My first week at seminary, I wrote a heartfelt, hopeful post about my two years here. They’ve been both more and less than I’ve hoped for: wonderful friends, occasionally disappointing classes, papers I’m proud of, papers I want burned. This week, my last as an enrolled student, I wanted to write something equally reflective, a summing-up of what I’ve learned and how I’ve grown, a contemplative look forward at the next chapter. Alas, buried as I am in final papers and freezer meals, the following is all I could summon.

My favorite nerdy running joke is to make an absurd connection and then say, “In this essay, I will.” In that spirit, here are the papers I didn’t write—but definitely could have written—while at Princeton.

From Hairshirts to Sweatshirts: Library Air-Conditioning as Contemporary Asceticism

The apartments might be humid, the classrooms might be sweltering, but one thing’s for sure: the library’s a crisp sixty-five degrees. Sure, it’s probably for the fragile old books. But what if we read students’ shivering study sessions as a kind of ascetic practice, a modern-day mortification of the flesh? What new insights might emerge if we saw this manufactured, carbon-burning refrigeration as generative?

Swerving Others, Swerving God: U.S. Route 1 as Evidence of Total Depravity

They say it’s the only empirically provable doctrine, and driving down Central Jersey’s main automobile artery, you’ll believe it. To the classic deadly sins of greed and sloth, let us add erratic signaling, inexplicably slow merging, and aggressive left turns as soon as the light turns green. But what if we only sin because we are embedded in sinful systems? To answer this question, this essay will investigate the design of Route 1—its devilish jughandles and demonic on-ramps—as a kind of original sin, an ontological brokenness at the level of tar and asphalt. Sin, in other words, might be where the rubber meets the road.

“Like a Rose Trampled on the Ground”: A Theology of Lanternflies

They’re the late-summer scourge of the East Coast: invasive, red-winged plant-destroyers that the government has told us to kill on sight. In August, their corpses lie everywhere, slowly baking into the cement. But what does it mean for a species to be invasive? Might Christ, who also finds a home in continents not his own, be seen as a kind of lanternfly? What if the flies’ red markings were seen not as an evolutionary happenstance but as a symbol of the blood of the Trampled One? What if each erratic, stomp-dodging flight was a little ascension, each clicking wing a miniature Sermon on the Mount?

Wait for the Lord (and for Verse Five): The Eschatological Significance of the Organ Interlude

If you’ve sung hymns with Presbyterians, you know what I’m talking about: that little ditty between verses 4 and 5 of “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing” when the organist gets to ~~show off~~ prepare our hearts for the triumphant harmonies of “To God all glory, praise, and love.” A moment of musically guided reflection, perhaps, or a chance for the congregation to catch its breath. But I argue that the organ interlude is analogous to our current place in the narrative of cosmic redemption: the prophets and disciples have sung their verses, and the heavenly chorus remains to come, but here and now—on this millennia-long Holy Saturday—the church’s pipes and pedals ring with the wordless breath of God. If the organist indulges in a dramatic key change, this interpretation is in fact strengthened: what was the Reformation, after all, but a modulation from fa(r away from orthodoxy) to sol(a scriptura)?

That Recent Email From Residence Life: History, Myth, or Both?

Some of us take it literally and do in fact move our storage bins out of the hallways due to the fire codes. For others, though, it’s more of a theological statement: our God is the type of God who wants—or at one point was understood to want—hallways free of bins, but this doesn’t necessarily apply to modern American hallways. If you look closely, in fact, there are two versions of the instructions embedded in the email: one speaks of hallways as empty voids, the other as dry, lifeless deserts. This ambiguity is complicated by the style of the email, which changes throughout, suggesting later editorial compilation. Let us call the first author J…

Two-Factor Authentication as a Trial of Faith

This one writes itself.

Photo courtesy Flickr user Luke Jones (CC BY 2.0)

Josh Parks

Josh Parks graduated from Calvin in 2018 with majors in English and music, and he is currently a PhD student in religious studies at the University of Virginia. When not writing, he can be found learning the alto recorder, watching obscure Disney movies, and making excruciating puns.