Course Catalogue 2023-2024

The class will develop further the exegetical skills of students through engagement with the Greek text of a New Testament book. By means of close reading of the text students will grow in their capacity to use Greek when interpreting the New Testament. Attention will be paid to textual criticism, translation issues, New Testament Greek syntax, and issues of historical, cultural, literary and theological context. The class will build students? ability to offer critically informed accounts of the meaning of New Testament texts in their first-century contexts, and increase students? understanding of the theological message of individual New Testament books and their contemporary implications.

This course will examine how the Bible has been read, interpreted and proclaimed by women beginning with the period of the early church and including the writings of medieval visionaries, renaissance exegetes and continuing into the modern and post-modern periods. Women's interpretations of the Bible will be examined with a view to recovering women's readings and counter readings of biblical texts and raising relevant methodological and hermeneutical questions for modern readers.

This course will examine how the Bible has been read, interpreted and proclaimed by women beginning with the period of the early church and including the writings of medieval visionaries, renaissance exegetes and continuing into the modern and post-modern periods. Women's interpretations of the Bible will be examined with a view to recovering women's readings and counter readings of biblical texts and raising relevant methodological and hermeneutical questions for modern readers.

Feminist theologies critically reflect on religious traditions from the perspective of persons who identify as women. It challenges ideas and practices that devalue women and retrieves and constructs alternatives to them. The course begins with an introduction to the methods and diverse voices in feminist theologies. Increasingly, the discipline is "intersectional" in recognition of the variety of factors that impact and shape a feminist standpoint- not only of sex and gender identity, but also race, nationality, religion, ability, sexual orientation, age, and other factors. With attention to African American (womanist), Indigenous, mujerista, Asian feminist, and transgender perspectives, we will assess some of the major topics in Christian theology: Who is God? What is the human condition?
What is redemption, and are Christian narratives redemptive for women? How do we know? Seeking solidarity between women's movements, this course seeks mutual learning from Jewish, Buddhist, and Muslim feminist thinkers, from interreligious dialogue, and from the religious hybridity that often results from intersectional formations. In addition to the classical loci, the course turns to trends related to coloniality, orthodoxy, theopoetics, materiality, and the connectivity of the virtual world.

Philosophical method for a theology of beauty. This course takes Balthasar's assessment of the loss of beauty as a context to survey the implications for the loss of beauty and the conditions for its recovery. Philosophical issues such as the nature of beauty, aesthetic experience/ perception, aesthetic judgements, the beauty of God/ Christ, and other cultural notions of beauty will be considered. Investigate Lonergan's philosophy as basis for theological aesthetics.

This course explores issues in the philosophy of religion, with special reference to The Brothers Karamazov. Major themes include: the existence and nature of God, religious language, religious experience, faith and reason, the problem of evil, religion and morality, and afterlife beliefs. Readings include Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and selections from theologians and philosophers of religion.

This course is geared to enrolment in the Artists' Workshop of the Institute for Christian Studies' ART in Orvieto offerings in Orvieto, Italy. It aims to integrate, through the writing of a major paper, the practical experience gained in these arts workshops with the more theoretical knowledge obtained through academic courses in the area of art, religion and theology. Building upon the activities undertaken in the workshop (discussion, visual journals, presentation of work and feedback) as well as the arts project accomplished, the paper will serve as a summative statement of what the student learned. It should demonstrate the student's analytical and interpretive skills as it seeks to find the points of intersection between artistic practice and the life of faith.

This seminar is an introduction to Sharia, the Islamic ethical-legal tradition or, more precisely, Sharia's interpretation (fiqh). Of primary concern are the methodologies of its derivation, including its core principles, such as the Qur'ran, the Phrophet's tradition (Sunna), consensus (ijma), and reasoning by analogy (qiyas). The course will also introduce students to the theory f the objectives of the law (maqasid al-shari'a) and legal maxims (al- -fiqhiyya al-kulliyya), which are important resources in contemporary Islamic ethical-legal reasoning. It will examine Sharia's institiions, the he historical development of its schools of thought ( ), and the processes by which ethical-legal decisions are made. Students will also have the opportunity to examine its applications in case studies of contemporary significance, mainly in the areas of biomedical ethics and sexual ethics.

An in-depth study of the theological ethics of Stanley Hauerwas, covering some of his major theological and philosophical influences, main themes of his work, the development of his thought, and some of his key interlocutors. The bulk of the course will focus on his ‘fundamental moral theology,’ including questions of the goal of human life, the nature of human actions and problems of action description, the significance of vision, narrative, and virtue in the Christian life, the place of ethics in the Christian community as people of God, and questions concerning the church’s peace witness. The course will also spend some time at Hauerwas’ work in the area of theology and medicine, particularly addressing how his broader theological and ethical convictions inform his approach to medical ethics. Finally, the course will touch on Hauerwas’s place in and contributions to theology in its more “dogmatic” expressions, his relation to Barth and to postliberalism, and his reception in both the Protestant and Catholic worlds.

This interdisciplinary and interreligious seminar is an in-depth exploration of key figures, methods, movements, and issues which have shaped and continue to shape debates on ecology across religious traditions. Starting with the historical and contemporary effects of colonization, the course engages a broad range of ecoethical questions in terms of social, political and planetary implications and how those intersect with the ethical concerns of specific religious traditions. Students will wrestle with pressing contemporary ecological concerns and work toward the articulation of their own ethics on questions related to the survival of the planet and humanity in light of their own religious tradition.

The course will consider issues and documents that will help the student to develop an understanding of the ecological crisis as well as ethical and theological responses to it. Topics will include: the new cosmology; ecofeminism; the limitations of a human-centred ethics; issues of economic, social, and gender justice; and environmental-human health issues.