Continuing in our series of past students reflecting on how the programme has impacted them, this week we are hearing from Ethan Masters.
Ethan Masters – Spring 2017
Having studied history at Geneva for several years before arriving in Scotland I already had an understand of the significance the Reformation had on Christian and general western thought. However, my study in the Semester in Scotland program has given me the invaluable opportunity to be in the places where these monumental moments in history have occurred; to be where the people lived. Historians such as Howard Mansfield hold that time and place are inseperable. This principle was never made more clear to me than when I was standing in the fields where the secret conventicles were held or walking among the century old graves of Covenanters. Being there helps one to understand that the people of the past are not so different from people in the present. We are all image bearers of Christ regardless of the era in which we live. As Albert Einstein once said “To those of us who believe in physics, the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, if a stubborn one at that.” The Semester in Scotland program changed the way I understand the forefathers of the Reformed faith. They are not simply historical figures, they are people – like me, like Adam, desperately aiming to be like Christ.