Sounds like an extreme case of no rest for the weary. Sounds exciting though. However, I suspect that a German theologian would be too much for me, especially one named Otto. I am quite happy, thank you, to stay with the level of Frank Sheed. Otherwise, one does risk getting lost.

On a side note: Do Aquinas's arguments for the existence of God still carry weight in the academic world? That Rice's daughter seems to think them worthy, as per her show on EWTN. I am enjoying that. Again, though, it is for us beginner types.

There's still an awful lot of work done with the five arguments, but more in philosophy than theology, which is really proper, given their nature. Thomas himself doesn't put a great deal of weight on them. They aren't terribly conclusive arguments: certainly there's a big leap from establishing the kind of "prime mover" that they go for, and then saying, "... and this we call 'God.'" I think it's recognized, in other words, that rather than establishing the existence of the Christian understanding of God in themselves, the arguments do not so much "prove the existence of God" as they "prove that belief in God is not irrational." And that's a significant difference.

Oh, I'm laughing. With you, not at you. Okay, 75% with you, 25% at you.

:-D

Thanks for the clarity! I had a great deal of fun delivering that point to some departmental friends yesterday and watching them shudder in sympathy before they started laughing. I'm not actually too worried about it. Intimidated yes, but not so worried. And hell, the process was already intimidating....

You want a dissertation advisor to a) help you through and b) help you make your work the best it can be. Sounds like B is covered?

More than covered! Professor Fahey, while being a zesty and brutal editor, just flat-out loves instructing students in how to write. As far as bringing my work to a scholar who is going to give it oodles of attention, all with the goal of making it fit to print, I couldn't have asked for better.

Which is, after all, why I didn't! I came to Marquette to write with Professor Fahey. My assessment was that he was, pound for pound, the best ecclesiologist in the United States. It's a fairly recent field, the study of the Church, at least in its modern form--it's pretty much a post-Vatican II development, so that's just 40 years, now. Cardinal Dulles at Fordham I thought was slipping and not going to be someone to study with anymore as he was getting so elderly and frail, and Francis Sullivan--the subject of my dissertation--was already retired in the Jesuit community at Boston College.

Those two, Dulles and Sullivan, in many ways were the "first" doing ecclesiology in the new mode, and I gave some of that edge to Sullivan, and so he became my object of study. Dulles, Sullivan and Fahey are all American Jesuits, which shows something of what a Jesuit "group project" this field almost was, at its top levels. The other really big name at the top, Richard McBrien, with whom I studied at Notre Dame, is the only non-Jesuit at the very top of the field.

So, all that to say that yes, I feel incredibly lucky to be exactly where I am, especially since Fahey retires in May but still was willing to direct me.

Great googly moogly man, it never rains but it pours...

Hope that sleep does show up in a proper amount once you've gotten over this disserhurdle!

I wish! It seems like I'm always in the non-virtuous states of either "excess" or "lack" when it comes to sleep....