5. Choosing the Question

The common practice of colleges is to provide a list of questions – perhaps six or so – from which the students may choose. Doubtless they do this to stop the markers dying of boredom and to make sure that library resources are evenly spread amongst students. Good reasons, perhaps: but it adds a layer of decision-making to the whole process which may cause you some stress – especially if you are one of those people who can never decide what colour socks to wear in the morning.

And the truth of the matter is that this is one of those decisions you are going to make that you have to make without fully knowing what it will look like at the end of the process. It’s a bit like getting married: you have to sort of guess on the basis of the piecemeal information you have what is going to work out best. And there’s years to regret the decision if it is made poorly. (Of course, the analogy breaks down in several obvious ways. There’s no party when you choose your essay topic. Your friends won’t give you presents. And… OK, maybe it was a rubbish analogy to begin with.)

But still: you are going to spend (well I hope!) a lot of hours wedded to this question – and not to some other possibly very interesting and worthwhile questions - so the decision is worth taking carefully.

Cast your eye over the list of essay questions. What immediately interests you? Usually, you will get a quick sense of what topic area a question is addressing, and you may have a sense already of a topic area that interests you. Perhaps a particular topic has been smoldering away in your mind for a while. Or perhaps you can immediately see how an issue will have benefits for your ministry. It might be that several of the questions have this effect. Asterisk them.

But it is worth looking a little more closely. It could be that the topic is of interest to you, but that the question is angled in a particular way so as to take it out of your frame of interest. I often speak with students who say, a couple of weeks in to the assignment, ‘I thought the essay was a question that was going to help me resolve x, but actually it has drawn me to y.’ Or, worse: I have marked essays that have been addressed to a vague topic area, say ‘the doctrine of election’, but not to the specific question about the doctrine of election, say ‘in what sense is Christ ‘the mirror of our election’ (John Calvin). We’ll talk about analyzing the question later; but it is worth noting that a topic and a question are somewhat different beasts and need to be held in separate cages in the zoo of your mind. Or they’ll fight, honest.

Now, a couple of more things are worth taking into account here. Many students will ask themselves quite straightforwardly ‘which essay is the easiest’? This is entirely understandable, especially if you have a low opinion of yourself as a student, or if you are not used to essay writing. But beware: the question that seems easiest may not be at all. Most students are attracted to a more general question – the kind of question that is asked in familiar terms and which appears to allow you scope to repeat information you already know or at least have a hunch you might know where to find. Here’s an example of such a question:
Discuss the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

This seems like a real gimme putt, to use a golfing term; or an open goal in football terms. Once when I was in primary school, in my only game as a striker for the senior soccer team, the ball popped over the defenders’ heads, leaving me in the clear bearing down on an open goal with the keeper out of his area. I vividly remember stabbing at the ball with my toe and watching it veer off wildly in the direction of the corner flag.

This could happen with this apparently easy essay. Why? Because it is vague. It looks like all you have to do is really simple. But it is actually asking you to do all the work in framing a response. ‘Discuss’ is a word that should alarm you – because it could mean almost anything. There is no frame of reference given in the question. It is actually a badly asked question in educational terms – but your teachers are fallible and you see this sort often enough, alas. The vagueness of the question will lead to the vagueness of your answer unless you are very careful.

So: don’t just try to choose the easiest. Usually that is impossible to tell, and the easiest-looking one usually isn’t. And it is a wasted opportunity to stretch yourself, too.

My advice would also be not to choose a topic because it is an opportunity to address a current church controversy – women’s ministry, or charismatic gifts, for example. It is good to think about these questions, of course! But inevitably, as a marker I find that these essays are skewed by feelings and polemics and tend to fall short of the mark as pieces of academic theological thinking. What’s more, controversies tend to pass in time. Will it still be an issue of such fundamental importance in ten years time? In the end, giving your time and your mind to an issue more at the heart of the theological enterprise is likely to equip you better to respond to controversy in any case.

It is worth getting a sense for what your class mates might doing. I am tempted to feed your cynicism here and say this is because it is easier to stand out in a smaller crowd – so choose the question that no-one else appears to be doing because you’ll get a better mark. But there two good reasons to consider what others are doing. First, it may be that library resources are limited and that you’ll do everyone a favour by attempting the question that is standing by looking desperate and dateless. Second, it’s because there could be a good chance for some collaborative learning and there are people who are doing this question who’d you like to work with. I’ll say some more about working with other students a bit later – it’s a practice which has obvious advantages but some hidden disadvantages.

But above all: go with something that interests you. It could be that you are intrigued and can’t imagine yet what an answer might be. It could be that you are going have an opportunity to read the work of a great theologian whose work you haven’t read before. It could be that you already have a sense of what the answer might be and you’re itching to put it down on paper. If none of the questions interests you, I don’t know what to suggest – but why are studying theology?!

POSTSCRIPT
In some circumstances you may be invited to make up your own question. It might be a final year project, or a later-year course in which a general topic area is given. For some students this is the worst thing in the world – it brings out all their vices of indecision. They can never settle on a topic or on a question within that topic. If this is you: I don’t know quite what to suggest except for make a decision and stick with it!!! I can’t help you more than that really!

But the trick here is to narrow it down. You aren’t writing a PhD. Most students are far too ambitious in what they propose. If you have a big question you are intent on answering, see yourself as just taking a slice off the top of it rather than doing the whole thing. Focus is what you want – you need to make space for yourself to mount a plausible argument and to marshal the necessary evidence. So for example: Evaluate the traditional doctrine of original sin would make a great book. It is possible to write something pretty good in a few thousand words on this. But why not make it: Evaluate Augustine’s doctrine of original sin? This gets you to focus on a particular set of texts rather than a potentially enormous array of materials.