My third year of teaching, I was finally out of survival mode and in the groove enough to have a life outside of school. A masters degree had been a long-time bucket list item. I had always said my undergraduate degree was for the job, but my future graduate degree would be for the education. Now with some money in the bank account, I could pursue an online M.A. in Biblical Theology from a Catholic University. Two standout teachers made this an incredibly enriching year of study and growth for me - Dr. Michael Barber and Dr. John Bergsma.
Dr. Barber, a founding university faculty member, taught THEO502: Foundations of Biblical Theology. One of my first impressions of him came from opening the reading lists for the class. The required readings were extensive and challenging, and the recommended readings were so far overshot that I didn't have a chance of getting through a quarter of that material. He immediately earned my respect simply for having a book list that long. It gave me to know two things right away: Dr. Barber was at least 700% better read than I was, and the bar was high.
Dr. Barber's classes were fast-paced, but followable. He provided a detailed outline of the content of each lecture. I had never seen notes with their own footnotes before, but I realized quickly that Dr. Barber was extremely detail-oriented, and he expected the same of us. He spoke in a combination of being both quick and succinct, which allowed him to cover a lot of content over a relatively short period of time. His planning and organization kept the classes purposeful and productive. As a teacher, this was a lesson inside a lesson. Not only was I learning the basics of theology - how and why to study it - I was seeing how extensive work outside the classroom brought about the learning inside it. We respected our professor for the rigor he imposed on himself, and it motivated us to aim higher.
The content he covered gave a much wider context for the theological books I had read in the past. It gave me a sense of where we had landed in the whole history of the discipline. I remember slogging through Ratzinger's The Nature and Mission of Theology, enough of it now unlocked that the margins were popping up with exited notes and connections. This foundations course was not only providing the necessities for the degree; it was also providing motivation and inspiration to do the work that would be required.
If Dr. Barber was the setter, Dr. Bergsma was his outside hitter. In BIBL511: Pentateuch, he applied practically what Dr. Barber had laid out theoretically. A visiting professor, his class was uniquely timed to overlap with my short enrollment. From the very beginning, I knew I was very lucky to take his course. One of the main texts for the class was the draft of an Old Testament commentary that Dr. Bergsma was co-authoring. My two favorite undergraduate courses had been ones where the professors authored their own textbooks. These teachers can present a depth of content that only comes from years of their own labored study. Just like Dr. Barber, Dr. Bergsma was meticulously prepared, and we students reaped the benefits.
The fact that Dr. Bergsma was advanced in his field did not mean his presentations went over our heads. He had a knack for simplification of complex ideas, and his dry oversimplification of humorous ideas kept us all laughing. He was known for his stick-figure illustrations and goofy impersonations of biblical patriarchs. Again, lessons in pedagogy underlaid the lessons in theology. Complex ideas can be distilled into accessible language, and the entertainment value of a class should never be underrated.
Dr. Bergsma illumined parts of the Bible that had been nonsensical to me. Leviticus is usually the book that bogs down well-intentioned readers attempting the Bible from beginning to end. Only 3 books in, they get dietary laws, washing rituals, and even guidelines on baldness. I had usually heard of these as reasons to discount the Scriptures; if such were God's laws in the Old Testament, certainly current laws of the Church were just as ridiculous. But Dr. Bergsma put these codes, so seemingly out-of-touch, into a historical and whole biblical context. I saw how fitting they were for the purpose at hand, and Leviticus unexpectedly became one of my favorite Scriptures.
This "hermeneutic of unity," this way of approaching the Bible as a tightly interwoven story, was absolutely thrilling. Of course, the Bible is mysterious, containing many seeming contradictions. But digging deeper and looking for ways to reconcile the surface-level questions was more satisfying than any deconstructive tack. Dr. Barber and Dr. Bergsma exemplified this approach in their scholarship and, in their own individual styles, modeled the highest quality teaching.
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