by damming a small river that ran through the property. Before the lake was created, the bridge in the picture rose about 80 feet above the ground and was extravagant in comparison to the river it spanned. The bridge has about 20 rooms inside the supports that are now underwater.

This is the humble grave of Winston Churchill and his wife Clementine. After a massive state funeral in London, he was buried in his family burial plot at a church nearby Blenheim Palace.


This is a reconstruction of the skeleton of the Dodo, a species that was brought to Europe in the 1600's from the Island of Mauritius, which is off the coast of Madagascar. The birds went extinct after humans introduced predators such as dogs, cats and rats to their island, which the flightless birds could not evade.


This is Paul, one of my friends who tried to make some extra money by selling burritos at a "football" (that's what they call soccer) game. Unfortunately he did not get the reaction he was anticipating. When he asked some brits if they would like to buy a burrito, they responded, "What's a burrito?" This is a picture from a mewithoutyou concert I went to in London.

This is the Radcliffe Camera, which contains two of the major reading rooms of the Bodleian library, which has over 12 million books!

Cheers.

I have been studying the gospels and the period in which they were written for the past four weeks. Both my understanding and perspective have changed in regards to the gospels, and as a result my faith in what they proclaim has also been strengthened. A lot of the questions that I had about discrepancies between the different gospel accounts have been answered by looking at the gospels in their context. Each gospel writer is writing to a specific audience at a specific time in history, and each chooses to focus on different aspects of the Christ story in order to communicate their purpose to their readers.

My perspective on Christianity and the scriptures as a whole has also changed since I have been here. I knew before that there were many connections between the Old and New Testaments, but now I believe that the gospel writers did not exactly write their gospels with the intention that there was going to be a New Testament at all. They did not think they were writing a New Testament so much as they were writing a continuance of the Jewish scriptures, showing that Christ had come to make all things new and complete the Law. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all tell the same basic Christ story, but each one focuses on different aspects of that story. They all incorporate Jewish themes and Old Testament themes to a certain extent in their gospel. Each wrote his gospel 30 or more years after Christ ascended to heaven, and each writer wrote from the perspective of a church that was facing many challenges between Judaism and the emerging religion of Christianity. The gospel writers did not necessarily intend for Christianity and Judaism to be two distinct religions. One of the intentions in writing their gospels was that they meant to show how Christ came to complete the law and radically reinterpret Judaism. This can be drawn out of the gospels because we see that Christ did not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17) and by all of the Jewish themes that are in the New Testament. In its earliest forms, Christianity was indistinguishable from Judaism, and it wasn't until Christ was largely rejected as the messiah by mainstream Judaism that Christianity emerged as its own distinct religion.

This is an attempt at a brief summation of what I have been learning thus far. I sometimes struggle to articulate effectively what I have been learning, so I hope this makes sense.
Cheers.

For each tutorial of my tutorials, I spend about 20-30 hours a week preparing a paper to present to my tutor. During our meeting, I read the paper to him and then spend the remainder of the time discussing the topic and debating and conflicts of interest that myself and my tutor might be having. It might seem strange to spend so much time preparing for a one hour conversation, but when I am asked questions or have my position challenged, I want to be able to defend myself.
Back at home, professors write up test questions and I study the night before and try to spew out the information that I will most likely forget minutes after I take the test. Here, the "test" comes each week when I meet with my tutor. I don't want to look like a fool in front of a person who has a doctorate in the field of theology, so I work all week trying to "know my stuff" for when I present my paper to him. While my tutor is usually quick to refute the position that I have taken on the week's topic, I learn a lot from my mistakes. Interestingly enough, I retain what I have learned long after the discussion with my professor is over.
There have been many times when I have left my tutorial feeling like quite the fool. I don’t really let that get to me though. I learn from my mistakes and move on knowing that my one week of research about a question pales in comparison to my tutor’s years of research in the field of theology. While I do not always assume the same position on questions my tutor raises, I do respect his opinion and walk away having had my own position strengthened.