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Centered Diversity in Systematic Theology

2009· article· en· W1976545734 on OpenAlex
James B. Peterson

Why this work is in the frame

A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.

affAt least one author lists a Canadian institution in the pinned OpenAlex snapshot.

Bibliographic record

VenueTeaching Theology & Religion · 2009
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldArts and Humanities
TopicChristian Theology and Mission
Canadian institutionsMcMaster UniversityMcMaster Divinity College
Fundersnot available
KeywordsCreedSystematic theologyDivinityContext (archaeology)Reading (process)Formative assessmentDiversity (politics)EpistemologyOrder (exchange)SociologyPhilosophyTheologyPedagogyHistoryLinguistics

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

The context: Divinity College students at McMaster University are part of Christian traditions from Radical Reformation to Coptic Orthodox. Core courses for professional degrees include a two-semester overview of systematic theology. The pedagogical purpose: Students are to become well versed in their home tradition while discovering what it has in common or in contrast with others. The intended disposition is one of respect, not relativism. To pursue that, students are encouraged to build a habit of first understanding why a given view is compelling and then to go on to evaluate that view. When disagreements arise it is an opportunity for insight. Students come to hold convictions because they have thought them through, not just because they are the only perspectives that they have heard. Description of the strategy: I ask each student to choose two textbooks from an annotated list: one standard systematic in their own tradition and one systematic from outside it. Class proceeds in the order of the Apostles' Creed as an early and formative framework. For example, the ancient creed begins with “We believe,” so students start reading wherever their texts discuss ecclesiology and epistemology. Students have not found it difficult to find the parallel discussions in their two chosen systematics; the order of approach may vary from one systematic to another, but most of the same topics are addressed and are clearly marked. Systematic theology does have the advantage of being systematic! Reading an influential systematic theology in their tradition and one from outside it on each topic gives the students a chance to see a best case for their tradition, what it has in common with fellow Christian traditions, and how it is distinct. The reading load is manageable while students interact with two examples of how a comprehensive and integrated approach can be developed. For evaluation, essay questions and papers ask students to compare and contrast the argument of their two systematics with their own position on given topics. Why it is effective: The wide range of systematics chosen across the full class makes for lively discussion. If the class does not understand a tradition's perspective to a proponent's satisfaction, there are plenty of students with their tradition's best texts well studied and at hand to help us be more accurate and sympathetic. Pursuing a respected systematic theology in their own tradition and a systematic from outside their tradition in parallel helps students see both what their own traditions contribute as well as that they have much in common with one another.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.001
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: Theoretical or conceptual
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.287
Threshold uncertainty score0.591

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0010.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0010.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.027
GPT teacher head0.247
Teacher spread0.221 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it