Student Life

As a teacher I often feel like I'm constantly pouring out, so it's nice when I have an opportunity to get filled back up. Technically, I'm allowed one week per year for continuing professional development, so for the first time in five years I decided to take advantage of that! So last week I rescheduled my classes, hopped on a tiny little plane with only about 20 other people for the short flight to Cape Town, and stepped back into the classroom myself.

GWC is the yellow building in the background.

George Whitefield College is a reformed Anglican Bible school in Muizenberg, South Africa, a small suburb located on the southern coast of Cape Town. They had invited Dr. Don Carson to come as a visiting lecturer to teach a post-graduate course on the epistle to the Hebrews. Dr. Carson has been a pastor, professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Chicago, prolific author and editor of many books and articles, and co-founder of The Gospel Coalition (among other things!). I heard that somebody once said they have three rules in life: 1) Tell your wife you love her; 2) Brush your teeth twice a day; and 3) If you ever, ever, ever have a chance to hear Don Carson teach, then always take it!

So six years after my last seminary class, I found myself a student again. It was actually really nice to be back in the academic sphere where I was surrounded by other people who were asking the same kinds of questions I find myself asking. It was great to dive deeply into texts of Scripture, to pick apart the logical flow of argument, and figure out how the NT author was appropriately quoting and re-applying passages from the Old Testament. But perhaps my biggest takeaway from the course was seeing how Dr. Carson seamlessly wove together his knowledge from many different disciplines. It's amazing how his systematic theology and his language study and his pastoral experience inform his Biblical exegesis and vice versa. It's easy to separate each of those into different categories, but he helpfully brought them all together. It reminded me how I need to be reading much more broadly across the scope of different disciplines within theological studies.

Overall it was helpful, and encouraging, and challenging to help me become a better teacher. And it didn't hurt that after class I could walk across the street for a little stroll along the beach!

Muizenberg beach on a warm sunny day