Nations University call

[Thorne]

Are you starting the first course, JB?

I plan to apply Monday/Tuesday. I'm not fully committed to doing this anymore, but I'll apply and look around, and decide in a few months based on how the first 1-3 courses go for me. It seems like that first one is harder than most of the rest, and the second seems to have more work than average too.

I have to see how demanding the other things in my life are. I think it's ok if I get off to a slow start, and then I go really fast for a few weeks here and there. That's the only way I can do it, given the other obligations. For a while I felt like it would be silly to enroll if I wasn't going to make much progress in the first 5 months, but now I think it's ok.

Honestly, if you don't need the MTS for anything, I'd leave it be. Not only is there a very limited market for theological degrees, but Nations doesn't even have ATS approval IIRC, which is even more limiting.

It's your choice, but all of the paths you discuss are so far removed from theology that I'm frankly baffled.

BEWARE: What follows is an almost entirely unrelated rant.
I've been studying the Bible intermittently for twelve years. In that time, I've completely designed, researched, and written about four fairly radical ideas regarding the Bible, yet have no plan to pursue even the cheapest MTS or MA Theology. To put this in perspective, I wrote a 98 page report (almost a pseudo-thesis) on the least radical of those ideas: outlining the complete set of reasons why it is unlikely that God is omnipotent, omnipresent, or omniscient according to the Bible (as understood through its original languages with a tiny nugget of human logic). A pastor friend of mine, who went to the school I originally wanted to attend for an MA Theology, read the whole thing and couldn't come up with a rebuttal of any kind. When he passed it to someone who had authority in the school (which will remain unnamed), I was told that those ideas, "maliciously undermine the sovereignty and power of God" and would result in my formal expulsion if I were to submit those ideas, in any form, as my thesis. If Christian universities are so dogmatic that ideas which are Biblical, yet question the current power base, are not tolerated, why waste the time or money?