Previous Years' Course Catalogues

The ?New Homiletic? introduced by Fred Craddock, Eugene Lowry and many other teachers of preaching, vigorously criticized the propositional discursive and deductive preaching normative in much North American Christianity in the first three quarters of the 20th century. Such preaching was often mocked as ?Three Points and a Poem.? Advocates of the New Homiletic proposed a variety of models to replace that style of preaching. These models tended to be inductive in shape, valued narrative and attended to the form of the Biblical text as well as its content in shaping the sermon. The New Homiletic aimed to evoke an experience of the gospel rather than to teach key propositions about the faith. While the New Homiletic is no longer ?new? and propositional discursive preaching has experienced a very considerable revival due to the introduction of Power Point to worship, it remains useful to preachers (and a relief to listeners) to preach in a variety of forms and styles. Students will preach two of the four models.

Preachers and listeners gather for worship in postcolonial spaces, carrying with them the memory and present experience of colonialism and imperialism. This course approaches the task of preaching from the perspective of postcolonial theories and theologies. It will consider the significance of empire as broad context for preaching, and introduce resources for the homiletical exploration of issues Including race, ethnicity, gender, cultural difference and global development. Tt~e focus will be the Canadian context, and Canada's unique postcolonial status. Students will learn to evaluate materials for sermon preparation from a postcolonial perspective, consider postcolonial reading strategies for biblical texts, reflect deeply on number of historical and contemporary concerns, and develop sermons that seek to adequately address the reality of Canada's contemporary context.

This course is designed to help students understand the "backstory" to the Bible - the history, geography, culture and practices that made up the normal everyday world of the ancient Israelites and their neighbours, but which are utterly foreign to us. Through this course, students will develop a better understanding of the physical and conceptual context of the Old and New Testaments that will help offer a foundation for understanding and interpreting the Bible.

This course is designed to help students understand the "backstory" to the Bible - the history, geography, culture and practices that made up the normal everyday world of the ancient Israelites and their neighbours, but which are utterly foreign to us. Through this course, students will develop a better understanding of the physical and conceptual context of the Old and New Testaments that will help offer a foundation for understanding and interpreting the Bible.

This course is designed to help students understand the "backstory" to the Bible - the history, geography, culture and practices that made up the normal everyday world of the ancient Israelites and their neighbours, but which are utterly foreign to us. Through this course, students will develop a better understanding of the physical and conceptual context of the Old and New Testaments that will help offer a foundation for understanding and interpreting the Bible.

This course is designed to help students understand the "backstory" to the Bible - the history, geography, culture and practices that made up the normal everyday world of the ancient Israelites and their neighbours, but which are utterly foreign to us. Through this course, students will develop a better understanding of the physical and conceptual context of the Old and New Testaments that will help offer a foundation for understanding and interpreting the Bible.

This course presents an overview of the geography and history of Israel and its place in the ancient Near East from the emergence of Israel in canaan to the beginning of the Roman period. Students will also be introduced to the major issues relating to historiography. Lectures and workshops. Class presentation, regular assignments, and major paper.

This course centers the experiences of children and adolescents in theological reflection on what it means to be a human person. This serves to reframe the often unreflected-upon assumption of middle-age as a norm in theological anthropology. It also introduces an “already and not yet” quality into these theological reflections, affirming that children and adolescents are already fully human and beloved of God, while recognizing that they are not yet fully grown. The course will explore some of the traditional categories of theological anthropology (such as freedom, grace, sin, and the imago Dei) in order to understand how these categories are experienced by children and adolescents and how these experiences can inform a more capacious theological perspective on all of humanity.

The bulk of this course will consist of a detailed examination of the anthropology (the doctrine of the human person) of the fourth-century Cappadocian author, Gregory of Nyssa, in relation to his theology (his doctrine of God). This will necessarily include discussion of Gregory's psychology (his doctrine of the soul), his understanding of body's relation to soul, and the importance of the right ordering of the passions in the redemption of the individual. Because Gregory's theology is a form of Christian Platonism the term will begin with a brief treatment of these themes in both pagan and Christian Platonic authors from Plato to Gregory's own day. This course will be offered in fall 2015.

Prophetic and ethical approaches to preaching assume that there is a need for positive social change in communities. This course explores how the preaching of the church contributes to social change within the church and beyond. Through an emphasis on contextualization of the word, and critical engagement with a variety of homiletic proposals, this course seeks to build a robust understanding of the gospel in context and the ways that good news is heard and received in various locations. Topics include decolonial preaching, Eco theology, liberation preaching, black preaching, feminist preaching. The goal is to craft and deliver sermons that engage deeply with the biblical text and can respond to social phenomenon and crises in contextual and gospel-centered ways.

This seminar explores the historical, doctrinal, philosophical and mystical aspects of Islamic liturgical texts, namely supplications and devotions. Special emphasis will be placed on readings from The Psalms of Islam as known as Psalms of the Family of the Prophet (Zabūr Āl Muḥammad/Ṣaḥīfa al-Sajjādiyya) and various devotional elegies.  Sections include comparisons to the Biblical Psalms, the Syriac prayer tradition and Hebrew prayers in the Jewish tradition. We will also explore the often-controversial role of pilgrimage and its perceived efficacy in Islamic traditions with a special focus on visitation of graves of saints while comparing similar practices in Christian traditions to understand the role that such practices occupy in both traditions. This will introduce key Islamic texts while engaging with Christian and Jewish approaches to prayer.

The course provides an exploration of how Christianity has understood the relationship among God, creation, humanity and spirituality, and how that understanding has contributed to the ecological challenges we currently face as well as can contribute to a helpful response. The course begins with an overview of our understanding of spirituality and creation during the patristic, medieval and reformation periods, then shifts to contemporary understandings drawing from current discussions of Christology, creation-centred spirituality, eco-feminism, deep ecology, and the healing of nature and the healing of self.