Theology (THEO)

This first course in theology offers a critical study of the Bible and early Christian tradition. Following an introduction to the Old and New Testaments, students follow major post-biblical developments in Christian life and worship (e.g., liturgy, theology, doctrine, asceticism), emphasizing the first five centuries.

This first course in theology offers a critical study of the Bible and early Christian tradition. Following an introduction to the Old and New Testaments, students follow major post-biblical developments in Christian life and worship (e.g., liturgy, theology, doctrine, asceticism), emphasizing the first five centuries.

This first course in theology offers a critical study of the Bible and early Christian tradition. Following an introduction to the Old and New Testaments, students follow major post-biblical developments in Christian life and worship (e.g., liturgy, theology, doctrine, asceticism), emphasizing the first five centuries.

This course is an investigation of the person and significance of Jesus Christ that is both scripturally grounded and examines the reception and development of the Scriptural witness in the ongoing Tradition.

This course is designed to introduce the basics of Catholic theology, including Roman Catholic beliefs, practices and devotional life, the structure of the Church, and the scripture. Since we have the advantage of studying at Notre Dame, we will explain Catholic doctrines and practices while touring the Catholic sites on campus—the basilica, the grotto, the stations of the Cross, etc. After explaining the basics, we will pay special attention to the Holy Bible, which contains the covenant between God and God’s people.

This is the discussion section required for some sections of THEO 10001.

This first course in theology offers a study of the Bible and early Christian tradition. In Foundations, students reflect theologically on the Old and New Testaments and major post-biblical developments in Christian life and worship (e.g., liturgy, theology, doctrine, asceticism), emphasizing the first five centuries.

This first course in theology offers a study of the Bible and early Christian tradition. In Foundations, students reflect theologically on the Old and New Testaments and major post-biblical developments in Christian life and worship (e.g., liturgy, theology, doctrine, asceticism), emphasizing the first five centuries.

Environmental degradation and climate change are among the most pressing scientific, economic, political, and social issues of our time. These problems seem to require technological solutions. But they also seem to be the result of the increasing technological sophistication of human societies. This means that the ecological crisis is inextricable from questions about the proper use of technology. This course will equip students to reflect on these interrelated challenges from a theological perspective. Drawing on scripture and other texts from the Jewish and Christian traditions, students will reflect on the significance of the doctrine of creation for motivating care for the non-human natural world. We will also reflect on the moral and theological significance of ecology and technology through some of the literary classics of the environmental movement. Finally, we will explore how local communities might develop virtues and practices that would constitute a theologically-informed response to our "eco-technological" crisis. By the end of the course, students will have deepened their capacity for theological reflection and will understand how theology provides a compelling framework for moral formation and collective action in response to some of today's most urgent global challenges.

This course will build on the groundwork established in the Foundations of Theology course by providing exposure to three theological matrices that have had a decided impact on the development of Africana (i.e., African and African Diasporan) identity and culture in the North American Diaspora. The first is the symbolic universe of Africana biblical hermeneutics. The second is the Black Church. The third is that uniquely African American musical form known as Blues. Students will be given an opportunity to explore: the cosmological, ontological, anthropological, soteriological, and Christological assertions animating each of these milieus; their historical and contemporary points of intersection; and the ways in which each has influenced the other. Particular attention will be directed toward understanding the history of reception, interpretation, and appropriation of the Christian Bible by peoples of African descent; the evolution of the Black Church and the distinctive contributions made by Africana Catholics to it; and the emergence of Blues music, artists, and performance spaces as non-ecclesial loci of protest and crucibles in which Africana spiritualities of resistance have been and continue to be forged. Students will leave the course with a deeper appreciation of four issues, the implications of which are far reaching for those within the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant branches of the larger Christian family. The first is how culture and context shape the ways in which people read and appropriate sacred writings. The second is the impact that culture, memory, hermeneutics, and identity have on spirituality and ecclesiology. The third is the role that poetry and other art forms play as media for theological speculation and construction. The fourth is the pivotal impact that enculturation has on theology, pastoral care, ministry, and ecumenism. The class will also introduce students to those essential sources - both primary and secondary - methodologies, core questions, and debates foundational for a theological assessment of these universes of theological discourse. It will also expose them to three interdisciplinary subfields that span and inform the disciplines of Theology and Africana Studies: (1) the history of Africana biblical interpretation in North America; (2) Black Church Studies; and (3) Blues Studies.

Ideas about the 'afterlife' emerge gradually in Jewish and Christian theological tradition. In this course, we will explore the history of these theologies of heaven and hell, paying particular attention to the shifting conceptions of the afterlife (resurrection, judgement, new creation, etc.), what social and political purposes these descriptions serve, and how theologies of the afterlife operate in contemporary society.

Students will explore theological questions attending the evolution of Jewish-Christian encounter from the adversarial disputations of the Middle Ages to the dynamic dialogues of the present day. How did ancient and medieval Christians perceive Jews, Judaism, and the prophetic roots of the Church in the Hebrew Scriptures? What doctrines and prophecies proved divisive for Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages? What role did the Bible and the Talmud play in mediating those disputes? Why did Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages resort to contemptuous theologies of the other? Did the preaching of contempt for the Jews contribute to modern antisemitism? What opportunities for dialogue have opened since the twentieth century? These questions guide students in examining documents related to the emergence of Jewish-Christian dialogue since the Holocaust and Vatican II—and its long prehistory. (Left: Ecclesia et Synagoga, Strasbourg Cathedral). The course scrutinizes a topic that can yield emotional reactions as it investigates a dynamic inter-religious relationship that is nonetheless saddled with conflict. Looking to a horizon of mutual understanding and respect, the course seeks to impart an historically and theologically informed capacity for reflection on the Jewish-Christian relationship, culminating in a student-led colloquium on the future of inter-religious dialogue.

We can only live good lives, the philosopher Hannah Arendt proposed, if we can make reasonable guesses as to what the future will bring. (Will your major connect you to an important career? Will your family thrive as the years advance? Will Notre Dame beat Michigan next time?) But what happens when our expectations are upended? How can we live good lives if we have no clear sense of how to deal with the challenges of today - no clear sense of what tomorrow will bring? In this class, we will look at how Christians responded to the end of the world. This does not mean an imminent apocalypse (though sometimes that was expected), but the collapse of a civilization, a cultural order, or a set of shared expectations that shaped how people made sense of the world and made choices within it. We will focus on two periods of social disintegration: the early Middle Ages, when the age-old Roman Empire (which had seemed to Christians like a providential gift for the spread of the Gospel) collapsed, and the 20th century, when the globe was shaken by world wars, genocides, atomic bombs, and a moral and metaphysical confusion that, some argue, persists to this day. Thereby, we will attend to three issues. First, the theology of history or of providence. How do Christians make sense of God's activity in history, with its moments of disaster and prosperity? Second, the choices people make about how to live a good life within history, which together constitute a morality. Third, and most importantly for our purposes, how do we understand the world we live in and the choices we make within it? Is the world improving, laboriously but steadily? Do we live in a world that trembles on the surface but remains solid at its foundation? Is the world on the verge of collapse? Whatever the case may be, how should we live within it?

From the early Church until today, Christians have had the experience of not being quite at home in the world, of not being able to attain genuine happiness here, of orienting their lives towards something that goes beyond this world. Apologists like C.S. Lewis recognized that this has been one of Christianity's most powerful claims in an age of widespread materialism and religious indifference: we are not limited to what we are able to experience in this world; we are, in fact, pilgrims. Yet Christianity makes this claim within its broader message that, on the one hand, this world is the good creation of a good God and, on the other, human destiny is not a disembodied heaven but a bodily resurrection into a new heaven and earth. In that sense, we are not just travelers passing through the cosmos: we were made for this world, and it was made for us. This cosmic perspective implies that the world is indeed our home, and it has profound importance for how we think about liturgy, the environment, and all the dimensions of Christian life. In this class, we will explore the foundations of Christian cosmology and consider its implications for Christian life and thought today. We will study the Church's first major doctrinal conflict, the Gnostic Controversy, which was not primarily about Christ or the Trinity, but about whether salvation means an escape from the world or the redemption of the world. From there, we'll trace the great debates provoked by Origen of Alexandria's theology, which were among other things a struggle over what kind of Scriptural and Christological cosmology could do justice to the Church's commitment to the fundamental goodness of creation. To conclude, we'll consider some of the consequences of these cosmological visions with regard to feasting and fasting, marriage and celibacy, stability and transience, wonder and contemplation, and angels and demons, looking especially at the liturgical theology of Pope Benedict and the environmentalism of Pope Francis. Readings may be drawn from the Bible, Irenaeus of Lyons, Origen of Alexandria, Evagrius of Pontus, Theophilus of Alexandria, Augustine of Hippo, Maximus the Confessor, Louis Bouyer, Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis, Wendell Berry, G.K. Chesterton, Josef Pieper, Teilhard de Chardin, and others.

We can only live good lives, the philosopher Hannah Arendt proposed, if we can make reasonable guesses as to what the future will bring. (Will your major connect you to an important career? Will your family thrive as the years advance? Will Notre Dame beat Michigan next time?) But what happens when our expectations are upended? How can we live good lives if we have no clear sense of how to deal with the challenges of today—no clear sense of what tomorrow will bring? In this class, we will look at how Christians responded to the end of the world. This does not mean an imminent apocalypse (though sometimes that was expected), but the collapse of a civilization, a cultural order, or a set of shared expectations that shaped how people made sense of the world and made choices within it. We will focus on two periods of social disintegration: the early Middle Ages, when the age-old Roman Empire (which had seemed to Christians like a providential gift for the spread of the Gospel) collapsed, and the 20th century, when the globe was shaken by world wars, genocides, atomic bombs, and a moral and metaphysical confusion that, some argue, persists to this day. Thereby, we will attend to three issues. First, the theology of history or of providence. How do Christians make sense of God's activity in history, with its moments of disaster and prosperity? Second, the choices people make about how to live a good life within history, which together constitute a morality. Third, and most importantly for our purposes, how do we understand the world we live in and the choices we make within it? Is the world improving, laboriously but steadily? Do we live in a world that trembles on the surface but remains solid at its foundation? Is the world on the verge of collapse? Whatever the case may be, how should we live within it?

The question of the Bishop of Rome's role in the Church is a longstanding theological matter that bears upon not only Catholics in communion with him, but ecumenical dialogues with Orthodox and Protestant Christians, who are no longer so. This course surveys papal history from its Apostolic origins to the close of Second Vatican Council. We will attend not only to the biographies of various Popes throughout those centuries, but will also account for the development of the papacy itself. Thus we will address topics such as: the Pope and empire, how the papacy relates to Church councils and synods, the papacy and Eastern Churches, and the Pope as theologian, among other topics.

From the early Church until today, Christians have had the experience of not being quite at home in the world, of not being able to attain genuine happiness here, of orienting their lives towards something that goes beyond this world. Apologists like C.S. Lewis recognized that this has been one of Christianity’s most powerful claims in an age of widespread materialism and religious indifference: we are not limited to what we are able to experience in this world; we are, in fact, pilgrims. Yet Christianity makes this claim within its broader message that, on the one hand, this world is the good creation of a good God and, on the other, human destiny is not a disembodied heaven but a bodily resurrection into a new heaven and earth. In that sense, we are not just travelers passing through the cosmos: we were made for this world, and it was made for us. This cosmic perspective implies that the world is indeed our home, and it has profound importance for how we look at the world and imagine our lives within it. Thus this class will also consider what we imagine a home to be and whether the Christian cosmology can address those concerns, as well as what resources we have to foster a new way of looking at the world. In one of the most important recent works of theological cosmology, Louis Bouyer claimed that the great benefits of the scientific worldview for humanity’s understanding of and power over the world have come at the cost of abstracting ourselves from it to some degree, and that one of the main oppositions to that abstraction has come in the form of poetry. Consequently, we will read both literary accounts of what it means to be “at home,” as well as the genre of nature writing in order to foster practices of attention to the world. The class will culminate in the work of two of the great Christian poets of recent centuries, T.S. Eliot and G.M. Hopkins, in whom we can find both practices of close attention to the world and an interpretation of that world in terms of a Christian cosmology. Thus the poetic, attentive, and theological dimensions of the class will be drawn together in what early Christians called “natural contemplation.”

This course contributes to Notre Dame's core curriculum through its examination of theology as reflection on faith within the context of a living Christian Tradition. The course explores how theology - classically understood as "faith seeking understanding" - addresses questions Latinx Christians probe as they seek to live Christian faith in engagement with the world. More specifically, the course investigates three core topics: (a) the history of Latinx Christians as the context for their theological reflection; (b) an assessment of the theological significance of Jesus's Galilean origins; and (c) Latinx devotion and religious traditions as expressions of their lived faith and as resources for theology.

Has envy simply become the “acceptable” vice in a culture that pulsates with comparison and competition? This course retrieves a robustly theological portrayal of envy from within the Jewish-Christian tradition, engaging not only theological treatises—e.g., patristic homilies, Gregory the Great’s Moralia, Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae—but also the important witness of literary texts. While the Christian tradition has been clear (if not unanimous) on the grave and destructive nature of this vice, literary texts illuminate more sharply the unfolding of envy in the human heart as well as its fragmentation of relationships on many levels, ultimately alienating the soul from God. Beyond providing an anatomy of envy, theological and literary voices will be explored also for the remedies proffered to heal this vicious human inclination.

The death and resurrection of Christ sits at the heart of the Christian faith. From its earliest centuries, Christianity has honored the memory of those who died for the faith in imitation of Christ's death, especially in the Church's earliest centuries. As Christianity developed into the favored religion of the Roman Empire and martyrdom became less common, the deeply sacrificial spirit that sat at martyrdom's heart found expression in other forms. Women and men developed lives of extreme and sometimes extravagant renunciation, styling themselves "athletes" even as their sport was the practice of the faith. This second required theology course explores the role martyrs, monks, and spiritual athletes have played in the Christian theological tradition. How and why did these figures emerge? How did their deaths interact with and interpret Scripture? How did they interact with and challenge the cultural contexts in which they found themselves? What literary and artistic forms emerged in light of these lives? How did these figures and forms change across the centuries? What can these figures and their lives tell us about fundamental Christian teachings around death, life, suffering, and sacrifice?

Pope Francis, in his 2013 Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (EG), writes, "I dream of a ‘a missionary option' for the Church" (EG 27). Francis's admonition continues the insight from Vatican II's decree on mission Ad Gentes (AG), which defines the Church as missionary by its very nature because "it is from the mission of the Son and the mission of the Holy Spirit that she draws her origin, in accordance with the decree of the Father" (AG 2). Francis sees mission as the "authentic self-fulfillment" of the Christian life in the sense that, as the Latin American bishops have written in their document from the 2007 Aparecida Conference, quoted in EG 10, "Life grows by being given away, and weakens in isolation and comfort." Francis continues a longstanding impulse in the Church to urge the generous sharing of the Gospel with those at the margins, urging all Christians to be missionary disciples. This course will study the missionary activity of the Church, both historically and theologically. After a brief look at mission and evangelization in the New Testament and the early and medieval Church, we will then explore important moments of missionary contact in the Americas, Africa, and Asia in the modern (post-Columbian) period. Particular attention will be given to the operative theologies and practices of mission at work in such encounters, as well as to the practical effects of missionary activity. The course will conclude with a look at contemporary missionary practice and theory. The coming of Christianity to most of the world has often overlapped with the political, economic, and social processes associated with the term colonialism and related forms of intercultural contact. We will study the consequences of that overlap, along with the many theological issues raised, especially for Christians in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, with a particular focus on eastern Africa, where both instructors have lived and worked.

This course traces the development of the dogma of Mary's Immaculate Conception and its theological significance today. The course proceeds in four units. It first explores Christian teaching on Original Sin (the sin from which Mary is believed to have been preserved). It then examines key primary texts (Anselm, Aquinas, Duns Scotus) in the development of the Marian dogma. Third, it focusses on the Marian apparitions in 1858 at Lourdes, which occurred four years after the promulgation of the dogma by Pope Pius IX in 1854. Fourth, it studies the contemporary significance of the dogma for Christian anthropology, ecclesiology, and ecumenism. The teaching on Mary's Immaculate Conception is shown to be interconnected to the Church's beliefs about human nature (creation, Fall, sexuality), Christ, redemption, the sacraments, and sanctification.

Eastern Christians and their churches are an indispensable part of global Christianity, shedding light on its origins, basic theological principles, achievements, and historical failures, dilemmas, and challenges. The course provides an overview of the diversity of Christian churches in the East, which belong to the different cultural traditions of Eastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. Students will be introduced to the theological views and liturgical life of Eastern-rite Christians, i.e., Orthodox, Oriental, and Eastern Catholic, and their fascinating histories. We will explore the Byzantine-rite Churches in more detail and discuss the challenges their theology and history pose for the contemporary world and international relations. Special attention will be given to Slavic Christianity, especially Russian and Ukrainian religious history. Reflections on the diversity of Eastern Christian traditions lead to insights into theological, moral, and cultural issues of particular relevance today, such as ecumenism, war and nonviolence, Christian churches and totalitarianism, and the role of liturgy and ritual in modern culture.

This course is for all students seeking to understand the Catholic faith. Catholic doctrines will be studied both individually, and towards the development of an integrated vision of the Faith as a whole. Lectures and readings hinge on theological reflection on the Catechism and other primary texts, both ancient and contemporary.

What is the path for sanctification to the beatific vision? Using the fiction of C.S. Lewis for signposts on the path, this course will consider the doctrine of sin (Screwtape Letters), sanctification as cooperating with grace (The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe, Perelandra), and the final formation of saints (The Great Divorce, The Last Battle). Other authors will be helpful in understanding Christian spirituality as a struggle to cultivate the virtues and overcome the passions: Augustine, Maximus Confessor, Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Dorothy Sayers, Joseph Pieper, and G.K. Chesterton.

Thomas Aquinas is one of the foremost theologians and teachers in the Christian tradition. This course offers a theological introduction to the teachings of the Christian faith through Aquinas's writings, covering his principal claims about God, Christ, human beings, and the Church and sacraments. This topical exploration will highlight the interconnectedness of various doctrines and the systematic quality of Aquinas's own teaching, allowing us to engage with the presentation of a coherent Christian worldview. At the same time, the course emphasizes the dynamic relation between these theological topics as reflected in the structure of the Summa theologiae: God as the beginning and end of all creatures; human beings as made to find their fulfillment in God; and Christ the incarnate God as the way of return, mediated through his sacraments and Church. The course approaches these doctrines under the integrative concept "wisdom," following Aquinas's understanding of the theologian's task as one of growing in the wisdom of God. This task, which puts reason at the service of faith, constitutes an intellectual response to the divine calling of human beings to participate in the supernatural life.

A historical survey of the cross and crucifix in Christian theology, popular piety, ritual practice, and art, from the New Testament though the sixteenth-century and in both eastern and western traditions. Topics include the discovery and dissemination of relics of the True Cross, the emergence and development of crucifixion iconography, hymns dedicated to the cross, and the liturgical feasts and veneration of the cross.

"Who do you say that I am?" Jesus' charged question to his disciples has resonated throughout Christian history, sparking numerous debates and controversies. Who is Jesus Christ? Is he God, man, or both? If we say he is both, what do we mean? These are the basic questions at the heart of what is known as "Christology" or the study of Christ. During this course, we will approach this study through an analysis of the names or titles that are first ascribed to Jesus of Nazareth in the New Testament (Messiah, Son of God, Son of Man, King, Slave, Priest, Lamb, etc.). Each lecture will consider a different name or title, examining its context and use in Scripture, as well as its theological and cultural (including artistic) reception in Christian history. This will allow us to gain a panaromic view of how Jesus has been seen and understood across the centuries not only in a strictly theological context, but also in wider culture too.

A study of the ways Christians and Jews represented their sacred stories in visual art throughout history. Examples include the decoration of worship spaces (churches and synagogues), tomb chambers and sarcophagi, liturgical vessels, pottery bowls and plates, gold glasses, and early illuminated books. Students will examine the differences and similarities between Jewish and Christian sacred art, noting the modes by which these two communities expressed their faith and reinforced their distinct religious identities, initially within the broader context of a pre-existing and polytheistic Roman culture and later in a dominantly Christian one.

The histories of sainthood, war, and theology are strangely intertwined. Accounts of violent warfare in the Old Testament led the Manichaeans and the Marcionites to reject the Old Testament and its God and to deny the holiness of Jewish patriarchs (Abraham, Jacob, Moses), prophets, and kings (David). Defending the unity of the Bible as the inspired Word of God, Saint Augustine defended the holiness of Old Testament battle-leaders and laid the foundation for a “Just War” theory. Many Christian saints (Martin of Tours, Christopher, Guthlac, Francis of Assisi) became hermits and ascetics after quitting military service, turning battle against the enemy into a discipline of struggle against the devil and his temptations. Some former soldiers (e.g., Saint Ignatius of Loyola) adopted military discipline, language, and images in their striving for holiness. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux taught that Christian knighthood and the Crusades could be paths to sainthood, even as he warned against the spiritual dangers of warfare. Saints Joan of Arc and Saint George were warrior saints and are invoked by soldiers. In modern times, reflection on warfare has inspired extraordinary writings by mystically gifted souls (e.g., Teilhard de Chardin’s Mass on the Altar of the World, Simone Weil’s Iliad, Poem of Force) who served in war zones. Other saints, martyrs, and mystics (Dorothy Day, Franz Jagerstaetter, Franz Reinisch) have, however, refused military service as idolatrous. The Church’s social teaching constantly proclaims the call to peace and peacemaking, the possibility of conscientious objection, and the criteria for just and unjust war. This course seeks to understand the diversity of saintly decisions and practices and to discern their faithfulness to Christian doctrine.

For many Christians, sacred places have been central to their religious experience: they have visited, prayed towards, imagined, and even reproduced them in miniature. Beginning with the Bible, this course will examine the development of holy places. We will attend to historical questions (How and when did shrines develop? What did they look like? Who were the people who went on pilgrimage? What was it like to travel?), as well as to literary ones (Why did pilgrims write about their experience? What is the nature of this genre? What might have been the impact of these writings on audiences “back home”?). But our overarching questions will be theological: What does it mean to localize the holy, to believe that God is more present in some places than in others? In pursuing answers to these questions, we will look not only at texts, but also at objects—ordinary things as well fine art—and at film (commercial and documentary). In the first half of the semester, we will focus largely on the early church, looking first at the phenomenon of pilgrimage to holy people, and then at the development of the “Holy Land.” In the second half of the course, we will turn to the great pilgrimage shrines in western Europe, especially Santiago de Compostela (and its associated Camino) and Lourdes.

This course explores the theological significance of the Blessed Virgin Mary within Christian tradition by investigating the history of Marian thought and devotion. The first of the course's four parts examines accounts of Mary found in the New Testament alongside early Christian narratives concerning Mary's life and assumption or dormition into heaven. The second part of the course analyzes Patristic theological reflection on Mary and key texts within the Christological disputes of the early Church, especially those concerning the contested Marian title Theotokos (God-bearer). The third part of the course examines Medieval and Byzantine witnesses to Marian theology and devotion, including Marian iconography, hymnody, and spiritual writing. The fourth and final part of the course attends to later developments in the Church's understanding of Mary, beginning with Reformation-era disputes over Mary and the cult of the saints and terminating in Pope Paul VI's proclamation of Mary as Mater Ecclesiae (Mother of the Church) after the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council. Here, special attention is given to Mary's place in ecumenical dialogue. Through historical investigation, this course seeks to recognize the central importance of Mary, Mother of God and Mother of the Church, for Christian life, thought, and practice.

This course studies the history and meaning of liturgy and centers around three key areas, namely: (1) Anthropology: Why do humans pursue ritual activity as a means of interaction with the divine? What forms did religious ritual take in the ancient Jewish and pre-Christian Graeco-Roman worlds? (2) Theology: How does the Christian belief in the incarnation and paschal mystery enrich this anthropology of ritual? What are the ecclesiological underpinnings of the Church's liturgy? How does the Church understand its sacraments as an anticipation and actualization of the age to come? (3) History: How has the Church's sacramental life developed over time? What has remained constant in spite of historical change?

The Rites of Christian Initiation (Baptism, Confirmation, and First Eucharist) and the Eucharistic Liturgy as the primary sacramental celebrations of and in the Church: their biblical and anthropological foundations, historical evolution, contemporary forms and pastoral effectiveness. Requirements will include 3-4 short papers and three unit exams.

Holy Communion is a sign of Christian unity as well as the presence of Christ with his people. Since the Reformation, however, communion has become a sign and instrument of disunity between Christians of different denominations because of different doctrines and ways of celebrating. This course will begin by looking at eucharistic dialogue between different churches today, and then examine the development of communion through church history, including disputes over how the Eucharist should be celebrated and received, questions of Christ's presence in the Eucharist, and the idea that the Eucharist is a sacrifice.

This course introduces students to the study of theology through attention to the sacrament of marriage. The structure of the course, drawn from the rite of marriage, seeks to understand the nature of divine and human love and how this love is salvific for the human person. The course will introduce students to major sources for a Christian understanding of love through attention to philosophy, works of cultural analysis, and theological classics related to marriage and family life. The class will treat themes related to a natural theology of love; the understanding of God as lover within the Scriptures and the Tradition; sexual ethics and a theology of family life; and, a spirituality of marriage and the family in the modern age.

In this course, students will encounter the development of the theology of Jesus Christ through hymns and creeds of the Church. We begin with the Christology of the New Testament, then turn to the hymns and creeds of the Christological controversies in the early Church. In the second half of the course, we consider the rise of devotion to the Blessed Sacrament; the Reformation and Counter-Reformation; and selected hymns used in churches today. Students will learn to read hymns for their theological basis and doctrinal implications, contextualizing them within the historical development and expression of Christology.

An examination of the role and representation of women in Christian texts and practices from the biblical period, through late antiquity and the middle ages, into the present. This course employs a variety of methods (theological, historical, socio-cultural, art historical) to explore diverse histories of women, such as female biblical figures, late antique women martyrs and monastics, medieval mystics, female saints, and the modern and contemporary lives of women. A special focus for Fall 2022 will be the intersection of women's bodies and the liturgical-ritual life of the Church through a global lens, including the experiences of women in the Christian East and Africa.

Rhythms of Faith (RoF) is an innovative theology course for undergraduates at the University of Notre Dame. Whereas many theology courses invite engagement with theological ideas through critical essay-writing, students in RoF will be trained to grapple with liturgy and music through the creative process, i.e., by working with classmates to produce new works of art: texts and songs designed to be sung in community. By drawing on the centuries-old tradition of singing Psalms and Canticles, RoF will equip students with the conceptual framework for bringing their own experiences, ideas, and diverse musical backgrounds into creative conversation with liturgy and prayer. This class is for anyone, regardless of their musical training or proclivity–the requisite singing and song-writing skills will be taught throughout the course. Completing the group projects in RoF will allow students to experience first-hand the process of integrating their intellectual knowledge of religion with embodied practice. Through this community-based creative process, students can experience the transformation of growing into a community of trust–one of vulnerability, interdependence, love, and celebration–and as a result, growing to constructively engage their faith with their whole selves for a lifetime ahead.

Shedding light on arguably one of the most significant developments of the Roman Catholic Church in the 20th century, this course aims above all to stimulate students to think about the meaning and the future of public Christian worship practices. It will focus on historical events and evolutions, on prominent figures and places, as well as on foundational writings and documents. Students will get to know how the pastoral commitment of the Liturgical Movement’s promoters went hand in hand with profound scholarship, both historical and theological, and why that matters. Due attention will be paid to an ad litteram reading of Sacrosanctum Concilium, Vatican II’s first fruit, and to the way in which the liturgical reforms were implemented. In this context, it will also be explained which discussions about liturgy, tradition, language, and culture there were before, at, and after the Council.

This course is intended to be a second level theology course that introduces fundamental principles of Catholic moral theology and Catholic Social Teaching, as oriented specifically for those preparing to enter the business world. As such, students will be encouraged to think in theological categories about business and ethics, and to appreciate how these categories bring the light of faith, in unity with the insights of human reason, to bear on the purpose of business and the possibility of virtuous engagement in this profession, which Pope Francis has called a "noble vocation." (Laudato Si, 129) In the first part of the course, we will introduce basic questions about human morality and the way that the Catholic tradition has reflected upon some of the central questions of human life: What does it mean to live the good life? What is morality, and what role does it play in the quest for happiness? What does God have to do with being moral? How does the question of vocation and discernment of purpose play into morality? Our aim here is to think about these basic questions in the light of Christian revelation, and how Catholic beliefs about God, creation, humanity and the person of Jesus have oriented and shaped the Church's moral reasoning based on the Scriptures, tradition, and history of the Church. The second part of the course is structured around the cardinal the theological virtues. As we encounter each of the virtues, we will first think introspectively, taking stock of how and why the virtue matters to each of us individually. We will then examine how each virtue can help guide personal actions in professional contexts, creating virtuous environments conducive to ethical flourishing in professional life. In order to do so, we will rely on insights from Catholic social teaching, and address debates over its interpretation and application. In dialogue with the virtue and Catholic social tradition, we will introduce cases from "applied ethics," to see how the virtue relates to real business contexts and situations in order to guide action. Throughout, a particular emphasis will be placed on the theme of Christian discipleship: How can a follower of Jesus, in different times and places, answer these questions and navigate these issues as a concrete way of expressing one's affirmation of Jesus Christ as one "who fully reveals human beings to themselves and makes their supreme calling clear?" (GS 22)

This course will introduce students to the fundamental tenets of Catholic moral theology with an eye to its relevance for the analysis of contemporary moral controversies. By the end of this course, students should be able to offer a nuanced moral analysis of a contemporary moral controversy that recognizably builds upon the theological and conceptual resources offered by the Catholic moral tradition. To do so, students will engage that tradition's analysis of the moral act, the moral significance of the cardinal virtues, the relationship between the virtue of justice and charity, the distinction between mortal and venial sin, and the necessity of grace for one to live the good life. In the course of this investigation, we will touch upon how the above resources can be used to think through the nature of happiness, freedom, and the morality of warfare, alcohol-use, and lying. In order to see the relevance of these topics for contemporary society, students will be asked to review three contemporary films that highlight these themes. At the conclusion of the course, we will examine opposing arguments about the morality of hunger strikes, abortion, and collateral damage in light of what we have learned throughout the course.

This course seeks to introduce participants to the principal elements in the Catholic Tradition on marriage by examining the sources of this tradition in sacred scripture, the work of ancient Christian writers, the official teachings of the Church and recent theological reflection. The method employed in the course is thus historical, scriptural, and thematic. The readings selected for this course are intended to expose students to contemporary discussion in moral theology apropos of these issues, and provide them with the necessary theological tools to critically evaluate a wide variety of ethical positions dealing with marriage in the Catholic tradition.

The goal of this course is to familiarize students with the rich tradition of Catholic social teaching in order to develop skills for critical reading and appropriation of this canon of magisterial documents. Students will examine papal, conciliar, and episcopal texts from Rerum novarum (1891) up to the present time, identifying operative principles, tracing central theological, ethical, and ecclesial concerns, and locating each document within its proper historical context. Students will hold recurring themes in conversation with the broader theoretical framework of Catholic social thought and relevant secondary literature. Finally, students will examine some foundational topics in the early weeks of this course, such as the Biblical roots of CST, its natural law underpinnings, and its ecclesiological influences.

This course examines the economic dimensions of violence in light of Catholic social teaching and Western political and economic thought. After an in-depth overview of Catholic social teaching in relation to alternative social theories, we bring them to bear on the issue of violence in three social spheres: the domestic (domestic abuse and sexual assault), the economic (sweatshops), and the international political (war). In each case we will examine Catholic responses to the problem.

Using the method of community-engaged learning, requiring 20 hours of work in the South Bend community, this course will afford students the opportunity to explore the theology and practice of the Catholic social tradition. Students will combine social analysis with theological reflection in integrating their site experiences. In conversation with primary texts of the Catholic social tradition, the course material will consider a variety of thematic issues through an ethical lens, including education, health care, restorative justice, racial justice, power relations, environmental justice, and structural violence. This course satisfies the core course requirement for the Catholic Social Tradition Minor.

People live and act in an ecological theater created by God that includes all other living organisms and their ecosystems within the biosphere. Urgent questions abound today about what our relationship and responsibilities are to the rest of the natural world. This course examines our relationship to God, creation, and one another through two foci: integral ecology and watershed theology. In Laudato si’, Pope Francis uses integral ecology—the intersection and interaction of natural ecology and human ecology—to address ecological concerns. Within this integral ecology framework, we will examine a theology of creation and theological anthropology—our God-given identity and mission—as it relates to the Great Lakes watershed of which we are a part. We will examine four major topics about our home watershed: biodiversity and invasive species, water use and pollution, food and agriculture, and energy. As ecological citizens and creatures of God, we will also examine, in the context of integral ecology, the connection between Catholic liturgy and ecology, addressing the Sacraments of Baptism, Eucharist, and Marriage. Each of these Sacraments entails ecological consequences and responsibilities in how followers of Jesus Christ live out their ecclesial beliefs. Note, for the Sacrament of Marriage, we shall be examining human sexuality from an integral ecology perspective. This course will have a special appeal to students interested in the intersection of theology and science, especially ecology and environmental studies.

This course focuses on the theological and ethical issues that arise in the practice of health care. Through the lectures, discussions, and assignments in this course, students will gain a command of Catholic moral principles such as human dignity, the preferential option for the poor, and the common good as they pertain to health care. The course will explore issues related to the beginning and end of life, to health care justice, to moral conflicts in research and health care delivery, and to emerging issues in genetics and biotechnology.

This course is intended to be an introduction to Catholic moral theology customized for those discerning a career as a business professional. In the wake of ethical failures at a number of prominent corporations, business leaders have renewed their call for ethical behavior and have begun to establish criteria for hiring morally thoughtful employees and to institute ethics education in the workplace. This is a move which has prompted a number of questions. Are institutions of higher education or small groups of well-meaning business professionals capable of training people to behave ethically? Is the real problem in contemporary business a lack of ethical knowledge, a lack of skill in applying rules to particular cases, or a lack of sensitivity to morally relevant issues? In the first part of the course, we will examine philosophical, theological, and economic interpretations of our current business situation, and we will consider various approaches to thinking about the ethical dimensions of business. In the second part of the course, we will examine the tradition of Catholic theology as a virtue ethics tradition, considering how virtue relates to happiness, law, moral judgment, and one's professional vocation. Third, we will examine Catholic theologies of work and the tradition of Catholic social teaching, with special attention to the relationship between workers and management as well as the norms of justice that ought to govern these relations. The course will conclude with student presentations of original cases.

“Peace is not the absence of war, but the presence of justice,” Salvadoran peacemaker and archbishop Oscar Romero’s statement is echoed by many other peacemakers from within and beyond the Christian tradition. Given this definition of peace, what does it mean for us to be peacemakers and justice-seekers in the world today? In this course, we will explore many issues of violence in our world, from the context of Palestine and Israel, military violence in Latin America, racism in the United States, to gender-based violence in our campus and society. We will also look at figures throughout Christian history, from early Christian martyrs for peace to proponents of just war theory to contemporary peacemakers, who offer us insights on what it means to build peace and justice in a violent world. In this course, we will both wrestle with the histories of violence found in scripture and church history, and consider what it means for us to take up the Christian call to be peacemakers in our own context.

This course will explore the theology and practice of nonviolence as a form of askesis, or spiritual discipline. The material will include readings from Scripture, the early Christian tradition, and Catholic social teaching. Religious sources outside the Christian tradition will include Gandhi and Thich Nhat Hanh. This course will use the method of community-based learning and will require twenty hours of service spread over ten weeks at particular sites in the South Bend area.

The course offers an introduction to the spirituality of the Congregation of Holy Cross through an examination of the biographies of the Congregation’s past and present members. As a development level course in theology, the primary goal of the class is to familiarize students with the historical development of three classic theological topics (spirituality, saints, and virtue) by focusing on the charism, lives and apostolates of Holy Cross. An important secondary goal will be to help students develop an appreciation for how Holy Cross has influenced and continues to inform the work of the University of Notre Dame and what would be required to live by that vision after graduation in professional life, family life, and local church communities.

Faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and savior has practical implications for the way believers construe the world, organize their lives and engage with the world. In this course students will be introduced to the basic elements in Christian moral thinking and decision making. We will look at nature of ethics in general and of Christian ethics in particular. We will cover questions related to the specificity of Christian ethics, Jesus and moral thinking, the human (Christian) person as moral agent, and the different methods employed in making ethical decisions. This course is therefore a foundational course which is meant to prepare students for further studies in moral theology and ethics or for life as responsible Christian men and women who are reasonably well equipped to face up to the implications of their faith for life in the world.

How can one understand theological aspects of the human person using computational methods? Drawing upon neuroscience and the psychology of religion, one can model cognitive and linguistic aspects of human moral, religious, and spiritual development and exemplarity in ways amenable to computational analysis and simulation. The course will focus on using broadly applicable, semantic analysis techniques from artificial intelligence to extract meaning from classic and contemporary texts that are significant for theological anthropology, Christian spirituality, and moral theology.

This course will address sustainability in the context of the local academic community and its institutions. In conversation with the papal encyclical, Laudato Si’, On Care for Our Common Home, this course will provide students with interdisciplinary opportunities to explore the challenges of sustainability and develop collaborative strategies for making our common campus homes more sustainable. Students will be invited to examine the course materials in conversation with the mission of the Congregation of Holy Cross through immersion at each of the campuses and encounters with professionals whose work impacts sustainability. This course will also include a community-engaged learning component, in which students will volunteer 2 hours/week through the semester. See the document in our class Google folder, “Tricampus CBL/EL Instructions and Site List Fall 2024” for further details.

Reconciliation is increasingly becoming a popular notion in our time, finding its way into the political rhetoric and public policy of many governments. South Africa and its apparently successful Truth and Reconciliation Commission have captured the imagination of many post conflict societies (including nations like Rwanda, Bosnia, Northern Ireland and communities in the United States as they debate the merits and possibility of similar "reconciliation" efforts in their communities. Interest in reconciliation in the academic world has also increased, with scholarship on the topic and with institutions setting up "reconciliation studies" as a specialization sub field in the growing world of peace studies. It is perhaps not surprising that reconciliation has become a popular buzz world. The end of the cold war did not usher in a new world order of peace that many had hoped for. On the contrary, war, conflict and violence seem to be on the rise in a world marked by growing polarization between religious, ethnic and national identities. In the midst of such a fragmented and broken world, reconciliation is a rallying cry for some hope of healing, conflict resolution and solidarity among peoples. However, even as reconciliation has become popular, its meaning has remained vague, and its theological connections even more unclear. What difference if any does one's Christian faith make in the way one understands or pursues reconciliation? What's the Christian understanding of reconciliation anyway? What is the relation between reconciliation with God, and reconciliation in its social, political and economic dimensions? Why has Catholic discussions on reconciliation so much focused on "the sacrament of reconciliation" and not paid as much attention to the notion of social reconciliation? The course seeks to answer these and similar questions.

More than a century before African slaves were trafficked to the Virginia colony in 1619, Christopher Columbus transported captured indigenous peoples to Spain from the New World. The dispossession and enslavement of non-Europeans in the colonization of the Americas was justified by Christians but also condemned by Christians with different economic and political interests. This development course in theology introduces students to the challenging intersection of faith, slavery, and freedom by exploring key figures, events, and movements that have shaped the complex historical legacy of Christianity in the Americas, a hemispheric past that remains ever bound together. In addition to Christianity's role in colonial expansion and racial ideology, the course especially considers how lived faith in God provided a catalyst for the empowerment and resistance of the oppressed and their advocates in shared struggles to attain greater social justice, racial equality, and political autonomy. From the "Protector of the Indians" Bartolomé de las Casas to César Chávez, and the "Black Moses" Harriet Tubman to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the course explores these and other extraordinary figures of hope in the Americas who gave their lives to protest institutional violence and promote authentic expressions of faith. In the course, students will engage this turbulent past through a contextual approach to theology that examines idolatry, migration, land, liberty, poverty, social sin, nonviolence, and solidarity as normative categories relevant for addressing contemporary social crises afflicting our nation and the earth.

The movement of peoples in a world of territorially bounded and sovereign nation-states was one of the earliest questions to arise in international thought and has been one of the most perduring. This course puts present questions about the ethics of migration, and the ethics of how receiving countries treat migrants, in historical, theoretical, and doctrinal context. The course begins by analyzing the role of hospitality rights in the claims of Europeans to travel and settle in the new world. It then moves to social analyses of migration patterns, a series of different theological and ethical frameworks for interpreting the contemporary challenge of migration - kinship; solidarity; communitarianism; human rights; justice; and responsibility -and the role of the theological notion of human dignity and a theologically grounded account of human rights in responding to challenge of migration.

This course is intended to be a second level theology course that introduces fundamental principles of Catholic moral theology and Catholic Social Teaching, as oriented specifically for those preparing to enter the business world. As such, students will be encouraged to think in theological categories about business and ethics, and to appreciate how these categories bring the light of faith, in unity with the insights of human reason, to bear on the purpose of business and the possibility of virtuous engagement in this profession within a just and humane society.

This course attempts to answer a question posed by Gustavo Gutiérrez: If theology focuses on how the suffering poor talk about God or how to talk about God in the face of poverty, how do we do such theology?

In this course, we will study the development of personal moral character and conscience through a series of guided discussions about values, decisions, habits, virtues and vices, the role of the Christian narrative, and finally, an integrated theory of Christian character formation. To illustrate the dimensions of character and conscience we will consider cases and dilemmas in the topic areas of relationships and sexuality, biomedical ethics, and justice concerns. Readings will include selections from writers in contemporary Christian ethics and cases drawn from numerous scholarly and popular sources. Requirements will include attendance at class sessions; significant participation in group discussions; several 3-5-page papers; and a 6-8-page final paper.

What does it mean to live a good life, to flourish as a human being? What does faith have to do with it? This "everyday ethics" course begins by resituating morality into the context of true happiness. We then examine various virtues, with attention to how the virtuous life is distinctive in the context of the Christian faith. We examine some particular issues (alcohol use, sexuality, end of life decisions), but our main emphasis is on how to live virtuous, fulfilling everyday lives, with careful attention to the difference faith makes in doing so.

This course provides you the opportunity to consider the relevance of ancient wisdom traditions for conducting an ethical analysis of modern technologies. The traditions on which you will focus are Christian teachings about the Ten Commandments (a digest of the moral law of the Hebrew Bible) and natural law (moral knowledge that is accessible to all people). You will apply the normative values of these traditions to evaluating technologies like generative artificial intelligence, content moderation, anthropogenic climate change, resource-allocation algorithms, autonomous weapons, digital companions, population health care, synthetic media, and social media. As you will discover, this interdisciplinary engagement has already begun because technologists are utilizing numerous concepts that are shared by Christian theology. You will critically evaluate this discourse and seek to improve it by drawing from the riches of the wisdom traditions of Christianity.

What does it mean for us to say we are human beings with personal dignity and a social nature, living in an imperfect world affected by sin? This course is an introduction to Catholic moral theology through the lens of social ethics. It aims to familiarize students with the theological foundations of eight terms that recur throughout Catholic social teaching: dignity, social nature, natural law, freedom, sin, conscience, justice, and love. Special emphasis will be placed on how these concepts are interconnected in a moral framework. Students will compare and contrast these concepts with definitions from other texts, identifying and analyzing the use of diverse definitions in debates on structural injustice, lawful resistance, gender equality, the death penalty, etc., and charting paths for realistic dialogue based on an acknowledgment of common understandings, mutual enrichment, and objective differences.

In his apostolic exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate, Pope Frances called Jesus's Sermon on the Mount the Christian’s “identity card.” In this course, we will take this sermon as it has come to us in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke as the starting point for an exploration of Christian practice. In the first half of the course, we will be concerned with historical interpretations of this sermon, in the form of sermons, commentaries, saint’s lives, monastic rules, dramatic performances, and, culminating in, the Second Vatican Council’s "Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World." The second half of the course will then follow Vatican II's turn to the wider world by taking up various struggles for peace and justice under the rubric of the Beatitudes, including those fighting against poverty, lynching, racially motivated police violence, war, distraction; and on behalf of the incarcerated, migrants, and the earth.

Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming society, impacting how we live as individuals and communities. This course will examine the issues raised by AI from the perspective of the Catholic understanding of the human person, Catholic theological anthropology. The course will particularly focus on how to ensure that AI promotes rather than prevents human flourishing. In the process of exploring those broad concerns, the course will address specific issues related to AI, such as whether AI could be a person, relationships with chatbots, surveillance capitalism, the implications of Catholic Social Teaching for AI, AI in warfare, bias, transhumanism, and the impacts of social media.

How did the resources of traditional Catholicism– the sacraments, the scriptures, and the lives of the saints– enable figures like Dorothy Day, Father Daniel Berrigan, and Sister Maura Clarke to resist endemic violence, poverty, and political repression in their time? Can one be a Catholic and an anarchist? How have student anti-war protests on Catholic campuses like Notre Dame drawn on the Catholic social tradition and Catholic liturgy in 1968 and 2024? This course examines the development of a socially-engaged, Gospel-centered pacifism from the earliest witnesses in Scripture and the lives of the saints through their grounding in the teachings of the Catholic faith in a contemporary American context. Looking to movements such as the Catholic Worker, Ploughshares, solidarity with Central American, and anti-war activism from the Vietnam era to the present, we will explore how doctrines such as the imago Dei and the Mystical Body of Christ are enfleshed in the life of the Church.

What constitutes a good life? And how can business serve our pursuit of it? In our fragmented culture, it seems that we must compartmentalize. We want to build families. We want to pursue careers. Perhaps we want to worship God. In this course, we will think through a more holistic approach to thinking about a good life, about what true happiness is. To do this, we will build out of a theological perspective rooted in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, with special focus on what this means for the practice of good business. The honors section is designed for participants in the Business Honors Program.

An introduction to Catholicism by showing how Catholic beliefs and practices shape the Church’s understanding of the Christian life. It is organized around the four basic parts of the Mass: (1) the Opening Rites, (2) the Liturgy of the Word, (3) the Liturgy of the Eucharist, and (4) the Closing Rites. In this basic format, many aspects of Catholic belief and practice are explored: baptism, the sacraments, the proclaiming and preaching of the scriptures, Holy Communion, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the witness of the martyrs, the lives of the saints, Holy Orders, religious life, marriage, Catholic social teaching, ecumenism, interreligious dialogue, and the mission of the Church in the modern world. In covering these topics and themes, several authors will help us: Hippolytus, Cyril of Jerusalem, Augustine, Aquinas, Thomas Merton, James Joyce, Graham Greene, Dorothy Day, Josef Pieper, Richard Rodriguez, Ron Hansen, Carolyn Forche, Christian de Cherge, and Popes Benedict XVI, Francis, and Leo XIV. The overall purpose of the course is to acquire and develop a broad understanding of Catholic life shaped by the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and thus also to avoid the usual clichés about the Catholic Church—that it’s narrow, outdated, oppressive, unintelligent in its thinking—all of which are true sometimes, but not necessarily so. Put in positive terms, “the faith” will be explored as a constellation of beliefs and practices that come together to form a distinct form of life, one that is both deeply traditional, yet also disturbingly radical, in that it calls on the followers of Christ to die to themselves as the only sure road leading to true life.

Hinduism and Christianity

The goal of this course is to introduce students to the ways in which Christian theologians have interpreted the scripture of Islam, the Quran, through the centuries, and to explore with them possible Christian theological responses to that scripture. To that end the course will involve a clear presentation of the Quran and Quranic Studies, the relationship of the Qur'an to the Bible, and the tradition of Christian theological reflection on non-Christian religions. This course fulfills the second ("development") requirement. No background in the Qur'an, Arabic, or Islam, is required or expected of students.

This class introduces students to the aims and methods of meditation with a particular emphasis on its Buddhist and Christian forms. It covers the stages of meditation in both traditions, their Scriptural foundations, the wide variety of techniques used to attain contemplative states, and the doctrines meditation is intended to express and inculcate in believers. Christian sources will include writings from Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Evagrius Ponticus, John of Sinai, Ignatius Loyola, Teresa of Avila, Pavel Florensky, and Joseph Ratzinger (among others). Buddhist sources will include Tsongkhapa, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Lati Rinpoche, and other modern Tibetan authors. Special attention will also be given to recent controversies over the adoption of yoga by Christians.

Intertwined throughout history, Judaism and Christianity have developed a multifaceted relationship marked by both tension and reciprocal admiration. Inspired by the Catholic Church’s call for fraternal dialogue based on the “spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews,” this course examines this relationship from a theological perspective, focusing on the history of Jewish-Christian dialogue and debate and its contemporary implications. Studying this history will enable students to reflect on theological concepts shared by both traditions, including revelation, tradition, and scriptural interpretation, as well as conflicting perspectives on divine election, universalism, and religious law. Also serving as an introduction to Jewish theology, the course enables students to compare Christian commitments with Jewish ones. Through engagement with modern thinkers who debate these traditions, students will gain insight into the complex dynamics of continuity and transformation within both faiths.

This course explores the interactions between Christianity and three Asian religious traditions: Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. Through a comparative perspective, students will examine key theological concepts, ritual practices, and ethical frameworks in Asian religions, highlighting both their distinctiveness and commonality with Christianity. Special attention will be paid to the spread of Christianity in Asia and its encounters with Asian religions and culture. The goal of this course is to deepen our understanding of both Christianity and Asian religions through comparative studies. By engaging with primary texts and scholarly articles, students will develop a nuanced understanding of the rich tapestry and complexity involved in cross-cultural religious interactions.

Beginning with an overview of the terms “belongingness” and “Abrahamic religions,” the first part of this course situates the notion of religious belongingness within the theological sub-disciplines of comparative theology and religious ethics, introducing students to valuable theoretical tools upon which the remainder of the course is built. Next, the second part of this course systematically compares various historical and contemporary notions of religious belongingness within the Christian Church to Jewish and Muslim notions of the Synagogue and the Ummah, focusing on what a comparative examination of these traditions’ various understandings of religious communality might teach Christians about what belonging to the Church means today. Finally, the third part of this course examines the ongoing phenomena of religious belongingness within shared, pluralistic contexts and asks: What might a Christian comparative theological approach to the ethics of religious communality look like in our day and age?

Human beings are dynamic creatures and therefore change throughout the course of their lives. Some of these changes we call “conversions,” though the word describes a variety of experiences, not all of them religious. This course will begin by exploring the idea of conversions in our intellectual, emotional, and moral lives, drawing upon theological, philosophical, and psychological texts. We will then turn to religious conversion stories - both historical and fictional - throughout the history of Christianity, beginning with the New Testament and moving through to the 21st century. Students will learn to think critically about conversion both in the texts we read and in their own lives.

Salvation, according to St. Paul, is through grace that is freely given by God (Rom 3:24). Yet, humans are also enjoined to work out their salvation (Phil 2:12), as cooperators with God (1 Cor. 3:9). How do these two aspects, divine grace and human action, fit together in the initial gift and outworking of human salvation? Can humans work out their salvation if salvation is ultimately a gift from God? What are the theological ramifications of such a teaching? In the Western theological tradition, St. Augustine of Hippo, the 'Doctor gratiae' (Doctor of Grace) worked out an understanding of grace in terms of God's prior and continual work in humans. Augustine's doctrine, which underwent development in his own lifetime, was received and developed in significant ways throughout the high and late middle ages and into the period of the Protestant Reformation. In this course, we will explore the 'doctrine of grace' as it is received and developed by key thinkers in the Christian tradition of the West: Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, and John Calvin.

From the New Testament on, the Christian community has turned repeatedly to the formulation and description of its identity, essence and constitutional elements. Specifying what is entailed in the claim of the creed--"I believe in the one, holy and catholic church"--has been especially necessary at certain crucial moments in the history of the Christian movement. Providing an introduction to the main themes and problems in ecclesiology (the doctrine about the Church), this course will examine the teachings of leading theologians in the Patristic and Medieval period (e.g., Augustine; Aquinas; Luther) and the determinations of the last two Vatican councils, largely concerned with such ecclesiological matters as the constitution of the church, the role of the papacy, infallibility, and the Universal versus Local Churches.

This course studies the theology of discernment in the Christian tradition, principally in relation to a theology of vocation as the challenge and possibility of "hearing the word of God and acting on it." In order to study what it means to "hear", the course will attend to the importance of solitude, contemplation, and developing a scriptural memory within the Christian tradition, while also diagnosing the challenges to listening in the modern world. To study what it means to "act" on the word of God, the course will attend to the priority of mercy, commitment, and sacrifice in the Christian life. Methodologically, part of the study of discernment will include engaging in and reflecting on practices of discernment that relate to the "hearing" and "acting" dimensions of the Christian vocation.

Jesus' primary audience was the first century Galilean peasantry. He spoke from the margins to the marginalized. The Christian churches have not always followed this example, opting to speak from and on behalf of the centers of power. There is, consequently, an inbuilt and ongoing tension - often fraught, yet sometimes fruitful - within Christian communities that share a common faith but experience God from different social and cultural locations. As a consequence of Western European expansion, conquest, and colonialism, Christianity in modernity has become a truly global religion, further complicating this long-standing tension. However, as Pope Francis has said, "Great changes in history were realized when reality was seen not from the center but rather from the periphery. . .Truly to understand reality we need to move away from the central position of calmness and peacefulness and direct ourselves to the peripheral areas." These peripheral areas are "the margins." Therefore, taking our cue from both Jesus and Pope Francis, this course will examine several fundamental Christian doctrines (e.g. sin, salvation, mercy, and Christ) as they have been articulated among peoples who have been marginalized and oppressed in modernity. Engaging these often overlooked (but no less Christian) theological traditions from the margins is important for any Christian self-understanding within the world today.

This course is an extended study of the transcendental of Beauty as it relates to the nature of God, with considerations of the divine nature as trinitarian as well as certain Christological and pneumatological dimensions. Possible themes include the coincidence of beauty with truth and goodness, as well as the intersections between beauty and suffering, beauty and sanctity, and beauty and human desire. Readings will be drawn primarily from the Christian intellectual and theological tradition, supplemented along the way with material from the disciplines of philosophy, literature, poetry, art, and music.

The first Christians announced that they had experienced salvation in and through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. This course will explore the meaning of that experience for that first generation of believers as well as for today. The first half of the course will explore a biblical and theological portrait of the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus and the faith journey of the first disciples. The second half of the course will consider questions about Jesus' identity and the meaning of salvation in the early church and in today's global context including the meaning of Christian hope in a world of suffering and religious and cultural pluralism, and whether a Christian understanding of salvation includes all persons and all of creation.

What is sin? This course aims to answer this question, by looking at the biblical and traditional understanding of sin in both Western and Eastern Christianity. In addition to this historical aspect, in this course we will also look at the question of human sinfulness in a systematic perspective, understanding sin in light of other Christian doctrines, especially theological anthropology (the theological understanding of human nature), as well as in the light of other disciplines of study, such as psychology. The course concludes with a study of the "seven deadly sins" (or is it eight?) and seeks to understand how they relate to our modern culture.

This course introduces students to the study of theology through a focus on what traditionally has been called "spiritual theology." What is the goal of the spiritual life? What practices, relationships, and stages does the spiritual journey involve? How is it reasonable to think that one can live a human life with a divine "format," even now, by living in union with God who is love? Why does that form of living satisfy the deepest thirst of the heart, and what does it have to do with changing the world? We will study the scriptural and sacramental basis of spiritual theology, and we will focus on certain historical developments in spiritual theology that are especially relevant in the modern world, such as the theologies of St. Teresa of Avila and St. Ignatius of Loyola. The title of the course echoes a scriptural image that St. Teresa of Avila used as she developed her theology of prayer: "Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water" (Jn 7:38).

This course explores the topics of race and racial justice (in a particularly American context) in conversation with Christian theology. While it is initially tempting to reduce this conversation to identification of theological grounds for anti-racism, things are not so simple: theology itself is implicated in the long history of American racism. This is not merely to note that theology has been passively vitiated by racist thought; it is also to affirm that theology has played an active role in the creation of racialized categories and the perpetuation of racial injustices. Nevertheless, when theology is utilized well, it can galvanize individuals to endorse and join in the work of racial justice. This tenuous relationship—between oppressive theologies and racial harms, and between uplifting theologies and racial justice—is this course’s focus. Along the way, students will engage a host of other topics students including the (mis)use of racial terms; types of racial wrongs, historical and continuing; and controversies like implicit bias and the “Model Minority.”

Jesus of Nazareth is indisputably one of the most important figures in world history, yet for Christians even this claim is an understatement. The major Christian churches teach not only that Jesus was the foremost of the prophets, but that he is eternally the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity. They also teach that his work as a man included not only his public miracles and his oral teaching but an invisible ministry of reconciling human beings to the God from whom they had been estranged by sin. Even for Christians who do not subscribe to traditional teachings, Jesus remains a moral exemplar and an object of devotion. Muslims revere him as the sixth of seven great prophets, a number of Jews and Hindus have found a place for him in their faith, and he has been a frequent subject for philosophers, poets, and novelists, whatever their religion. This course addresses the figure of Jesus both as the center of Christian proclamation and as a subject of imaginative and philosophical reflection in Christianity and beyond. The first half of the course will concern the nature, ministry, teaching, and example of Jesus as these have been understood in the historic teaching of the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions; the second half of the course will turn to questions concerning the figure of Jesus as understood both in modern Christian theology, in other religious traditions, and in some recent literary and philosophical challenges to Christianity.

In the 20th century, Catholic theological thought has turned to the child as revealing the meaning of personhood in an increasingly technocratic age. This course invites students to contemplate this turn through a careful re-reading of a theology of childhood throughout the history of Christianity. In this class, participants will discover the centrality of childhood to key themes in Catholic theology including original sin, the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Sacraments, prayer, and the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. Lastly, through an intellectual contemplation of theological childhood, students in this course will be invited to consider their own future vocation as educators in faith to their future children.

This course aims to equip students with the tools to examine and contribute to contemporary problems in the relationship between Christian beliefs and the natural sciences. This is achieved by allowing students to see those topics as embedded in a long history of theologians engaging the physics, medicine, and natural philosophy of their times. Roughly half the course will be devoted to that history, drawing out three narrative arcs: the sophisticated ways that Christians dealt with apparent conflicts between their beliefs about nature and those of secular authorities; the ways that the contemporary sciences depended on particular theological presuppositions (divine voluntarism and immutability, the regularity and intelligibility of nature); and the contingency of the contemporary sciences. Against this historical backdrop, the second half of the course will consider four classical Christian doctrines that appear to be in conflict with some aspect of contemporary science: the imago Dei in relation to evolution and scientific transhumanism; miracles in relation to the laws of nature; doctrines of the Fall and original sin in relation to population biology; and the doctrine of the soul in relation to neuroscience.

This course offers a systematic exploration of the central doctrines of the Catholic faith through a sustained reading of Matthias Scheeben’s classic work, The Mysteries of Christianity. Scheeben, a late 19th‑century German theologian associated with the “Roman School,” exercised a profound influence on many key figures of 20th‑century Catholic theology and remains a highly respected voice today. The depth and density of his writing make him a demanding author; he is not for the faint of heart. For those willing to do the work, however, he offers an unparalleled entry into the mysteries of the Catholic faith and the riches of the theological tradition. Students considering this course are strongly encouraged to read the sample of Scheeben’s work provided in the “Class Notes” below before enrolling.

This course is designed to introduce you to the basic teachings and spiritualities of Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam. We will approach these religions both historically and theologically, seeking to determine where they converge and differ from Christianity on such perennial issues as death, meaning, the nature of the ultimate Mystery, the overcoming of suffering etc. That is to say, we will not only attempt to comprehend these religions according to their own self-understanding, but we will also endeavor to appraise their significance in relation to Christian faith, both in the challenge and enrichment they present. We will also examine some traditional and contemporary Catholic and Protestant approaches to the truth claims of other religions. Our own search to know how the truth and experience of other faiths are related to Christian faith will be guided by the insights of important Christian contemplatives who have entered deeply into the spirituality of other traditions. By course end we ought to have a greater understanding of what is essential to Christian faith and practice as well as a greater appreciation of the spiritual paths of others.

Understanding the relationship between Islam and Christian theology is not a walk in the park. The relationship between Christianity and Islam is absolutely unique, in part because of the way that Muslims challenge Christian teaching on Jesus. According to standard Islamic teaching, Jesus was not God, not a savior, and did not die on the cross. Instead, he was a Muslim prophet who predicted the coming of Muhammad. From a traditional Islamic perspective, Christian teaching on Christ is confused and the New Testament on which it is based is a falsified version of an Islamic revelation that God gave to Jesus. Muhammad came centuries later to correct the errors of Christians and to preach the same eternal religion that Jesus once taught: Islam. Muslims, in other words, have something to say to Christians: that Jesus was a Muslim and that Muhammad is a true prophet sent to the entire world. In this course, we will listen to how Muslims explain and express this idea, examine how Christians have responded through the centuries, and ask how Christians today might fruitfully promote dialogue with Islam. NO PRIOR BACKGROUND in Arabic or Islam is required for this course.

This course will seek to identify and address the various tensions between theology and the natural sciences, reimagining that relationship as one of complementarity. A large part of that tension has been constituted by the modern Western presupposition that the unique and privileged access to reality comes through the empirical method of the natural sciences. We will begin with a brief introduction to the history of the development of scientific method, before turning to an investigation of the methodological differences between the natural sciences and theology. It will be shown that the complementarity of the two methods stems from their both being particularizations of the more general process involved in learning. The second section of the course will focus on specific topics which have historically been considered a source of division between Christian belief and the theories of the natural sciences. These will include an examination of objections to the belief in the existence of God, the seeming tensions between the scriptural creation narrative and evolutionary biology, and the incompatibility of belief in the resurrection with modern materialist reductionism. Finally, there will be a treatment of the convergence of natural science and theology on the question of ecological ethics.

The formation of Christians' communal identity, theological imagination, and social practices have always been worked out - whether implicitly or explicitly - in relation to empire. This course explores this complex theological and historical relationship between Church and empire with particular attention to the ways Christian communities have attempted to resist the onslaught of pre-modern and modern imperialism in order to preserve the integrity of various aspects of the gospel of Christ. In the process of this exploration we will attempt, as a class, to discern some general characteristics of a counter-imperial Catholic ethos or spirituality by paying close attention to the ways the Church has compromised, negotiated, or resisted empire concerning images of Jesus, the effects of baptism, the scope of Christ's Eucharistic presence, and the legitimate modes of evangelization at the Church's disposal.

Christian theologians have long been interested in Buddhism, not least because it promises a complete religion, spirituality, and culture without the existence of God. This class introduces students to the life of the Buddha, Buddhist Scriptures, Buddhist religious orders, and the various schools of Buddhist philosophy in India, China, Korea, Japan, and Tibet. Topics explored include proofs and refutations of God's existence, reincarnation and future lives, the nature of the human person, the origin of evil and suffering, Buddhist approaches to ethics, and contemporary Buddhist-Christian dialogue. No previous knowledge of Buddhism is required.

In this course, we will study the historical and conceptual development of the Christian understanding of death and how it relates to various theological themes including nature and creation, human being and subjectivity, and sin, salvation, eschatology, and the sacraments. Course readings will include the Bible and classical Christian literature, as well as readings from philosophy, literature, and the sciences.

Can one use the principle, “What would Jesus do?” to think about political systems, decisions and policies? In the coming election, many things are uncertain, but what is not uncertain is that religious faith, and Christian faith in particular, will be a touchstone, or perhaps better, a lightning rod, in the political debates that are already underway. This course will not focus on this or that political issue (abortion, immigration, taxation, entitlement programs, same-sex marriage), but rather will take a step back to examine the ways that Christians have thought more generally about how the obligations of their faith relate to their obligations as a citizen. We will look at some classic positions, especially of Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, but then focus on case studies, including the polarizing debates over slavery (very conducted with reference to the Bible) in the years leading up to and during the Civil War. The goal of the course is to enable students to identify the different starting points and ways of thinking that Christians have taken, and are still taking today, to interrelate faith and politics, so that students can better understand the variety of positions, including their own ways of thinking and the positions with which they disagree.

This course is offered as a systematic and historical introduction to Christian Spirituality with a systematic focus on its nature, stages, and goal; an historical focus on different traditions and representative figures; a thematic focus on the kinds of language and literary figures that are used to describe the spiritual life (e.g., in terms of a journey, maturation, mountain-climbing, and kinds of relationship, etc.), and a practical focus on the disciplines that cultivate it and are conducive to its end. Other than Scripture, various saints and spiritual authors to be read include Catherine of Siena, Guigo II, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Benedict, Bernard of Clairvaux, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Therese of Lisieux, Symeon the New Theologian, Gregory Palamas, and Seraphim of Sarov.

This course investigates the Christian understanding of creation and how this doctrine relates to contemporary scientific issues. We will examine the development of the doctrine beginning with Scripture and the Creed and progressing through the early Church period into the Medieval and Scholastic era, focusing on the concepts of creation ex nihilo, creation continua, divine Providence, and divine action in the world. With the rise of the modern era, we will analyze the origin of and principles involved with the purported conflict between science and theology. We will bring the doctrine of creation into dialogue with three contemporary issues in the sciences: cosmology, evolution, and ecology. Integral to this course will be the relationship and response of humankind to God and to creation. This course will have a special appeal to students interested in the intersection of science and theology.

The Christian confession of a God of infinite love and goodness seems to be severely challenged by the immensity of suffering and evil. This course explores different theological responses to the theoretical and practical problems presented by suffering and evil. Attention will also be given to how psychology, Scripture, Buddhism, and film have addressed these issues. The format of the course will consist of lectures, discussions, and the close reading and analysis of seminal texts.

The course will explore the relationship between God and humanity through a variety of theological lenses. The asymmetrical relationship will be considered as a form of dialogue and as a path to finding new approaches to a dialogue of cultures viable today. Sources will include the Old and New Testament, St. Augustine, medieval Christian writers like St. Anselm of Canterbury, Ramón Llull, St. Catherine of Siena, and Nicholas of Cusa, Bartolomé de la Casas, Jewish thinkers like Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and Emmanuel Levinas, Karl Barth, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Pope Paul VI, Karol Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II, Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, Robert Schreiter, Virgilio Elizondo, María Pilar Aquino, Alejandro García-Rivera, the monks of Tibhirine, and Emmanuel Katongole.

This course introduces the theological foundations of Christian vocation through considering the Eucharistic transformation of human communion and of our understanding, memory, and will by means of the imagination. The Catholic imagination recognizes all things—the world, the self, creativity, the past, the present, vocation, suffering, death—in relation to the communion which is God’s very nature, life, and gift to us. The first part of the course therefore contemplates the Trinitarian communion, received in Jesus Christ and the Church which is his Body, through alternating doctrinal studies and literary considerations. The first part also seeks to understand the world, in its giftedness, brokenness, and renewal, through the lens of communion. The second part seeks to remember a life through the same lens of communion, and the third part seeks to intend a life toward this communion. Thus, this course considers the central images of Christian salvation history from creation to eschatology as well as how these images may be appropriated in the lived experience of Christian spirituality. This course is designed to assist Notre Dame undergraduates who are preparing to work as “Mentors-in-Faith” within Notre Dame Vision.

In the wake of the Holocaust, the Catholic Church put its relationship with the Jewish people on a new footing with the declaration Nostra Aetate, wherein the Church calls to mind "the bond that spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham's stock." In this course we will explore the nature of this bond, and put into practice the call to dialogue that, according to Nostra Aetate, follows from it. The substantive goals of this course are two. First, we will study what Christians have thought, and what Christianity - especially Catholicism - has taught across the centuries about Jews and Judaism, and about the relationship between the Church and its Jewish roots. Second, we will learn about the teachings and practices of Judaism, from the early Christian centuries to today, and engage in theological comparison between Christian and Jewish theology.

This course investigates the relationship between the Catholic Faith and modern science for the sake of an integrated worldview in which they are brought into a "relational unity," i.e. a dynamic interchange in which their distinct perspectives and methods are carefully respected. We will begin with historical, philosophical, biblical and theological resources for engaging science from the perspective of faith. These will be brought into dialogue with modern cosmology, evolutionary biology and the sciences of human origins in an attempt to forge a holistic perspective in which science, philosophy and theology are treated as distinct but mutually enriching paths to truth. Specific topics will include the conflict model of science and religion, the Galileo Affair, the biblical creation accounts, the doctrines of divine creation and divine providence, and the human person as the image of God.

A discussion of ethical problems in the medical profession in light of natural law and Christian moral principles.

This is a course in doing "local" theology: It examines the universal Catholic social teaching principle of the common good in the particular idiom applicable to Notre Dame students while studying in Ireland, namely, the place, poetry, and pilgrimages, historical and contemporaneous, that are characteristic of Irish spiritual and theological traditions. The course will equip students to encounter, interpret, and deepen understandings of how environment (sacred geography, landscape place lore, pilgrim pathways), poetry (traditional expressions, storytelling, poems), and pilgrimage (between self and society, homogeneity and pluralism, secular and sacred) shape and give expression to the "ecological conversion, whereby the effects of one's encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in their relationship with the world around them" (Laudato Si', n. 217). From the sacred mountain Croagh Patrick to the Book of Kells to the monastic site of Glendalough to the current Benedictine community at Kylemore Abbey, the course will shadow and augment the students' experience of Ireland so as to put theology, the environment, and society in dialogue. It will enable students, on the basis of their encounters in Ireland, to theologize, including in written and oral forms, regarding the care of creation and the civilization of love, with a particular focus on climate change and social/cultural evolutions as manifest in place, poetry, and pilgrimage.

Taught at a host instititution. LY1101 at TCD; The variety of terms used to designate the ‘Hebrew Bible' (e.g. Old Testament, Hebrew Scriptures, Tanak) indicate the richness of traditions related to these writings, the various ways that they are viewed, and also their life within different communities at different times. This module will orient students to the development of a variety of documents that are, or were, included in the scriptural traditions of various Jewish and Christian communities in antiquity. Questions related to forms before development of canons of scripture will be one main concern. When texts and their contents are a focal point students will be familiarised with many of the methods used for interpreting these writings. Focus on context will involve setting writings within their historical periods, political and social contexts, and provide information about material culture and archaeology relevant to a historical and literary approach to the subject.

"This module aims to introduce students to New Testament studies in general and to Gospel studies in particular. The general introduction will include consideration of the historical contexts of the New Testament texts, including political,socio-­-economic and religious factors within the Greco-­-Roman world and Early Judaism. The Gospels will then be studied with a view to determining the particular interests of their authors, and with a view to assessing their portraits of Jesus in relation to the historical Jesus. Continuous assessment includes the review of a popular 'historical fiction' novel assigned by the module coordinator."

This course introduces students to the shifting relations that characterized Christians' experience and understanding of the Roman empire during the first half-millennium of the Christian era. Focusing on the Church in the Holy Land as a unique historical laboratory richly intertwining culture, doctrine, and praxis, the course will be divided into three parts, surveying three major epochs: (1) the New Testament era; (2) the minority Church of the martyrs; and (3) Christian Byzantium. Profiting from the particular opportunities presented by the location at Tantur, the course will give special attention to sites of historical significance that may be visited and explored beyond the classroom. Students will thus gain an overview of general trends and acquire in-depth knowledge of certain key points of interest, while engaging various important dialectical relationships at work in the formation of normative Christian theological thought: e.g. Church and state, Christianity and non-Christian religions (both paganism and Judaism), Church and culture (inculturation), etc. As such, the course fulfills the expectations of a second required course in theology, exploring how "theology, as reflection on a living Tradition, is at once and inseparably both doctrinal and dialogical."

This course will explore the trajectory of John's writings beginning with the Gospel of John, the Letters of John, and finally the Apocalypse of John, otherwise known as Revelation. This course will discuss topics such as John and ethnicity, gender, politics, and John's historical relationship to Judaism.

This course will mainly focus on ancient paganism and the early Christian Church, from the 7th century BC until the 4th century CE). Special emphasis will be given on eastern Christian monasticism. A comparison with other monotheistic religions, such as Judaism and Islam, will be ventured towards the end of the semester.

This unit explores the history of Christianity, from its inception in antiquity as a small sect of Judaism to its global expansion as the world's most popular religion. Christianity is no monolithic religion, but it comprises a vast set of traditions that differ in significant ways, from theological beliefs to political practices to authoritative texts. A key aim of this unit is to examine the history of how Christianity came to be represented by such diverse sets of beliefs and practices by considering the major events, texts, and figures that constituted and informed these changes.

Provides the student with a deepened understanding of and ability to think critically about the multiple institutions that constituted the medieval Church, through an analysis of: religious movements and orders, periods of partial and radical reform, relations between ecclesiastic and lay powers, periods of crisis and decadence, and principal ecclesiological themes, schisms, and normative canons.

The nature, impact and evolution of globalization. Its impaction on the re-definition, or transnationalization of politics . The course will focus on the example of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) zone, especially the impact of globalisation.

Not long after his baptism, Augustine justifies his conversion to Christianity in this writing. His depiction of the Christian religion appears to be both time-bound, for example in its reference to Platonic ideas, and timeless, for example in its fundamental treatment of key human problems. In any case, it offers an introduction to the life and thought of Augustine, who has shaped Christianity to this day like no other. Based on the reading of selected passages, this course will give you an insight into central themes of church history as well as enabling you to acquire and apply basic methodological skills.

The disorientation that we are experiencing, in what Pope Francis defines "the change of epoch," urges answers that only a theological view of the historical reality may offer. By providing an introduction to the anthropology of Saint Thomas Aquinas, this course presents the main challenges that our contemporary world is facing, namely transhumanism and artificial intelligence, and proposes a practical way to build a "civilization of love," as asked by Saint Pope Paul VI since 1970. In this course we will aim to develop a consciousness of the necessity of the theological approach for the interpretation of the historical reality; Understand the "functioning" of the human being according to the anthropology of St. Thomas Aquinas; consider the challenges posed by the transhumanist movement and the development of artificial intelligence; introduce to the "civilization of love" and discern possible ways to foster it.

This course will approach the study of theology with and through the visual arts. The meaning and significance of the doctrines of the Incarnation, the Paschal Mystery, and the Holy Spirit will be explored by attending to the ways in which these teachings have been diversely embodied, tested and engaged by artists and artistic traditions throughout the Church's history. This dialogue will be structured through the framework of visual representations of key liturgical moments in the life of the Church, from Christmastide and Eastertide to Pentecost. We will consider how visual art is itself a form of theological reflection and come to appreciate its essential place within the Catholic tradition and its unique contribution to the Christian faith as a lived engagement with the world.

This module charts the theological discipline of ecclesiology, noting in particular how competing and complementary approaches to understanding 'church' have emerged, and exploring ecumenical proposals to foster more creative approaches to ecclesial unity and diversity.

By reading Aquinas's Compendium of Theology together, we will be able to see how Aquinas concisely sets forth a coherent account of the Christian faith as a whole. Students will also learn how to navigate effectively Aquinas's theological masterpiece, the Summa Theologiae, and we will discuss in detail Aquinas's approach to God, Creation, Providence, the Incarnation, Redemption, and Eschatology. In addition, students will have the opportunity to consider Aquinas's persistent influence on subsequent theology and church practice (in Catholic, Orthodox and Reformed traditions) to the present day.

Many religious traditions know the concept of “spiritual warfare”. On the one hand, military metaphors seem to be a natural choice to express obtaining anything at a cost (“we fought hard to get here…”). On the other, fundamentalisms of any kind (religious, political, ideological, etc.) show that only too often violent metaphors used in speech produce the ugly fruit of violent actions. Christianity is no exception to this tendency. Given the abuse of the metaphor, would we be better off without its use? Which theological and spiritual notions are expressed and how do they relate to the violence contained in the images used to convey them? How does the violent strand in Christian language relate to the equally prominent one centered on peace and non- violence? This course will explore these and other questions by taking a deep dive into foundational texts of the Judeo-Christian tradition. In a survey of biblical texts, carefully read in the context of the whole biblical canon, we will observe a progressive, though often incomplete, spiritualization of violence. From these scriptural foundations, we will turn to the writings of early Christian teachers across the Aramaic, Egyptian, and Latin traditions, where spiritual warfare features prominently. The desired outcome of this course is a nuanced and critical understanding of this undoubtedly important notion in Christian spirituality—the ability, as it were, to wield or sheathe this two-edged sword.

This course will study the missionary activity of the Church, both historically and theologically. After a brief look at mission and evangelization in the New Testament and the early Church and medieval Church, we will then explore important moments of missionary contact in the Americas, Africa, and Asia in the modern (post-Columbian) period, many of which were initiated by European missionaries. Particular attention will be given to the operative theologies and practices of mission at work in such encounters, as well as to the practical effects of missionary activity. The course will conclude with a look at contemporary missionary practice and theory. The coming of Christianity to most of the world has often overlapped with the political, economic, and social processes associated with the term colonialism and related forms of intercultural contact, again with European nations and missionary bodies playing a central role. We will study the consequences of that overlap, along with the many theological issues raised, especially for Christians in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, with a particular interest this summer in the historical role of German colonialism and missionary activity in the formation of global Christianity.

This course aims to organically integrate Liturgical Theology and Sacramental Theology. It is structured in four parts, preceded by an introductory section that addresses the relationship between Sacramental Theology and Liturgical Theology. Parts I through IV follow the triad "Mystery ¿ Celebration ¿ Life": the first frames the theological understanding of the Liturgy within the Mystery and its sacramental dispensation; The second part addresses the liturgical celebration of the Mystery; the third part studies the sacraments situated at the heart of the Liturgy, from a theological-liturgical and sacramental perspective; the fourth part explores the relationship between Liturgy and life.

"This module will introduce the student to the idea of sacrament, in the first part, as a central theological hermeneutic that underpins some of the k ey ways of thinking in the Catholic tradition. The idea of the 'sacramental imagination' will be explored from the perspective of the early Christian writers (for example, Augustine), as well from that of modern theological discourse on a sacramental worldview, especially in the writings of Odo Casel, Otto Semmelroth, Karl Rahner, Edward Schillebeeckx and Louis -Marie Chauvet. A second part of the module will move to the idea of liturgy as theologia prima, and explore some contemporary expositions of (sacramental) worship as an encounter of the humanity of God in Christ (Schillebeeckx, David Power, and Chauvet). This will allow for an exposition of ritual sacramental theory through the ages: including that of Augustine, the medieval theologians and the reformation. Contemporary inter-church and ecumenical discussion will be explored. A specific sacrament, baptism,will be surveyed from the perspective of the principal debates that helped shape how it is understood today in various church traditions, and from the perspective of the various schools of thought that have been presented in the module."

During the course, students' learning will be promoted through various methodologies that include group work and presentations. To facilitate the study of the branch, on the course website, the files with the required readings. The proper use of the delivered material is subject to certain considerations, in particular, that this only constitutes a contribution for the better monitoring of the classes, but it does not replace them. In the case of schemes, it must be considered that it is a synthesis of the contents, That must necessarily be studied in the light of the readings and canons indicated In other words, it would not be enough to learn by heart these notes, without relating to the exchange in classes, norms applicable to each subject and the readings that contribute to the best understanding of the different contents.

This course immerses participants in the theology of worship through a study of liturgy and sacraments. The focus is on: the emergence of Christian worship in the early decades of the church and its development through the centuries; the way Christian liturgies took shape and grew; and the evolution of sacramental theology. Overall, students are enabled to grasp the importance of worship in Christianity, see how the various liturgies of the church became what they are today, and appreciate some of the many contrasting dimensions of sacramental theology among the various churches.

The module examines key questions and turning points in theological thinking from Antiquity to Modernity. Beginning with the development of monotheism, the achievements in Christology in the ecumenical councils and the schism East and West. It will investigate biblical sources of the doctrine of God; outline the debates on imago Dei, free will and original sin in theological anthropology, compare models of salvation, and discuss theologies of history on theodicy and eschatology. New challenges to and responses from theology in relation to modernity's turn to subjectivity, critiques of religion (from philosophy and the social, medical and natural sciences), and the place of theology as a subject in the modern university will conclude the module.

Based on a foundational understanding of the Church as both institution and mystery, this module will study the sacraments from both an historical and theological perspective. Particular focus will be placed on the statement of Vatican II which claims that 'the purpose of the sacraments is to sanctify people, to build up the body of Christ, and, finally, to give worship to God; because they are signs they also instruct...they are called "sacraments of faith." ' [Sacrosanctum Concilium, 59] The sacraments of Eucharist and Baptism will be studied in depth as they are recognized and shared by most of the Christian traditions.

This course will address Catholic social teaching. Students will be expected to demonstrate a knowledge not only of the documents of the Magisterium, but also of the historical development and context of the issues.

This course taught by a Dominican sister gives an overview of the cardinal virtues as presented in Thomas Aquinas's Summa, with a specific focus on the virtues of Prudence, Fortitude, and Temperance. These virtues are studied individually, in relation to each other, and practically in the Christian life. Pontifical Anglicum (RY): After an introductory overview of the historical foundations of the doctrine of the cardinal virtues, the virtues of prudence, fortitude, and temperance are studied: 1) individually; 2) in the context of their relationship with the other virtues; 3) in their practical relevance to Christian life. I apologize that the syllabus is in Italian, as the course is taught in Italian. I was under the impression that this would count for a theology II and an Italian credit.

This course addresses the following topics: justice in relation to charity and other Christian virtues; the notion of right in medieval and modern Catholic tradition; society and common good in relation to legal, distributive, and commutative justice; specific requirements of justice regarding human life, material goods, honor and esteem, communication, privacy and secrecy; religion as an allied part of justice; truthfulness, gratitude, equity and other associated virtues.

This module involves close study of key thinkers in the history of theological ethics, focusing on a key thinker from each of five different historical periods: patristic, medieval, early modern, twentieth century and recent. Our goal is to understand how these thinkers relate to one another, how theological ethics relates to other aspects of theology like the study of doctrine and Scripture, and how they continue to influence thinking even today—often without our noticing their influence!

To learn and to assess the anthropological and theological fundamentals of the demands of the moral Christian in relation to sexual and matrimonial behavior. Fulfills University 2nd Theology req Angers, France - This is a lecture based course taught in French with a final written exam at the end. It first outlines the basis of morality and theology focusing on defining what moral theology is in our lives. Then, the lecture follows the books of the Bible to show how moral theology was first constructed and developed in the Old Testament in Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, and finally the prophets. Currently, we are focusing on the gospels and how Jesus took and developed the moral theology of the Old Testament throughout his life, and will later move into early Christian history.

Taught in Italian, this course explores the theological virtues (Faith, Hope, and Charity) within the framework of the Thomistic supernatural organism. It covers their nature, associated gifts of the Holy Spirit, related beatitudes, and the opposing vices.

The phenomenon of migration unfolds as one of the main components of globalization in the wake of the turn of the 21st century. The course offers a survey of humanity's essential dimension of being on the move and analyses the fundamental theological, anthropological and moral questions that arise from this. The course addresses the main facts and concepts about immigration necessary for theological and ethical reflection. Political, economic and social dimensions of immigration are illuminated by resources presented by the long history of the Catholic Social Tradition. Not only will Catholic Social Teaching on the issue be presented but also what the Bible can offer, as well as the voices of a number of theologians, who have reflected on this issue and on certain experiences within the life of the Church.

The module will examine the central importance of embodiment in Catholic Christian thought: almost all forms of Christianity have a belief in the resurrection of the body. Going back to Plato different approaches to the relationship between body and soul have existed. In this context the module will examine Christian thought on human sexuality and on bioethical issues, particularly as these have developed in the Catholic tradition. Particular attention will be given to contested debates in the areas of contraception, same-sex relationships, euthanasia, assisted reproduction and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis.

Moral Theology concerns itself with the human moral quest in the context of Christianity. It involves understanding the interplay between moral philosophy and moral theology as well as the key differences between religious and secular perspectives on morality.

This course examines the meaning and structure of the Roman Catholic moral tradition. Themes studied include: history and development of moral theology, the Christian conscience and its formation, discipleship and sin, the magisterium and authority, use of Scripture in moral theology, natural law, the role of moral principles and norms in contemporary moral theology.

In this seminar, students will engage with various ethical topics that deal with human life, and how theological, hermeneutical, and even scientific methods can be applied to them. Students will work with biblical passages to create comprehensive definitions and images of what a person is ,and how these definitions fit into a modern social context. To create such comparisons, the seminar will also deal with scientific and ethical texts about the history of embryos ,which circumstances warrant abortion in Germany, stem cell research, or in-vitro fertilization. By taking a pluralistic approach in terms of which sources the courses deal with, the students will be able to make arguments and debate about the descriptions of personhood from a biblical perspective , and if they can fit into current social contexts.

This course explores history of Christianity from the perspective of World Christianity. Understanding some of the major themes in the history of non-western Christianity by giving special emphasis on the role played by non-western indigenous Christian leaders. This course will focus on understanding history of Christianity firstly by exploring Christianity that evolved from first century in Jerusalem. Understanding how it has developed and functions in contemporary world. Secondly understanding Christianity that has its roots in western Christianity and studying how it has translated itself into non-western world by exploring how the transition has taken place, informed by specific local contexts, cultures and specific experiences of people. The students will be able to go beyond binary discourse of east and west and form their own opinion on history of Christianity.

6 CFU (3 UND credits) course that covers modern-age history through the lens of the never-ending conflict between politics and religion. Each lecture covers new examples of this conflict throughout different time periods in the modern age of history.

Not long after the canonization of the Bible, it had already become the subject of fierce debate between Jews and the nascent Christian church. With the appearance of Islam centuries later, all three major monotheistic religions took part in such polemics. These polemics involved both technical issues surrounding the biblical text and larger theoretical issues such as the method by which it should be interpreted, the identity of its author(s), and the editorial process which it underwent. For each of these issues, we will proceed chronologically from the earliest Jewish-Christian debates in the ancient period to the polemics involving Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Middle Ages. Finally, as we move into the modern period, we will explore the pivotal role that Jewish-Christian disputes played in the evolution of modern biblical criticism. Examining the inter-religious debate about the Bible throughout the ages provides a window into central themes in the history of these religions as well as familiarizing us with the questions that form the core of modern biblical studies.

Islamic Section: This Course is a university required course which focuses on the tow religions in Palestine:Christianity and Islam. The course is divided in to two parts: one concerning the definition of the Islamic religion, and the other concerning to the Christian religion, tow religious teachers teach its own partition. Each section presents their history, beliefs, moral precepts, feasts and rituals in view of reaching a deeper and unbiased appreciation of their roles in contemporary society. Christianity Section: This is a University required course taken by students who choose it in their fourth year. It focuses on the three major religions in the area:Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It presents their history, beliefs, moral precepts, feasts and rituals in view of reaching a deeper and unbiased appreciation of their roles in contemporary society.

This module examines the theological disciple of ecclesiology, noting how competing and complementary approaches to understanding the 'church' have emerged, and exploring ecumenical proposals to foster more creative approaches to ecclesial unity and diversity.

Religion is a subject in which people continue to vest powerful emotions. This course focuses on the three monotheistic religions of the Middle East: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and in order to develop a better understanding of them we will make frequent exciting on-site visits and we will exploit as many primary sources as possible.

This module studies what it means to be human from the perspective of theology. The study begins within the horizon of Jewish experience as articulated especially in the early chapters of the book of Genesis. The themes of human reality as the Imago Dei, of sanctification, of deification, as well as the theme of deep seated human alienation, are studied. In the Western tradition grace became a key concept in the articulation of the interplay of divine and human in history. The module studies its deployment through the centuries. Running through the module is the question, the debate, as to whether there are resources in theological anthropology for an understanding of human nature which have been lost in modern culture.

The course intends for students to reflect on the importance of the body as a constitutive dimension of the human person, from a believing perspective: the human being created in the image and likeness of God. From a theological and cultural perspective, the course invites each student to analyze the experience of the body using methodologies such as lecture, cooperative learning, and case studies. The learning will be evaluated through group presentations, case analysis and essays.

The aim of this module is to explore a Christian understanding of human existence. Taking up standard themes in theological anthropology (e.g., grace, creation eschatology, sin, free-will, human knowledge, finitude, desire, embodiment, etc.), this module enables students to develop knowledge and skills in an important area of theology, in both its historical context and contemporary setting. Special features of the module shall include study of patristic and medieval notions of nature, grace, sin, creation and the imago Dei, attending principally to the Latin tradition. Other aims of the module are to study some of the Great books, notably, Augustine's Confessions and City of God. Consideration of contemporary challenges will appeal to 20th-century debates, framed in ecumenical perspective (nouvelle theologie, retrievals of Kant's transcendental philosophy, narrative theology, Liberation theology, science and religion). Students will participate in learning activities such as attending lectures, keeping up with weekly reading assignments, and writing a long research essay. The module attempts to formulate a vision for a renewed Christian humanism.

This module is designed to introduce students to core themes that highlight the ever-changing interface between religion and science. In particular, we'll focus on the historical narrative in tandem with contemporary debates. Classical figures such as Galileo, Descartes, Newton and Darwin will be read and discussed. After Darwin, theological approaches to science evolve, especially in the twentieth century, with important voices emerging such as Teilhard de Chardin and Alfred North Whitehead; finally, contemporary trajectories shall fall within our purview, such as those evolutionists who submit Christianity to radical critique, known as the New Atheists (Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett).

What does it mean to be Christs disciple, to follow the God become human. What does it mean to fulfill our human nature. How does following the Christ of the Gospels require us to go beyond what is merely natural. How has Christ transformed our idea of human flourishing. What is the Thomistic Ignatian method of discerning ones personal vocation to follow Christ. We will answer these questions and more as we examine Christian discipleship through three main lenses, the human way of natural law, the way of Christ in the Gospels, and the Ignatian way of discernment and election.

PONTIFICAL UNIVERSITY OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS: This course will examine notable historical developments in the Church’s teaching on conscience, with particular emphasis on Thomas Aquinas’s teaching regarding the relationship between prudence and conscience. It will also address various challenges and misinterpretations of conscience. Angelicum (RY): This course examines notable historical developments in the Church¿s teaching on conscience, with particular emphasis on Thomas Aquinas¿s teaching regarding the relationship between prudence and conscience. It also addresses various challenges and misinterpretations of conscience.

The course will examine the representation of women in Catholic theology, including in the Old Testament, New Testament, and Christian art. The course will study this complex representation, and the additional analysis of God, within theological, historical, modern Latin American, and scholarly feminist contexts.

The aim of this module is to explore a Christian understanding of human existence. Taking up standard themes in theological anthropology (e.g., grace, creation eschatolog, sin, free-will, human knowledge, finitude, desire, emboidment, etc.), this module enables students to develope knowledge and skills in an important area of theology, in both its historical context and contemporary setting. Special features of the module shall include study of patristic and medeval notions of nature, grace, sin, creation and the imago Dei, attending principally to the Latin tradition. Other aims of the module are to study some of the Great books, notably, Ausgustine's Confessions and City of God. Consideration of contemporary challenges will appeal to 20h-century debates, framed in ecumenical perspective (nouvelle theologie, retrievals of Kant's transcendental philosophy, narrative theology, Liberation theology, science and religion). Students will participate in learning activities such as attending lectures keeping up with weekly reading assignments, and writing a long research essay. The module attempts to formulate a vision for a renewed Christian humanism

This class examines the fundamental doctrine of God and of the Holy Trinity in the Catholic tradition. Readings are taken from patristic, and medieval sources, including an intensive study of Aquinas on the mystery of God and the Trinitarian persons. Modern theological themes are also considered: analogical knowledge of God, immanent Trinity and the economy, modern challenges to knowledge of God and reconsiderations of classical divine attributes. There is also reflection on the Trinity and the spiritual life as well as Christian preaching and catechetical teaching of the doctrine of God.

The module introduces different approaches in the history of theology and in current systematic theology to the doctrine of the person and work of the Holy Spirit and the doctrine of the church. Within the broader Trinitarian framework, this module focuses on questions regarding the work of the Holy Spirit, the Trinity from a pneumatological perspective.

A survey course on the Orthodox Christian Tradition, from the beginnings to the modern world. The course will embrace the history, theology, and culture of this distinctive Christian tradition. It will explore the early Church, Byzantine, and post-Byzantine periods with particular focus on the `Greek` dimension of Orthodoxy. The Orthodox Church has an extraordinary history and remains a salutary challenge to contemporary modes of thinking and acting. This course offers an opportunity to delve deeply into this ancient yet eternally relevant expression of Christianity.

The course will not assume prior knowledge of Islam, and offers students both an introduction to Islam and also the opportunity to reflect on the relationship between Islam and Christianity. It will cover the origins of Islam and the central religious ideas and practices of the Islamic tradition, especially as these bear on Islamic attitudes to Christianity. Central to the course will be a concern to compare and contrast Islamic and Christian doctrines and practices. The recent publication Muslims Ask, Christians Answer by Christian Troll SJ, a leading Catholic scholar of Islam, together with other works such as Kenneth Cragg's The Call of the Minaret, will be constant reference points that will enable students to explore Christian theological responses to the challenges posed by Islam to Christian doctrine. The differences between Christian (and especially Catholic) teaching and Muslim beliefs will be considered on a number of topics, including Prophecy, Scripture, Revelation, the nature of God, the human condition, prayer, faith and society. A mosque-visit and possibly other relevant local visits will be organized.

This unit introduces students to the kinds of questions that arise concerning the person, life, work and significance of Jesus Christ. It considers answers offered in the Christian tradition and the present state of Christological discussion. It will cover the Jesus tradition in the New Testament, some types of New Testament Christology, the question of the historical Jesus, controversies in the early church and at the time of the Reformation, and a survey of contemporary Christological scholarship.

In the context of the contemporary world, this unit seeks to develop an understanding of the biblical view of humanity as created and in a relationship to God, a relationship that is broken by sin/alienation and renewed through the person and work of Christ. It explores such issues as the creation of human beings in the image of God, nature and grace, the significance of Jesus Christ as the New Adam. It will also consider the mutual implications of a Christian anthropology and the findings of the human and social sciences as these bear upon such contemporary questions as humankind's relationship to political life, to the environment, and the equality of the sexes.

This course provides a systematic historical study of God's self-communication (grace) and the deprivation of this grace due to original sin. It explores the paradox of human existence: the necessity of God and the reality that grace is a free gift. The course follows a historical framework, covering the Old Testament, New Testament, Patristic period, major theological councils, and debates, extending through Vatican II and the post-conciliar era. The course establishes the foundation for religion teachers to enable students to understand human beings and themselves through the specific anthropology that arises from faith.

A study of the following topics: - The existence of God - Religion or Religions - Revelation and Discovery - Science and Religion: Enemies or Allies?

This course will look at the development of the doctrines of sin, grace and free will through the history of the church. Students will gain an understanding of the ways in which the church has understood these doctrines and their interrelationship from the created order through the Fall to Justification and Redemption. The course will also help students process complex arguments regarding freedom of the will and determinism.

This course will look at the development of thought on the person of the Holy Spirit from the beginning of the church through to today. It will both examine debates about who the Holy Spirit is in relationship to the Father and the Son, as well as looking at the experience of the Holy Spirit in the church and in the lives of individual Christians.

This course explores the history of Christian experience in the Holy Land, with a focus on Christian relationships with Jews and Muslims. We will focus on the theme of the Church's identity in the world from its biblical roots to the multiplicity of contemporary understandings. In addition to discussing how Christians have engaged questions of identity and vocation in and for this context through the centuries, we will address two primary questions. First, how do Jews, Christians, and Muslims articulate their relationship with the Holy Land, especially Jerusalem? Second, how have Christians approached relations with Jews and Muslims, from the First Century through the Byzantine, Medieval, Reformation, modern, and post-Shoah eras? Throughout the course, students will be encouraged to consider how different conceptions of history, relationship to the land, and theologies of interfaith relations shape approach to contemporary political questions. Additional research, presentation and research paper required at the higher level

"The module examines the variety of ways through which the Gospels explore the identity of Jesus: Jesus is the Son of Man, Logos, Lord, the New Temple, the one who through whom the Spirit of God is poured out upon humankind. In the following centuries the Christological exploration continued with extraordinary passion and acuity, often fuelled by bitter controversy. The module will study these developments which culminate in the text of the Council of Chalcedon, always keeping in view how much was at stake, including the political identity of the protagonists. In the Catholic tradition the Conciliar definitions are normative, not in the sense that the matter is closed but in the sense that further explorations cannot be authentic if they are contradictory. Contemporary Catholic Christologies are studied. Particular attention is given to the Christology expressed at the Second Vatican Council, in documents such as Gaudium et Spes (no 24) and the ecclesiology that mirrors it in Lumen Gentium. In the New Testament the identity and the significance of Jesus is bound up with the presence of the Holy Spirit. Accordingly a study of Christology leads to a study of the theology of the Holy Spirit. This is also a study of the birth of a hope that endures and that leads to commitments that endure even when circumstances seem to invite despair. "

This module studies what it means to be human from the perspective of theology. The study will continue to narrate the story of the human as imago Dei, at once enmeshed in a story of deep seated human alienation. In the Western tradition grace became a key concept in the articulation of the interplay of divine and human in history. This module studies its deployment from the time of Reformation. The vocabulary of grace is redeployed, refashioned, argued over, and refined over the eras. Among many others there are breakthrough theologies of grace articulated by Luther, Trent, Henri de Lubac and Rahner. Perspectives on graced desire and graced bodiliness will be seen as foundational to Catholic thinking on sexuality, justice, and the dignity of human life.

This module will explore historical and contemporary perspectives on what might best be termed 'the mystery of God'. The module will begin with an exploration of God as one, the God revealed to Israel, as recounted in the Book of Exodus, and then continue to a consideration of God: One and Three. The Christian understanding of God as Trinity emerges from the Christology of the New Testament. The module will examine the development in understanding of God as Trinity in the Patristic era, most notably in the texts of the early Councils of the Church, and culminating with the formation of the needs. The trinitarian theologies of some major theologians in the Western tradition, particularly Augustine and Aquinas, will be examined, and the distinct path taken by the Eastern tradition sketched .The rift between Catholicism and Orthodoxy over the filioque clause will be studied, and accompanied by the contemporary ecumenical discussions of it. The work of a number of contemporary theologians, whose work has contributed significantly to the renewal of trinitarian theology in a way that is pastorally enriching, ecumenically sensitive and facilitating of inter-religious dialogue, will form an important part of the course.

The module begins with the origins of the self-understanding of Church in the New Testament, and its antecedent history in the Hebrew Bible. It then outlines some of the developments that have taken place over the last 2,000 years. Loyola Institute 47 Next there is a careful study of key texts in contemporary Catholic selfunderstanding, as articulated in the documents of the Second Vatican Council, principally Lumen Gentium, studied with and alongside other key texts have have direct bearing on ecclesiology, 'Ad Gentes Divinitus', 'Unitatis Redintegratio', and 'Orientalium Ecclesiarum'. The module studies some of the contested issues in Church governance today; the relation between Papal primacy and Episcopal sacramentality and the related theological issue of the relation between local Church and universal Church, the issue of in Church governance and ministry, and the contested issues in the theology of the magisterium. Catholicity's unity in diversity is carefully studied as the communion of Churches with diverse liturgical rites and canonical arrangements.

This course aims to introduce participants to some of the many different dimensions in thinking about Jesus Christ that have developed over the centuries since Christianity began. It focuses on the Person of Christ or Christology as it developed particularly through the period of the first Seven Ecumenical Councils and then more generally through the period of the Great Schism, the Reformation and up to Vatican 11. Different facets of Christology, the Councils and particular Churches will be considered. The course is designed to introduce and familiarise students with concepts and doctrines that came to form Christian orthodox thinking in the early centuries and which have remained central ever since. The course begins with a consideration of the New Testament roots of Christology and some early developments. It then progresses through each of the major Councils (325-787) following the various Christological controversies that gave rise to them. It looks at some of the key personalities involved, what went on at the Councils, what the issues were, what the outcome was in each case and what difference it made. Students will develop a sense of the part each Council came to play in later Councils. They will also see how the Councils continue to have a significant role in Church identities today. Wider elements such as the Trinitarian context of Christology, the place of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary will also feature. Students will have chance to consider the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. In relation to the seventh Council (Nicaea 11) there will be an exposition and discussion of icons and the Iconoclasm controversy. All this will introduce students to the beginnings, development and significance of the conciliar tradition in the Churches. The course enables students to see how the notion that Jesus was both human and divine grew and developed. This will provide a fundamental sense of the importance of the Incarnation to Christian faith. The course will expose and discuss what Incarnation is about and why it forms a central element in Christian faith, life and worship. Students will be encouraged to think critically about the issues and also helped to see the importance of those issues for faith and belief. The course also focuses on the various Churches that emerged during the controversies dealt with by the Councils. The focus will be on Churches that have a significant history relating to the Councils and for whom the Councils are still important today. These are the various Orthodox Churches, the Catholic Churches (including Eastern Catholic) and the Reformed Churches. The origins of the Church of England or Anglican Church will also be included. Students will emerge with a 'map' of the major denominations and their pedigree in the various Councils. The different Christologies will remain central throughout.

This module focuses on church and theology history from the Early Church to the High Middle Ages. We will look at important figures, doctrines and currents of this period, asking as to the church historical significance for our time. The underlying assumption of this module is that a critical engagement with the past is very important for dealing with the challenges facing the church and society today.

Origin, characteristics and contemporary emergencies of reflection on the mystery of God. The revelation of God triune in the historical-saving economy. The elaboration of the Trinitarian dogma. Systematic reflection on the mystery of the living God. Trinity and life. Themes and perspectives of contemporary Trinitarian theology.

This course is focused on God, his revelation, and his work in history from the Latin American theological perspective. Latin America's theological thinking emphasizes that the transmission of the Christian message should not only take into account fidelity to the revelation of God but needs also to consider another theological place, that of the peoples of the continent, which makes possible an experience of God. Therefore, this course will examine the foundations and features of Latin American theology in dialogue with the Latin American/Chilean context. This course includes a learning service methodology to encourage a learning process based on experience, oriented towards applying the class contents through services developed with communities. The service will be in the población La Bandera, Santiago, at the "Jesús Señor de la Vida" parish. In the "Jesús Señor de la Vida" parish students will work in groups to create and run projects to solve particular needs and challenges of the community. Students will carry out the service project, and they will commit to attending the events and making diagnoses regarding the community's needs. Therefore, it is expected that, at the end of the project, students will be able to understand the different elements and circumstances behind the community's needs and understand the way theology has been developed in the region.

In his encyclical on the environment, Laudato si, Pope Francis wrote that "more than in ideas or concepts as such, I am interested in how such a spirituality [an ecological spirituality] can motivate us to a more passionate concern for the protection of our world. A commitment this lofty cannot be sustained by doctrine alone, without a spirituality capable of inspiring us, without an "interior impulse which encourages, motivates, nourishes and gives meaning to our individual and communal activity." This course will explore the resources for such a "contemplative ecology" from both Christian writers and non-Christian ones, with a focus on the United States. It aims to be integrative in nature, covering works in theology and Christian spirituality, but also from the genres of nature-writing, poetry and film, and an experiential component. A principal question will be how considering the natural world by contemplative practices complements using the lenses of science and engineering. The course concludes with a close reading of sections of Pope Francis's Laudato si and Querida Amazonia, enriched by the consideration of resources unearthed earlier in the course. Two short papers and a final exam, as well as a journal reflecting on our theme against the background of the beautiful natural landscapes of Ireland

The aim of this module is to investigate the historical origins of the idea of Christ in the worship of the first Christian communities and the developments in the theological understanding of his person and his work of redemption across all eras and geographies. Drawing on primary sources, critical scholarship, ritual studies and visual art, the course will devise a historical and theological framework in which to assess theoretical presuppositions and consequences of different interpretations of the person and work of Christ through the ages. The relationship of various Christologies to current ethical issues, such as ecology, human rights, extreme poverty and anti-capitalism will be explored. The class is co-taught and capped at 16 students.

In the wake of the Holocaust, the Catholic Church put its relationship with the Jewish people on a new footing with the declaration Nostra Aetate, wherein the Church calls to mind "the bond that spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham's stock." In this course we will explore the nature of this bond, and put into practice the call to dialogue that, according to Nostra Aetate, follows from it. And we will do so in a place uniquely suited to these tasks: the Jerusalem Global Gateway. The substantive goals of this course are three. First, we will study what Christians have thought, and what Christianity—especially Catholicism—has taught across the centuries about Jews and Judaism, and about the relationship between the Church and its Jewish roots. Second, we will learn about the teachings and practices of Judaism, from the early Christian centuries to today, and engage in comparison between Christian and Jewish theology. Third, we will meet with Jewish and Christian thinkers and leaders in Israel and Palestine to learn about Jewish life and Jewish-Christian dialogue today.

Cosmology traces developments in the mythological and natural-scientific study of the universe in its complex history. This module presents these developments as they have been interpreted from biblical, theological and philosophical perspectives and traces how they conflicted or converged with cosmologies from the natural sciences particularly since the 16th century. It explores how specific cosmologies in-astronomy, thermodynamics, emerging universe models, evolutionary theory and in the return to narrative in the natural sciences- impact on theology, science, culture. This includes implications for anthropology: the human person as created in the image of God (imago Dei); as embodied and free, contingent and subject to frailty and failure ('sin'); as steward of creation; and inhabitant of the earthly cosmopolis.

This class examines the human being insofar as it is related to God as his creature. Christian anthropology is part of the dogmatic theology of creation, and so lays the foundation for moral theology and spirituality in their consideration of how this creature makes its journey to God.

In this course, students will discover the inter-relationship between theology and the arts, with a specific focus on the orientation of the arts toward worship. The course will consist of three parts. In the first part, students will discover major questions raised in the field of theological aesthetics. In the second part, students will look closely at the role of the body and materiality in Christian worship. In the third part, students will contemplate the inter-relationship between theology, worship, and the arts through attending to painting, poetry, music, sculpture, stained glass windows, architecture, and sermons. This intensive course will consist of asynchronous lectures delivered via video, as well as weekly blogs dealing with the material. Optional Zoom chats will be set up each week at various times (both in the morning and the evening) so that students may ask questions related to the material. The final exam will consist of analyzing 10 pieces of art used in worship, examining how these pieces of art enable the human person to locate oneself in the narrative of salvation.

Persona y Trascendencia forms students through foundation, study, and reflection on the transcendent nature of human life through presenting to them the question of the transcendent and reason's answer to it, the problem of evil, and the different postures to the Absolute (with a focus on Christianity as a plausible proposal).

This is the pre-course for the Theology Summer course taking place in Jerusalem: THEO 24841 Church of All Nations

This 1-credit course contemplates the saints via an introduction to their miracles. Students are required to attend the ever-popular Saturdays with the Saints lecture series on the six home football game Saturdays. The lectures will cover a variety of miracles and the saints associated with them, such as the healing miracles at Lourdes, the mystical wounds of stigmatists, the bodies of the incorrupt, martyrs, and even "saints that flew." In addition to the six Saturdays with the Saints lectures, students will attend an introductory class meeting before the first lecture and a final "retreat" once the series has ended for the season.

This one-credit course explores the relationship between the lives of the saints and Catholic social teaching. It focuses on the ways the infused virtues, especially love of God, spills over into an outward dynamic of love of neighbor. The first two classes focus on developing a theology of service and social action beginning with the New Testament figures of Mary, Stephen, and the apostle John, and continuing with key saints throughout the ages, such ss Martin of Tours, Thomas Becket, Francis of Assisi, and Vincent de Paul. Then turns to modern day figures such as Franz Jagerstatter Oscar Romero, Dorothy Day, and the martyred Trappists monks of Algeria. Requirements will be limited to journaling on sainthood and saints, and joining with others for a group project to be presented to the class in the final class meetings.

Study, rehearsal, and performance of sacred choral music of high quality from plainchant through music composed in the 21st century. Membership in the 65-voice SATB ensemble is by audition and limited to undergraduate and graduate students. The choir sings each Sunday at the 10:00 a. m. Solemn Mass at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, for Sunday evening vespers, and at special University liturgies and concerts throughout the year.

The University of Notre Dame Women's Liturgical Choir, under the direction of Andrew McShane, is a group of approximately 60 women who lead the liturgical music for the Saturday 5 p.m. Vigil Mass in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. The Women's Liturgical Choir is also heard at Sunday Vespers, weddings, Junior Parent's Weekend, Advent lessons, and carols and other special University liturgies. Each spring semester, the choir tours within the United States, and at the end of the academic year presents a concert of sacred music at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. The repertoire of the Women's Liturgical Choir includes chant, renaissance polyphony, and music from the 18th through 20th centuries. Rehearsals are held on Monday and Wednesday evenings from 5 to 6:30 p.m. and on Saturday's from 4 to 5 p.m. in Room 329 of the Coleman-Morse Center. If you are a female student, staff, or faculty member from the Notre Dame, St. Mary's or Holy Cross family and are interested in joining the choir, please contact Andrew McShane at 1-7800 or e-mail mcshane.1@nd. edu.

Work with the folk choir, which continues to build the repertoire for Catholic school use. Class meets for seven weeks. (Second summer elective)

Study, rehearsal, and performance of gospel music for liturgical purposes.

"Facilitating Growth in Faith" serves as a practicum allowing the Mentors in Faith from the NDVision Summer Program to reflect theologically on their catechetical ministry with high school students during each of four, one-week sessions. As such, this course will complete the educational objectives begun in Theology 30018. As a field education integrative seminar, this course will include interactive lectures, small group discussion sessions, and case study work on topics having to do with mentoring others in their personal and communal growth in faith and in their awareness of how to live their Christian vocations. Related theological topics include Christological and pneumatological perspectives on discipleship, grace, conversion, evil and human suffering, prayer, living the sacramental/liturgical life of the Church, becoming the Body of Christ, discerning the presence and action of God in our lives, and giving witness to faith in service and justice.

This course is designed to aid Notre Dame Vision Mentors in cultivating the dispositions, skills, and behaviors that faithfully express God's pedagogy-a pedagogy that will lead Mentors to genuinely attend to and share in the real situations and experiences of those to whom they minister for the sake of guiding them towards further growth and openness to grace.

This Spring’s 1-credit “book club” focuses on two works by the English novelist Graham Greene: “The Power and the Glory” (1940) and “The End of the Affair” (1951). As one critic remarked, Greene’s was an “uneasy Catholicism.” His novels present “a landscape filled with lonely, pathetic, and sometimes malevolent characters [who] live as exiles or on the extreme edges of society, conscious of their failure and their betrayals of one another and, often, of their faith in God.” And yet, such “Failure is,” paradoxically, “the one legitimate form of victory in Greene's Novels” for it is in such moments that they meet Him who emptied himself for our sakes and who became poor that we might become rich. As one character confesses, “You were there, teaching us to squander, like You taught the rich man, so that one day we might have nothing left except this love of You.” I hope you’ll join us as we explore themes of grace, mercy, hope, and forgiveness in these wonderful novels.

This one-credit offering is a supplement to Scripture Study Groups (see section notes). Taken together, these offerings invite students to engage in weekly small-group Scripture Study as well as a series of faculty conversations: e.g. “Old and New Testaments,” “Scripture and Church,” and "The Truthfulness of Scripture" and other gatherings.

Everyone is welcome to join a Scripture study group. Participating students will be supplied with a volume of the Navarre Commentary Series and be asked to join their peers each week for one-hour. Anyone who, in addition, wishes to earn 1-credit by supplementing this Scripture Study with a series of "faculty conversations" is welcome to enroll in Theo 30101, "Revelation and Reading Well."

Has God "called me from the womb" and "named my name" (Isa. 49:1)? How can I know God's will for my life, recognize and respond to God's call? What choices do I face and how am I to be guided in making them? What is included in the process of my vocation (sex, talents, education, profession, relationships, circumstances, dreams and desires)? This course combines three elements: (1) an introduction into forms of prayer conducive to discernment, (2) the reading and discussion of essays about vocation and discernment, and (3) interviews with women who have discerned (and continue to discern) their personal vocations. The course is designed to focus on vocations (lay and religious) open to women.

This course entails attending the Saturdays with the Saints lecture series (Fall 2023 Theme: "The Titles of Mary"), and a retreat at the end of the "season."

This one credit course will examine Augustine's Confessions during the class sessions. The only writing for the course will be the student's own spiritual autobiography essay.

This 1-credit course contemplates the saints via the ever-popular Saturdays with the Saints lecture series offered on the six home football game Saturdays. The lectures will address a selection of saints following a certain theme (TBD for 2025). In addition to the six Saturdays with the Saints lectures, students will attend an introductory class meeting before the first lecture and a final retreat once the series has ended for the season.

On August 15, 1988, John Paul II released his Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem, On the Dignity and Vocation of Women. This title implies that there is a specific "dignity and vocation" of men as well, although there has been no encyclical to date on that topic. This course sets as its objective to discover and to articulate what such an encyclical might contain, that is, what the dignity and vocation of men might be from a Catholic theological perspective. We will draw on both ancient and contemporary sources in philosophy and theology, evidence from Scripture, as well as from sociological and narrative literature that may aid us in our quest. The course will close with a theological consideration of St. Joseph from Scripture and Tradition, as the exemplar of the "dignity and vocation" of men, in order to offer a recapitulation of the themes of the whole semester.

Rhythms of Faith (RoF) is an innovative theology course for undergraduates at the University of Notre Dame. Whereas many theology courses invite engagement with theological ideas through critical essay-writing, students in RoF will be trained to grapple with liturgy and music through the creative process, i.e., by working with classmates to produce new works of art: texts and songs designed to be sung in community. By drawing on the centuries-old tradition of singing Psalms and Canticles, RoF will equip students with the conceptual framework for bringing their own experiences, ideas, and diverse musical backgrounds into creative conversation with liturgy and prayer. This class is for anyone, regardless of their musical training or proclivity–the requisite singing and song-writing skills will be taught throughout the course. Completing the group projects in RoF will allow students to experience first-hand the process of integrating their intellectual knowledge of religion with embodied practice. Through this community-based creative process, students can experience the transformation of growing into a community of trust–one of vulnerability, interdependence, love, and celebration–and as a result, growing to constructively engage their faith with their whole selves for a lifetime ahead.

In the wake of the Reformation-era's massive upheavals came the greatest flowering of devotional poetry in the English language. This body of literature offers its readers the opportunity to explore questions pertaining broadly to the study of lyric and to the study of the relationships between religion and literature. Early modern devotional poetry oscillates between eros and agape, private and communal modes of expression, shame and pride, doubt and faith, evanescence and transcendence, mutability and permanence, success and failure, and agency and helpless passivity. It experiments with gender, language, form, meter, voice, song, and address. We'll follow devotional poets through their many oscillations and turns by combining careful close reading of the poetry with the study of relevant historical, aesthetic, and theological contexts. You'll learn to read lyric poetry skillfully and sensitively, to think carefully about relationships between lyric and religion, and to write incisively and persuasively about lyric. Authors we'll read may include Thomas Brampton, Richard Maidstone, Francesco Petrarca (in translation), Sir Thomas Wyatt, Anne Locke, Mary Sidney, Sir Philip Sidney, St. Robert Southwell, S.J., Henry Constable, Fulke Greville, Edmund Spenser, John Donne, George Herbert, Robert Herrick, Henry Vaughan, Richard Crashaw, John Milton, and the great hymn writer Isaac Watts.

What does mental health have to do with faith? And, how do faith and spirituality relate to mental health? Moreover, what does this mean for one’s life, practically speaking? This course will be co-taught by Beth Hlabse of the Fiat Institute on Faith and Mental Health and Nancy Michael of Neuroscience and Behavior, and cross listed between Neuroscience & Behavior and Theology. By bridging the disciplines of theology, psychology, and neuroscience, the course provides a framework for students to consider central questions of self, including the etiology of mental illness, the meaning of suffering, conceptions of healing, and the importance of relationship to human flourishing. Through both conceptual and practical integration, students are invited to reflect on the intersection of faith and mental health within their own lives. The differential crosslist provides students the opportunity to explore aspects of nervous system function in the context of faith and mental health, while supporting holistic interdisciplinary discussion with Theology.

Relationships are critical to our wellbeing as people. Today, however, adolescents and adults report increased levels of loneliness—a concerning statistic given that loneliness is a risk factor for both physical and mental illnesses. This course considers the impact of relationships on mental health through neuroscientific and theological perspectives, offering an integrative framework through which students will examine the potential of relationships to both wound and heal. As a community-engaged seminar, the course provides students with opportunities to encounter community members who live with serious mental illness. Throughout the term, students will share in dialogue with the members and staff of the Clubhouse of St. Joseph County—a program that promotes the recovery of adults living with mental illness by providing a welcoming community, meaningful work, and supported employment. In-class seminar discussions will address the cultural, personal, and environmental factors that exacerbate experiences of loneliness among those with serious mental illness. The class will culminate with students’ identification of means to strengthen supportive relationships, particularly among those with mental illness, following the principles of solidarity and the common good.

The point of this course is that the Eucharist—the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ—commits us to work for justice and peace for the poor, workers, the unborn, immigrants, refugees, and the entire earth. The course is built around five public lectures with Drs. Clemens Sedmak, Margaret Pfeil, William Cavanaugh, Fr. Daniel Groody, C.S.C., and Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas. These public lectures will be followed by personal conversations with the class. The first class meets on Wednesday, January 17 (4:30-5:30) and five more Wednesdays : January 31, February 14, February 28, March 20, and April 17. The public lectures begin at 4:30, followed by Q & A, and class conversations conclude by 7:00. Dinner (pizza, salads, cookies, drinks) will be served. Requirements for this course include one-page responses to the lectures and one final reflection essay, oral conversation, or group discussion to be arranged with the instructor.

C.S. Lewis is one of the great apologists of the Christian faith; in other words, he makes central Christian teachings accessible to non-believers in accessible terms, while also buttressing the faith of believers. This course deploys a selection of works from C.S. Lewis to explore central beliefs of the Christian faith, with particular attention to ways people live that reflect (or contradict) those faith commitments. The anchors of the course, consonant with the required assignments, are the books Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce, complemented by selections from other books and essays. The ultimate goal of this course is not a thorough command of Lewis’ life and works; rather, the course relies on Lewis’ writings to help students probe the mysteries of God and evil, and virtue and vice.

In this course, we examine the various moral and theological justifications that individual believers and religious groups have invoked in support of the use of lethal violence, especially against innocent persons, to advance specific political ends. To do so, we will investigate the politics, ideology, and theology that animated the "terror" campaigns waged by the Irish Republican Army (1916-1922), the Provisional Irish Republican Army (1969-1997), Al-Qaeda (1988-), and ISIS (1999-). Throughout the course, we ask how, and to what extent, the religious beliefs or ideals of these groups influenced, supported, or restrained the kind of "violence" they adopted in pursuit of their stated political objectives. To provide an informed answer to this question, we will engage with some of the more influential texts (scriptural, philosophical, and theological) that have shaped Muslim and Christian perspectives on the moral justifications and limits of coordinated campaigns of lethal violence.

The journeys of human beings into space have captivated the imagination but have also raised significant ethical issues. As the human presence in space for research, recreation, commerce, and possible future habitation becomes more frequent and the goals of space exploration more clear, the urgency of addressing the ethical issues surrounding the human presence in space has also increased. This course begins with an examination of theological understandings of the origin and meaning of the cosmos across a number of different religious traditions, with a particular focus on Christian theological account of creation. The second part of the course reviews the various ways that human beings have approached and are considering the human presence in space, including lunar exploration, commercial exploitation, and possible habitation. The third part of the course considers the ethical issues associated with space commerce, and the course concludes with a comparison between past sublunary colonizations and as-yet-unrealized space colonizations.

This course will examine how the very concept of being human has been transformed and confused over the last two hundred years. Beginning with a discussion of the themes set forth in C. S. Lewis’s book, "The Abolition of Man," the course will engage with a variety of texts from the nineteenth century onwards and reflect upon the impact of (and connections between) material conditions (e.g. technology) and philosophical ideas (e.g., transhumanism) on the deep questions of what it means to be a human being. It will also reflect upon how Christianity is challenged by these but also offers a cogent response.

Global Catholicism will explore the past, present, and future of the Catholic Church from a variety of perspectives. The largest and oldest transnational organization in the world, the Catholic Church also embodies the people of God and the Body of Christ. It therefore lends itself to analysis from many academic disciplines, and, in this course, priority will be given to insights from theology and history, though with reference to other fields such as art history, literature, and the social sciences. Besides exploring the university’s art and archival collections, readings thus will include a novel, a memoir, primary sources both historical and theological, as well as analyses of pertinent issues and episodes that feature historical, theological, sociological, and anthropological approaches. There will also be a visit to Chicago’s Catholic parishes that reflect the Church’s global reach. Besides participation and engagement in class meetings, course requirements include regular brief responses to assigned readings, several group oral reports, and a mid-term and final exam. In addition, students will also prepare a final project that will seek to draw upon historical and theological reasoning to address a contemporary issue of importance for the Catholic Church, proposing a response to the issue from the perspective of a church leader (for example, a bishop, head of religious congregation, Catholic university president, etc.)

This course studies the major themes of Islamic theology. It starts from the early debates concerned with Muslim views of God, the nature of the Quran, the prophethood of Muhammad and ends with current debates about the status of Islamic law (sharia). It also discusses divine vs. human will, the role of politics in Muslim view of salvation and the limits of rationality. It traces how these topics moved from simple formulae to complex concepts due to sociopolitical controversies and conditions, whether they were sectarian or interreligious conflicts, crises of legitimacy, colonialism or modernity. The arguments of various schools are presented, and translated excerpts from prominent theologians are studied. As we read these texts we ask ourselves a number of questions. For example, what alternatives were possible for theologians other than what later became standard Muslim doctrines? What is the importance of imagination in the creation of these theological systems? Did modern Muslim theologians have better options to handle ancient traditions that most of them ended up adopting? Do some modern Muslim theologians have an alternative view to offer? The course is meant to help students see the problems of theology from an Islamic viewpoint that may deepen their understanding of wider

How has religion shaped American culture and politics? According to one story we tell, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution declared the separation of church and state, but that wall of separation has always been more porous than many have expected–or desired. And it never separated religion from American culture. Indeed, some historians argue that the separation of church and state spurred Americans to become even more religious in their daily lives and in public culture. And the United States has become one of the most devout–and most religiously diverse–countries in the modern world. Religious people, ideas, and practices have shaped how Americans understand politics, identity, race, gender and sexuality, immigration, community, democracy, and freedom. Religion animates our visual art, literature, music, and film. It moves people to take up arms against perceived enemies and to call for nonviolent civil disobedience. It provides moral comfort and spiritual frustration in turn. Thinking across American history and culture, this course asks how we ought to understand the role of religion in the United States. We will read leading scholarship in the study of U.S. religion alongside a broad range of historical and contemporary sources, including material culture and film. Students will also have the opportunity to pursue their own research on topics that interest them.

In this course, we will interpret Notre Dame-an institution often defined as America's only truly national University-from the perspective of American studies. Notre Dame--much like America--can be defined and understood in multiple ways: as a physical location, as social and institutional world, and as an imaginary. We will explore Notre Dame from its pre-history as the homeland of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, to its founding as a missionary outpost of the European Catholic Church, through its evolution during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, through its present profile as a top-tier research university and the nation's premier Catholic educational institution. We will focus not only on obvious subjects such as Catholicism and football but also on as other key topics and themes in American studies that intersect with Notre Dame's story in the past and present. This course is designed to fulfill the History and CAD requirements.

This Integration course, drawing on methods and insights from history, systematic theology, and philosophy, examines the complex ways in which Catholic tradition navigates both continuity and change. Through historical case studies and theological analyses, students will explore the possible meanings of "tradition" and how it might inform both doctrinal and Scriptural interpretation. In doing so, the course will advance a robust understanding of tradition as a living, continual engagement with the past. "Catholicism & Tradition" serves as a gateway to a new student and faculty group, the “Newman Seminar” (named in honor of St. John Henry Cardinal Newman, one of the most influential expositors of the development of doctrine in the modern Church), in which members will gather regularly to learn about and discuss challenging topics in contemporary Catholic theology. To register for the course, students must complete a short application (see Section Notes).

Though William Faulkner is one of the most significant and critically scrutinized novelists of the 20th century, both the author and his work remain shrouded in mystery. How did this seemingly provincial writer from the rural American South, with almost no formal education, come to be one of the most internationally influential, acclaimed, and debated writers of the 20th century? Why do his morbid and exhaustingly difficult stories continue to inspire critical interest with each new generation of readers? What questions and concerns animated his radically experimental imagination? Of all the mysteries that continue to haunt this vast critical legacy, there is perhaps none more intractable than the matter of religion. Though Faulkner's novels are charged with biblical references and elaborate Christian symbolism there is no scholarly consensus as to the significance and function of these disorienting and often grotesque biblical allusions, or even whether the fiction is grappling with any distinctly religious questions or concerns. Though some theologically minded critics, such as Thomas Merton, have heralded Faulkner’s fiction as biblically prophetic, there are others who interpret his work as fundamentally secular, deeply critical of religion, and even nihilistic. This course will explore the matter of Faulkner and Religion by focusing on the influence of the Christian and Hebrew scriptures on several short stories, public addresses, and major works. The course will not only provide an opportunity for deep reflection on the relationship between theology and literature—metaphysics and modernism—but also the opportunity to engage one of the most enduring, challenging, and rewarding novelists of the 20th century.

This course engages with the discipline of gender studies from a Catholic theological perspective. The work of Catholic philosopher Prudence Allen provides the backdrop of the course, namely her framework for categorizing different approaches to conceptualizing the sexes based on the criteria of equal dignity and meaningful difference. We will use (and modify) this basic schema in considering various theological, philosophical, and literary approaches to the nature and relationality of the sexes, from ancient cosmologies and scripture to the theories that arise in the era of modern feminism. The course will culminate by considering questions and controversies about men and women in our current cultural context, both within the Church and across society as a whole.

This 1-credit course is designed to complement a student’s attendance at the 1.5 day teaching conference, ‘What is an Organ?’ co-sponsored by the College of Science and the Science and Religion Initiative of the McGrath Institute for Church Life. Students will learn of key concepts in anatomy related to the biological nature and purpose of organs - both as a structure in their own right and as part of an integrated system, will become familiar with key theological ideas related to our creation imago Dei, the concept of purpose both with respect to its physical and eschatalogical components, and will develop a holistic understanding of the relationship between faith/reason, science/religion, generally, and the relationship between our scientific concept of the human body (i.e. organs, organ system)/theological understanding of purpose, specifically.

What does it mean to practice Marian devotion? What could it mean to love, honor, or place confidence in the woman whose image stands atop the golden dome? This course provides an introduction to Marian devotion by drawing upon the historical treasury of poems, prayers, sermons, and spiritual writings written by men and women of the Holy Cross and found in student, faculty, and alumni publications. With Bl. Basil Moreau, founder of the Holy Cross, students will contemplate the sorrows of Our Lady and her pondering, Immaculate Heart. They will reflect, with G.K. Chesterton, visiting professor in 1930, on how the Queen of Sorrows “has brought joy upon the earth.” They will read the charge of St. Mary’s president, Sr. Madeleva Wolff, to graduates: “You can take her to the world estranged from her. It has no greater need.” The purpose of this course is to offer an opportunity for students to explore and reflect on Mary, devotional practices, and life under the golden mantle of Our Lady of the Dome.

This course will devote the first part of the semester to establishing an account of the historical roots of the current affordable/low-income housing crisis in the United States, paying particular attention to the local St. Joseph County context. It will also introduce students to the housing “continuum of care” in the City of South Bend, noting the various institutional and governmental agencies currently involved in addressing housing needs as well as the gaps in coverage, e.g., the need for a permanent low-barrier intake center and more permanent supportive housing (PSH). The second part of the course will involve constructive and innovative engagement as students collaborate on specific research projects introduced in the first part of the course. Students will have the opportunity to network with area housing agencies and local government entities as well as research best practices in other urban areas. During this segment of the course, students will engage with experts in the field, both virtually and in person. This work will lead into students’ constructive proposals for a concrete contribution to meeting the current low-income and supportive housing needs locally, regionally, and/or nationally. All these signs of the times will be held in conversation with the Catholic social tradition, exploring the concept of housing as a human right and duty in service of the common good. We will also use the CST concept of integral ecology to understand the social, economic, and ecological aspects of the current housing crisis, in conversation with Laudato si’, Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical.

The Notre Dame Basilica Schola is a liturgical choir and laboratory ensemble specializing in a broad range of unaccompanied sacred choral music. As a liturgical ensemble, it serves its members by helping them grow in their understanding of the interplay between Christian liturgical practices, theology, and sacred music. In addition to regularly singing for Sunday evening Vespers in the Basilica, the choir sings periodically for Masses, other special services, and concerts during the academic year. May be repeated for credit.

When people engage with art in museum settings, many feel that they don’t “get it” and that “getting it” requires a large amount of specialized and sometimes arcane art historical knowledge. While art historical facts can guide our thinking, enlighten our imaginations, and provide us with helpful frameworks for considering works of art, scholarly research and writing represents just one of many ways to engage with art in museums. One of the most fruitful and enriching ways to engage with works of art is through concentrated looking, contemplation, and prayer. In this “hands-on” course hosted at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art (we won’t actually be touching any art!), we will explore the spiritual dimension of art across the collection. Our practice will be supported by myriad theologians and holy figures such as Simone Weil, Thomas Merton, and St. John Paul II, just to name a few, who experienced the great fruits of sustained engagement with created things. Through this course, you will have the opportunity to not only learn more about the collection, but to deepen your own spiritual life through engagement with the works of art during this season of Lent.

Works of art and archaeological artifacts have represented rich windows into the historical understanding of the Church and theological movements across time. For centuries, the dialectic between the written word and visual culture has shaped systematic theology, liturgy, biblical interpretation, and tradition. This one-credit course, taught exclusively at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art and using works from the collection, will allow students a “hands-on” experience to cultivate their theological imaginations through guided viewings of original works of art. This class will engage with a wide variety of media and time periods, highlighting religious works from Rembrandt and Dürer prints, to Renaissance paintings, to modern and contemporary sculpture, and much more.

This course will begin with reading David Lancy’s work, The Anthropology of Childhood, in order to form a good intellectual background in this sub-discipline of anthropology. Then, at Notre Dame’s Shaw Center for Children and Families, students will participate in practicum through one hour of childcare a week of the children of single mothers in addiction recovery while the mothers are in addiction recovery group. The class will then arrange times to discuss the childcare in light of the anthropology of childhood.

The best way to come to know the saints is to actually practice praying and serving in the way the saints themselves prayed and served. The focus of this course is the prayer of particular saints, first in terms of learning how they prayed and why they prayed the way they did, and second in terms of actually practicing these forms of prayer as a deeper and more intimate form of study. Offered in conjunction with the Sullivan Undergraduate Saints Fellowship, this course will provide the undergraduate fellows with the opportunity to develop an understanding of prayer and holiness in general, alongside longer plunges into the prayer lives of at least four specific saints. The days and times for course meeting will be determined with the students in the course.

Immersion: Eight week summer service-learning placements. This three-credit course of the Summer Service Learning Program (SSLP) takes place before, during, and after student participation in the eight consecutive week summer immersion sponsored by the Center for Social Concerns and the Notre Dame Alumni Association. The goal of the course is to reflect on the meaning and dynamics of Christian service, compassion and Catholic social teaching through experiential learning, reading, writing and discussions. Writing assignments include journal assignments and a final paper. The course is completed during the first five weeks of fall semester and is graded Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory. Acceptance is based on the student's application and interview. Students are required to attend SSLP formation sessions once per week in the spring prior to leaving for their immersion. Session dates are listed on the course webpage. Students will also participate in two fall small group sessions and will sign up for a time of their choosing. Contact the Center for Social Concerns for more information. Apply online via the Center for Social Concerns website: http://socialconcerns.nd.edu/academic/. Please note, this course has extra required meeting times and/or events outside of the displayed meeting schedule. Please go to this courses designated webpage within the Center for Social Concerns website (http://socialconcerns.nd.edu/) for further details.

The Center for Social Concerns' International Summer Service Learning Program (ISSLP) has an 8-10 week summer international immersion taken the summer before the Fall class meets. This course seeks to challenge students who have domestic service-learning experiences to encounter international realities, and to provide them the opportunity to work with community members and grassroots groups working to address the needs of their communities. The learning goals of the course are to gain an understanding of the multi-dimensionality of global poverty, gain tools for social analysis to identify root causes of poverty, and examine the ways the social institution relates to the political, social, economic and demographic conditions of the larger society (host country) in order to address poverty. Students will gain knowledge and understanding of global social issues in light of Catholic Social Teaching specifically through the themes of Solidarity and Preferential Option for the Poor. Students will develop a global citizenship orientation and outlook while strengthening cross-cultural competencies. Academic requirements include a journal, reading and writing assignments during the summer months, six re-entry classes meetings and a final paper/project. Apply online via the Center for Social Concerns website: http://socialconcerns.nd.edu/academic/

This course is designed to introduce students to the cultural and social issues of the Appalachian region - its history, people, culture, challenges, and strengths - through study and experiential learning. The course also provides engagement with the people of Appalachia through a required immersion over Fall Break. The Appalachia Seminar utilizes a Catholic Social Tradition (CST) framework to build skills around social analysis, critical thinking, and theological reflection. Students examine the relationship between solidarity and service and consider how the Common Good is expressed in local communities across the region. This course has a fee.

U.S. health care policy and reform is the center of public debate and discussion in recent years. Furthermore, the Catholic social tradition invites persons of good will to pursue a health care system that raises the dignity of each person. This seminar invites participants to examine and assess our current and evolving healthcare system, explore the possibilities and direction of the future of U.S. healthcare, and investigate how modifications might move us toward a society that reflects care for the common good. In preparation, students will look at the complexities of integrating economics, policy, and health-related outcomes into a system that works toward the common good and especially toward those in poverty. Apply online via the Center for Social Concerns website: http://socialconcerns.nd.edu/social-concerns-seminars.

Solidarity and the City explores the principle and practice of solidarity in the context of U.S. cities. Students will examine the root causes of poverty and injustice in urban areas, will work on individual and group assignments that apply that learning to specific issues of justice, and will participate in a Spring Break immersion to a city to learn/work alongside partners engaging issues of particular importance in context.

Students are invited to experience the field of community organizing through engaging leaders from neighborhood organizations and faith communities who are actively confronting injustice and oppression. Students will analyze the contemporary situation of Midwest urban neighborhoods (Chicago, Indianapolis and South Bend), understand the role of churches influencing systems and structures, dialogue and build relationships with leaders, and participate in live social action campaigns. This experience and skillset will equip students to be agents of change by organizing for justice in their respective communities. This course requires participation in an immersion during the fall break.

The Bible as a revelation of God in human history. The transmission of the word of God: the concept of tradition and the formation of the biblical text in the history of Israel. The language and text of the TA and the NT. The concept of inspiration and its declination throughout the history of the Church. The formation of the canon. The principle of biblical truth, hermeneutics and the Bible in ecclesial life in the light of documents The interpretation of the Bible in the Church (PCB 1993), Verbum Domini (2010) and Inspiration and truth of Sacred Scripture (2014).

Seminar format: Study of meaning and significance of poverty in Latin America, from theological and social science perspective. Mandatory 2 credit field work component.

This class examines a system of Christian morality as it relates to the New and Old Testament, from the laws of creation and the 10 commandments given in Genesis and Exodus to the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels, as well as its evolution over time. We discuss not only from where morality systems are derived, but also their ability to apply universally and how they can be applied in our lives.

The purpose of the course is to provide a knowledge and a method of "reading" Greek myths of the Archaic and Classical periods in their cultural and historical context. The course among other things, will examine the nature of Greek myth and its representation in Greek art. It will also explore how the artistic representation of myth reflected social and religious institutions and practices; and finally it will investigate how myth is related to religion.

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the religious life of the Japanese people today. In a highly developed and cultured country, Shinto, Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, folk religions, and new religions co-exist in harmony. The course presents the history and development of religious thought in Japan.

Same as THEO 34708. Taught as 23020 in Nagoya. The purpose of this course is to introduce the student to the religious life of the Japanese people today. The first part of the course focuses on some of the recurrent themes in the history of religion in Japan, tracing the religious traditions and historical developments that have shaped the current religious situation. The second part of the course deals explicitly with contemporary religious movements and trends in Japan. Here comparisons are made with the current religious situation in other societies, in order to place the Japanese situation within the broader context of contemporary religious developments worldwide.

This course will integrate the experience of teaching in London Catholic schools with a reflection on practice informed by contemporary scholarship. Students who are successful in applying for placements with Catholic secondary schools in London will spend 10-15 hours per week on-site in their school, working with staff and students in a variety of ways. They will also meet weekly, as a class, to discuss their experiences and to explore the broader context of their experiences. Beginning with an introduction to the English Catholic school, its history and relationship with the State, the course will include: the Catholic school and the common good; teaching and learning in the UK tradition; controversy in the face of religious pluralism, secularisation and the question of the separation of Church and State; Catholic school ethos; spiritual capital and leadership of the Catholic school.

This class is taken by students undertaking a variety of internships in a number of Catholic, Protestant, and secular charitable organizations in London, such as CAFOD, The Winch, American International Church: The Soup Kitchen, Caritas, and Emmaus. Students will spend one and half days each week at their internship placement, and then meet together once each week for a short lecture and discussion, enabling them to consider their first-hand experiences in the context of the theology of Catholic Social Teaching, and develop their understanding of that theology in action.

This course will examine the history of Christianity from the 13th to the 20th century. Students will learn about the role of spirituality throughout the history of Christianity, as well as foundational figures, Saints, schools of thought, and cultural movements that shaped Christianity as we know it today. AU - Angers, France: This is a lecture based course taught in French. The lecture followed the explicit teachings of Canon Law to define what the sacrament of marriage means theologically and the practical rules surrounding it in reality. Therefore, we learned the cases in which the Church will define a marriage as sacramental, valid, or not recognize it and all the specific rules the Church follows, whether strict or requiring permission. The final in this class was a 5 page reflection and commentary paper based on an article discussing how the Church can counteract the growing number of marriage nullity cases.

The module introduces different approaches in the history of theology and in current systematic theology to the doctrine of the person and work of the Holy Spirit and the doctrine of the church. Within the broader Trinitarian framework, this module focuses on questions regarding the work of the Holy Spirit, the Trinity from a pneumatological perspective

This is a two-semester introductory course in biblical Hebrew; under normal circumstances, the student must complete the first to enroll in the second. The fall semester will be devoted to learning the grammar of biblical Hebrew. The spring semester will be divided into two parts. For the first six weeks we will finish and review the grammar. In the remaining part of the course we will read and translate texts from the Hebrew Bible, Qumran, and Rabbinic literature. The course will focus on developing reading and comprehension skills in biblical Hebrew through the study of biblical texts. In addition, students will learn how to use reference grammars, concordances, and apparatus to the Biblica Hebraica. The course encourages students to think about the grammatical forms and their implications for biblical interpretation.

This is the second of a two-semester introductory course in Biblical Hebrew; under normal circumstances, the student must complete the first in order to enroll in the second. In addition to the completion of Lambdin's elementary grammar, students are introduced to some (modified) Biblical texts.

The first semester of Intermediate Hebrew aims to complete and solidify students’ knowledge of the fundamentals of Biblical Hebrew grammar, to enlarge students’ store of Biblical Hebrew vocabulary, and to enable students to become fluent readers of classical Biblical Hebrew prose. Time-permitting, we will also broach the topics of Biblical Hebrew poetry and historical scholarship on the Hebrew Bible.

This fourth-semester course in biblical Hebrew will continue and build upon THEO 40004/60006. Our efforts will be focused on the preparation, oral reading, and translation of selected biblical passages, with an emphasis on rapid reading of large section of biblical prose. But time also will be spent continuing to review basic grammar as well as developing an appreciation of syntax and poetic structure. If time permits we will also read selections from the corpus of Hebrew inscriptions.

The course will focus on how the church musician lives out his or her baptism through the work of liturgical music.Sub-topics will include artistic creativity and musical tradition, the connection between worship and culture, and a Christian understanding of Beauty.

This course will offer students an introductory-level survey of the books of the Hebrew Bible, with emphasis placed on the holistic (i.e., theological, literary, and social-scientific) study of the history, literature, and religion of ancient Israel. The implications of selected texts in Christian and Jewish theological discourse will also be explored. Required course components include the major divisions of the Hebrew Bible (Pentateuch, Prophets, and Writings), and writing spans the following research-related genres (case studies, article reviews, journal, and critical notes). Fall only.

Beginning from Jesus's own engagement with the Hebrew Bible, this course considers the presentation and re‐presentation of divine immanence and royal or priestly hope in the successive life of the Scriptural text in the community of faith. In this relationship between text and tradition, we will trace a reciprocal relationship between the Scriptures and the Son of God throughout Law, Prophets and Writings.

This course will be a lecture course, supplemented by readings and discussion. The purpose of this course is to introduce the student to the major historical and exegetical problems involved in the quest for the historical Jesus, especially as pursued today in the wake of the so-called "Third Quest" (ca. 1970-2000). The course will move from initial definitions and concepts, through questions of sources and criteria, to consideration of selected sayings and deeds of Jesus that may reasonably be considered historical. The course will especially focus on the correct understanding of the criteria of "historicity" (or "authenticity"). Examples of material to which the criteria may be applied will be selected from the major areas historical of Jesus research: e.g., Jesus' relation to John the Baptist, Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom as future yet present, his realization of the kingdom through deeds of power (miracles) and table fellowship, the various levels or circles of followers (the crowds, the disciples, the Twelve), various competing groups (Pharisees, Sadducees), his teaching in relation to the Mosaic Law, the enigma (riddle-speech) of his parables, self-designation, final days, passion, and death. Rather than trying to cover large amounts of material, the emphasis will be on grasping the method of the quest, especially the understanding and application of the criteria of historicity.

This course will serve as an introduction to the ancient literary, historical, and theological circumstances that influenced the shape and content of the Hebrew Bible (or, Old Testament). We will focus heavily on primary texts from a wide range of literary genres (myth, law, historiography, prophecy, hymns, treaties, prayer, wisdom) common to Near Eastern and Biblical literature. Our goal in doing so will be to examine the Hebrew Bible with an open-minded but critical eye and, more importantly, inspect and analyze the theology inherent to non-biblical texts (e.g., Enūma eliš, The Baal Cycle, Hesiod's Theogony). The end result of the course will be a working knowledge of and appreciation for the interconnectedness of the vast ancient world that gave rise to sacred scripture. While knowledge of Biblical languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek) is an added bonus, it is not a requirement for participation in this course. This course is designed to be accessible to those with and without a deep familiarity with the Biblical text. Consequently, all primary materials will be read in translation.

Paul's letter to the churches of Galatia is a fascinating window into the conflicts that roiled earliest Christianity. It is also one of the most theologically consequential books of the Bible. This course will guide students through a close reading of the Greek text of Galatians while attending to the historical setting of the letter as well as its theology.

This course is intended to offer a sustained reading of the Greek text of the book of Acts. We’ll pay special attention to the text, grammar, intertextuality, and meaning of this earliest book of Christian history, focusing particularly on the theological and literary strategies of the author.

How did the New Testament come to be? This course will offer a critical introduction to the documents that make up the canon of the New Testament, considering questions of both origin (authorship, date, circumstances) and content (structure, purpose, theology). Beginning with the earliest traditions about Jesus, the course will in turn examine Jesus, the Pauline writings, the Gospels and Acts, and Hebrews to Revelation. Attention will also be paid to familiarising students with basic methodological approaches.

As the central work of the Christian tradition, the Bible has had an enormous impact on film since the early days of cinema. In this class we will do some serious, close reading of the Bible, and some serious, close viewing of films that engage with the Bible in some way, ranging from 'sword and sandal' classics to more subtle recent work. The goal of the course is to develop a sophisticated theological and critical appreciation of the relationship between Bible and film. Note that this course will require you to view on average one movie per week outside of class time.

This course is intended to introduce students to the Greek-speaking Judaism that flourished in the Mediterranean world from roughly the 3rd century BCE to the 2nd century CE. After a historical introduction to the period, special attention will be paid to the literary output of translators and authors. We will focus on the Septuagint, a series of Jewish novellas, the Alexandrian tradition (esp. Philo) and Josephus. Some knowledge of Greek will be helpful but is not required, since these sources are available in translation.

The texts of the Apostolic Fathers are some of the earliest Christian texts outside the New Testament (some maybe even written before the New Testament was completed). They are a crucial witness to early Christianity in the process of development, working out important pastoral and theological questions. This course will supply a historical, literary, and theological introduction to the texts of the Apostolic Fathers, including the letters of Ignatius, 1 & 2 Clement, the Epistle of Barnabas, Polycarp, the Shepherd of Hermas, Diognetus, and the Didache. MTS students may take this course for either BS or HC credit.

his course will examine the heritage, writings, and legacy of the Apostle Paul. It is divided into five unequal parts: 1) Introductory Issues; 2) Paul in His Pre-Christian and Early Apostolic Years; 3) The Letters of Paul; 4) The Letters of Paul's Followers; and 5) Pseudo-Pauline Works and Ancient Views of Paul. Most of the course is devoted to Paul's letters (Part III). Opportunities for student response and discussion will be provided during each session of the course. The course has four main objectives: (1) to provide an introduction to the letters of Paul and the apostle himself; (2) to provide insight into the cultural, religious, and philosophical dimensions of the Greco-Roman world in which Paul lived; (3) to acquaint the student with some of the various ancient and modern interpretations of Paul; and (4) to introduce students to the major scholarly methods used to interpret Pauline literature.

This course offers a close academic reading of the Gospel of John; 1, 2, and 3 John; and the Book of Revelation (Apocalypse), alongside a survey of their reception in the tradition. Students will be introduced to a range of methods in contemporary scriptural scholarship and, as a final project, will compose a critical commentary of their own.

This seminar will lead students through a close reading of the Letter to the Hebrews and the numerous portions of the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament from which that letter draws. Participants will be asked to read commentary from throughout the tradition and to author a full-length commentary of their own.

Gothic, the subject of this course, might be considered a distant relative of not only English but also modern German, Dutch, and the various Scandinavian languages. It is in fact the oldest recorded Germanic language, and was spoken, in one form or another, by related groups who spread southward, eastward, and westward across Europe from the first to the sixth centuries, remaking much of the political landscape but leaving a very small written record. Gothic survives primarily in a late-fourth-century translation of the New Testament, prepared by Ulfila, an Arian bishop of the Goths. This is primarily a language course, in which we will learn the grammar of Gothic and translate passages from the New Testament and the Skeireins(a fragmentary commentary on the Gospel of John). We will also ponder the peculiar purple manuscript with silver script in which Ulfila's translation survives (the Codex argenteus), speculate on the character of the Crimean Gothic recorded over a millennium after Ulfila's death, explore the structural relations among Gothic and the other Germanic languages, and discuss the conceptual roles the Goths have been made to play in the formation of European states, Germanic ethnicity, nationalism, horror fiction, and modern racial separatist movements. No prior knowledge of an older language is required, although, since this is a language course, curiosity and an agile mind are.

No book of the Old Testament has proven to be more important for the understanding of Jesus of Nazareth than that of the prophet Isaiah. We shall examine the teachings of the prophet in their historical and Jewish contexts in to order to understand more deeply why why the book has proved so important for Christian theology.

This course offers a chance for sustained, careful interpretation of one of richest and most enigmatic books of the Christian canon, the Book of Revelation. We will together consider the genre and purpose of the text, and above all read the Greek together and patiently consider exegetical issues as they arise. Prior knowledge of Greek is a prerequisite.

This course will be organized around close reading of the Gospel According to Luke, while also keeping an eye on parallels in the other gospels.

Early Christian authors wrote imaginatively and thoughtfully about Jesus and the apostles, about the prophets and visionaries of the Old Testament, or about visions of heaven and hell. This material is not contained in the canonical Scriptures but has been transmitted outside the canon. This course will offer the opportunity to read and study this literature firsthand, going beyond some of the popular misunderstandings of apocryphal literature to a proper estimation of these products of the pious imagination. We will read apocryphal gospels (such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Infancy Gospel of James, and several others), apocryphal stories about the apostles (e.g., Acts of Paul and Thecla, Acts of John), early Christian apocalypses, and Christian stories that draw on Old Testament figures, among other others.

This course will consider the presentation of the figure of David - Israel's first Messiah -- in the books of Samuel and the Psalms.

As the prayer book of the Bible, the Psalter gives expession to the other side of a dialogue initiated by the Living God, articulating the response of the faith and the hope(s) elicited from the people of God in their long and arduous pilgrimage. The objective of this course will be to acquire a deeper understanding of this anthology of inspired pieces through exegetical and theological inquiry, tracking the religious themes and exploring the spirituality it voices as well its reception in developing contexts of faith—including its canonical shape. As lyric expressions of religious experience, the Psalms will also yield to an examination of their different literary forms and poetic styles. Selected Psalms showcasing the various features will be explored in greater detail. Accompanying this study will be a comparative and contrastive examination of the Psalms’ nearest analogues outside of Ancient Israel—specifically, those of Assyria, Babylonia, and Sumer. This look at Mesopotamian compositions will allow for some appreciation of the broader context in which the Psalter was forged and thus provide a backdrop against which to hear and appreciate the Psalms’ unique and enduring role in the public and private prayer of the community of faith.

This course offers a close reading and study of the entire book of Exodus in English, together with texts and artifacts from its ancient Near Eastern background and from its tradition of interpretation in Jewish and Christian theology, commentary, art, literature and liturgy, from Origen to liberation theology.

This course will be divided into two parts. For the first half of the course, we will consider the relationship of mercy to justice. Our point of departure will be the classic description of the character of God in Exodus 34:6-7, in particular, the mercy that God shows to a thousand generations in contrast to the justice he will mete out to the third generation. How should we understand the juxtaposition of these contrasting features of the Godhead? At least a dozen different Biblical texts make reference to the verses from Exodus and we will trace how they deepen and widen the matter. In the second half of the course, we will consider the most famous story of sin and forgiveness in the Old Testament: the story of David and Bathsheba. We will consider how it is related to Psalm 51, the Psalm appointed for Morning Prayer every Friday morning. We will conclude with a consideration of the paragraphs of the Catechism dedicated to the “Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation” and how it relates to the Biblical texts we have read over the semester.

This course offers a chance for sustained, careful interpretation of one of richest and most influential books of the Jewish and Christian canons, the Book of Genesis. We will together consider the genre and purpose of the text, patiently consider exegetical issues as they arise, and above all read the Hebrew together. In addition, we will keep track of early Jewish and Christian interpretations of key themes and passages. Prior knowledge of Hebrew is a prerequisite.

This course will guide students through the Greek text of 1 Corinthians, a fascinating window into earliest Christianity. Our main concern will be to understand the Greek text, but we will also consider historical and theological issues as they arise. Prior knowledge of Greek is a prerequisite.

This course offers a survey of Christian theology from the end of the New Testament to the eve of the Reformation (well, almost). Taking the theological idea of "Mystery" as our theme, we will acquaint ourselves with theologians or theological developments of major significance in the period covered by the survey. Thus, students will be invited to think about the character and nature of the theological task while investigating major issues, challenges, and questions at the intersection of faith and reason.

The course will examine the development of the Christian tradition from the time of the Reformation to the present (to Vatican II, maybe?). Particular topics from which instructors will choose to focus this journey include: the confessional division of the western Christian tradition during the Reformation and the responses that post-Reformation traditions make to the secularization of Western culture (reflected in many Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment philosophies, in the rise of modern science, and in the increasing secularization of politics in the modern nation state). The objective of the course is to develop a sense of the principal challenges and some of the diverse responses to those challenges that have shaped the on-going theological reflection of the church.

This course explores christological questions and debates arising in thirteenth-century scholastic theology. We will focus especially on the writings of Thomas Aquinas, covering such topics as the nature of the hypostatic union, the medieval reception of early Church councils, the question of the motive of the Incarnation, the instrumentality of Christ's human nature, and attendant doctrines. We will compare Aquinas's account with that of his Parisian contemporaries (e.g., Bonaventure and the Summa Halensis), as well as other notable medieval scholastics such as Robert Grosseteste.

This course will introduce students to Christian visual art from its evident beginnings (ca. 200), attend to its transformation under imperial patronage, and consider the aftermath of controversies regarding the veneration of icons during the eighth and ninth centuries. Working with both objects and texts, core themes include the continuity between Christian and pagan art of Late Antiquity, the influence of imperial ceremonies and style, the emergence of holy icons, the development of Passion iconography, and the divergent styles, motifs, and theological perspectives on the validity and role of images from the Byzantine East to the early Medieval West.

Catholicism and The City is an Architecture course intended primarily but not exclusively for undergraduate and graduate architecture students, and for undergraduate students from other disciplines. Viewed through the lenses of Catholic metaphysics and social teaching, the norms of historic classical humanist architectural and urban theory and practice, and related contemporary academic disciplines, the course is an introduction to cities generally, and more specifically a typological and historical introduction to the physical and spatial characteristics of the traditional urbanism of western Christendom, its global expansion, present devolution, and future prospects. The course addresses generally the nature and purpose/s of cities as cooperative human artifacts embodying particular cultural ideals and related forms of economic and political organization; and considers specifically cities as they relate to a Catholic understanding of human flourishing grounded in truths about God, creation, and human nature, including strategies for urbanism in a post-urban world in which human beings can flourish in towns and city neighborhoods that both anticipate and sacramentally participate in the City of God.

An upper-level seminar exploring themes related to issues in sacred architecture. The course is open to architecture students and students in other disciplines.

Historical Christianity is commonly depicted as a Western European religion. According to this view, Christianity, though born among Aramaic-speaking Jews in Palestine, quickly moved westward – from Rome to the North – where it eventually split into European Catholic and Protestant varieties. Underlying this geographic shift, moreover, was a shift in theological discourse, moving from a Semitic emphasis on poetry, metaphor, and symbol, to a Greco-Roman emphasis on philosophical questions and legal answers. The purpose of this course is to offer an alternate history of Christian theology that looks East rather than West, one which focuses on Christianity as it developed and was propagated in Syriac—a dialect of the Aramaic language that Jesus spoke. The course will focus especially on the great Syriac theological masters, the unique genres of poetry in which they wrote, and the rich liturgical contexts in which they worshipped.

An examination of the major philosophical and theological writings of St. Anselm. His "Monologian, Proslogian," and Cur Deus Homo" will be of central concern, but several lesser-known texts will also be read. Topics discussed in these writings include arguments for the existence of God, the divine nature, the Trinity, the Incarnation, freedom (and its compatibility with divine foreknowledge), and truth.

Dante I and Dante II are an in-depth study, over two semesters, of the entire Comedy, in its historical, philosophical and literary context, with selected readings from the minor works (e.g., Vita Nuova, Convivio, De vulgari eloquentia). Dante I focuses on the Inferno and the minor works; Dante II focuses on the Purgatorio and Paradiso. Lectures and discussion in English; the text will be read in the original with facing-page translation. Students may take one semester or both, in either order.

One of the most enduring legacies of early Christianity was the monastic movement. In this course, we will explore the varieties of ascetic practices in the early church, and their distinctive types of literature, with a particular interest in the relationship of ascetics to their environment. In the first half of the semester, we will focus on the solitaries, reading selections from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, and from the Lives of the Syrian ascetic heroes and the leaders of the Palestinian monks. In the second half of the semester, we will turn to the first monastic communities, reading the Rules of Pachomius, Basil, and Benedict. Along the way, we will incorporate modern experiences and views of the monastic life, reading selections from Thomas Merton and Kathleen Norris, among others, and discussing the extraordinary film Into Great Silence.

The Song of Songs is the great love song of the Bible. It occasions intensive reflection on the affective and especially amorous nature of the divine-human relationship. This course, which will be co-taught by two scholars of medieval Jewish and Christian theology respectively, provides an historically-nuanced theological survey of major trends in the interpretation of the Song of Songs developed by Jewish and Christian readers throughout the formative medieval period. Students will learn about allegorical, typological, philosophical, eschatological, pietistic, and mystical/symbolical modes of interpretation, and also the mutually polemical tensions that characterize Song of Songs exegesis across traditions. Jewish readers to be considered will include Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac of Troyes (i.e. Rashi), the Andalusian figures Abraham Ibn Ezra and Moses Maimonides, and Ezra of Girona, whose range of innovative readings are indebted to earlier rabbinic approaches to the Song as a national-historical allegory concerning Israel's unfolding redemption. Christian exegetes will include Hippolytus of Rome, Origen, Bruno of Segni, Honorius Augustodunensis, Alain de Lille, Rupert of Deutz, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Aelred of Rievaulx. Originally closely tied in Christian exegesis to sacramental mystagogy (Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist), the Song of Songs came to be read by Christians in additional contexts: the consecration of virgins, the Investiture Controversy, ecclesiology, Marian devotion, bridal mysticism, and marriage as a sacrament.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has said that the two greatest evangelical tools we have are the Arts and the Saints. This course examines the lives of the saints and the way their stories have been told through the ages. Part of our larger goal, then, will be retrieving this particular art of storytelling. Students will be asked not only to read the lives of the saints, but to write the life of a saint, too. In order to examine these stories most fully, we will spend time thinking about topics such as scriptural exegesis, martyrdom, relics, the communion of saints, medieval legends, art, and modern vitae or novels.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has exposed a profound religious divide between the two countries. For decades, if not centuries, the world has failed to notice this rift, treating Ukrainian Christianity as a sub-species of Russian Orthodoxy. The course aims to help interested upper-level undergraduate and master’s students to understand the similarities and differences between the two religious cultures. It highlights pivotal moments in the history of the Ukrainian and Russian churches, as well as the key figures who have shaped their theology throughout the centuries, from the medieval period of Kyivan Rus to the present day. Students will become familiar with notable Ukrainian religious thinkers and ecclesiastical figures, such as Petro Mohyla, Melety Smotrytsky, Hryhory Skovoroda, Andrey Sheptytsky, and Josef Slipyj. Russian religious thought will be represented by the works of Piotr Chaadaev, Alexey Khomiakov, Vladimir Solovyov, Leo Tolstoy, Sergius Bulgakov, and Pavel Florensky, among others. Thematically, most of the course material focuses on the topics of political theology, theology of history, theology of culture, theology of ritual, and issues of Christian unity.

This course looks at visions of church and Christian life in ecclesiology and spiritual theology from the Council of Trent to the present.

This course examines the life and thought of St Maximus the Confessor (c. 580 - 662), widely regarded as one of the most important and influential of all Byzantine Theologians. The course will move progressively through a large swathe of the Confessor's corpus, which includes an abundance of interconnected ascetic, mystagogical, cosmological, eschatological, and Christological material. The aim is to get a handle on the Confessor's complex and multi-layered theological vision, discuss his sources, as well as his ongoing relevance for the discipline of theology.

In what sense, can we call Dante a “theologian”? According to medieval theology, what is the role of “beauty” in the promotion of “holiness”? This course will consider these questions through reading a series of medieval theological discussions of holiness and beauty (especially as found in Boethius, Dionysius the Areopagite, and the Franciscan tradition). We will also explore how such ideas were translated into spirituality (Franciscan), the visual arts (Giotto), and poetry (Dante). Against such a background, we can come to appreciate why modern theologians are “re-categorizing” Dante, making arguments that we should read him not as a poet but as a theologian.

This course will address the theme of how Christian faith interacts with its surrounding context as Christians reflect on scripture and tradition in light of their experience. How do Christian theology and practice respond to issues arising from particular religious, cultural, and political contexts? How has this caused Christianity to take different shapes in varied historical and social settings? The church has wrestled with these questions since its inception, as the Acts of the Apostles and other New Testament writings show. Grounded in this biblical witness and a framework provided by contemporary theologians, we will explore these issues through examples drawn from the church in Africa. We will consider the work of African theologians as well as the lived theology of African Christians. We will survey exemplary cases from the history of the Christianity in Africa, but the course will focus on recent Christian theology, worship, and social ethics. For example we will explore the development of African Christologies, how gender shapes the transmission and reception of Christianity, the Rwandan genocide, and the church's role in peacebuilding. Through this course, students will be exposed to some of the varied manifestations of Catholicism and the broader Christian tradition in African contexts, and they will be trained to reflect on how context has shaped Christian faith in all settings.

Course surveys major traditions of Jewish piety and wisdom from the Ancient Period to the Middle Ages, with an emphasis on the novel modes of exegesis and theology developed in late thirteenth-century Iberia that are synonymous with the medieval kabbalah. Students will explore writings by Moses Nahmanides, Ezra of Gerona, Joseph Gikatilla, and examine the homilies of the Zohar. Themes include repentance, contemplative prayer, Torah, prophecy, knowledge of God, imitatio dei, God's male and female attributes, divine names, and the Hebrew language.

In this course students will survey aspects of Jewish piety from late antiquity to the present. Special attention will be paid to the medieval period. Among other topics, students will explore ancient rabbinic asceticism, contemplative and penitential practices in Rhineland communities, Kabbalah, Sufi-influenced spirituality, sacred fellowships, and Hasidism. Students will distinguish basic patterns of Jewish piety, such as contemplative worship, the approximation of divine attributes, exertion in Torah study, night vigils, examination of conscience, subduing anger, subjugation of the evil inclination, seclusion, silence, and more. The survey will also aid students researching Jewish theology and practice, Jewish-Christian acculturation, forms of medieval piety, and Judaism in the medieval Mediterranean.

The goal of this course is to introduce upper-level undergraduates and master-level students to the methods and procedures, basic literary forms, and main authors of medieval academic ("scholastic") theology, from its rise in the twelfth century to examples of Later Medieval and Early Modern periods. The overview will be provided against the backdrop of medieval intellectual history including the institutional development of medieval universities. We shall read and discuss selected chapters from works by Peter Abelard, Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, William of Ockham, Francisco da Vitoria, and a few others, focusing on the texts that address questions of theological methodology, such as the notion of "sacred doctrine" ("doctrina sacra"), sacramental theology, and ecclesiology, particularly on the impact of scholastic discourse on the theological self-understanding of medieval Christianitas. Particular attention will be devoted to literary genres and forms ("sententia," "summa", "distinctio," "quaestio," etc.) as well as to the role that medieval canon law played in the development of scholasticism. We will also discuss the reception of Latin scholastic theology in the Greek East and the impact of Thomas Aquinas on Byzantine theological thought of the Later Medieval period.

Kabbalah is often synonymous with “Jewish mysticism.” Stemming from Catalonia and Castile in the thirteenth century, its literature encompasses a speculative and hortatory domain of divine knowledge in the rabbinic tradition that has served as a major source of Jewish theology throughout the ensuing centuries. The course will explore the complex relationship of this medieval curriculum of rabbinic wisdom to the Church—among the richest case studies in the creative-yet-tortured confluence of Judaism and Christianity. Students will study the disputational context in which kabbalah first saw the light of history and especially the polemical representations of Christianity it produced. They will also investigate aspects of the discourse that would appear to approximate contemporary Christian teachings and practices. These include putatively para-Christological elements, penitential discourse, concern with poverty and social ethics, apparent parallels to Marian devotion, and more. Students will also examine apologetical readings of kabbalah by Christian authors during the early modern period and Jewish reactions thereto.

What must be done to reach eternal life, to come into the inheritance of the Son that will be shared with those who attain to God as their end? Theologians in the thirteenth century, whether "scholastic" or "spiritual", were much concerned with the journey to God as beatifying end, and in their writings displayed considerable variety in teaching the way to God, and in teaching the final state itself. The course will consider the theologies of journey of such scholastics as Albert the Great, Bonaventure, and Aquinas, and of such spiritual authors as Mechthild of Magdeburg, Hadewijch of Brabant, and Marguerite Porete. While treatises and systematic writings will receive their due, attention will also be paid to the treatment of journey, discipleship, and human flourishing in thirteenth-century preaching and exegesis, and in visionary accounts.

This course covers some of the major figures in the history of (Trinitarian) theology. Figures to be discussed from the patristic and medieval periods include Augustine, Dionysius, Richard of St. Victor, Bonaventure, Aquinas, Eckhart, Tauler, Ruusbroec; figures from the modern period include Elizabeth of the Trinity, Bulgakov, Rahner, Balthasar, Yves Congar, Chiara Lubich, Klaus Hemmerle, and Thomas Weinandy. Corresponding topics include the development of Trinitarian doctrine, differences between the various schools and their models of the Trinity, the relationship between Trinitarian and apophatic theology, the rise of kenotic theology, and theological responses to modern challenges. The goal is to ensure a sufficient basis in the tradition in order to be able to discuss such perennial issues as the much-disputed Filioque, and to show, most importantly, how the doctrine of the Trinity is not just one doctrine among others, but the central doctrine of the Christian faith, which informs not only every other doctrine, but the entirety of the Christian life as a mysterious participation in the primordial reality of the God who is Life from Life and Light from Light.

Deification, Divinization, or Theosis (literally "becoming god") is a theological concept that has gained widespread attention in recent years. It is often associated with Eastern Christian theology, usually with the sense that it represents an exotic view, one which is at best an optional extra or at worst an utter abrogation of the Christian faith. The idea, however, that the sanctification of the human being can in some way be described as deification is not as marginal or alien to the Christian tradition as many assume. Beginning with Scripture and moving through early, medieval, and modern Christian texts, this course will explore the ways in which Christians have talked about holiness as connected with deification. The aim of the course is to introduce a rich, multifaceted, and increasingly debated topic in Christian Theology as well as spur reflection and discussion of its meaning and relevance.

An exploration of the Christian practice of sacred travel from the fourth century through the ninth, with special attention to circuits that include sites in Rome, the Holy Land, Africa, and Egypt. Students will study archeological remains (monuments), pilgrims' itineraries and diaries (documents), holy relics, and souvenirs that travelers produced, obtained, and carried back home. Christian pilgrimage will be compared with contemporary polytheist travel to shrines and temples as well as tourism in general to define its distinctive forms and purposes. Course requirements will include the production of a research paper that may include reflections on an actual pilgrimage experience.

Guided by the voices of contemporary theologians, students will examine the textual riches of Judaism and the answers they yield to a question as basic as it is urgent: what constitutes Jewish theology in the twenty-first century? Through the course of studying a diverse range of responses to this question, students will analyze historical precedents, foundational categories, and methodologies marshalled in its service. Special attention will be dedicated to exploring dialogical and comparative approaches to the question. Some of the theologians covered will include Mara Benjamin, Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, and Michael Wyschogrod.

In this class, we will survey some of the most intriguing aspects of healthcare in the ancient and early Christian world. The topics that we will consider include not only theoretical discussions—about sickness and the environment, for example, or the appropriate orientation of doctors—but also practical measures to preserve or restore health, such as diet, bathing, and exercise. Behind all of this advice, however, lie the patients. What was their experience of illness: their sensations, hopes and fears? What were the social implications of disease? Within medical treatment, religion had always played a role, but the advent of Christianity brought increased attention to the needs of the sick. Jesus was widely known as a powerful healer, and the gospels are full of his miracles. But how exactly did he effect cures? To what extent was the spread of Christianity a result of improved healthcare, or the offer of more effective therapy? When was the first hospital founded, and why was it a monastic invention? At the same time as we address these questions about the ancient world, we will also consider healthcare today. How, for example, do the metaphors we use for sickness influence the treatment of patients? Or how, if the first patient case histories are found in the writings of Hippocrates, does learning this technique affect contemporary medical students? And if exorcism was widely believed to be an effective cure in early Christianity, can it still be an effective medical intervention today? What do we think about the medical basis of modern miracles? We will end the semester by considering several specialized topics, such as midwifery, leprosy, epilepsy, and the Justinianic plague. In addition to a midterm and final examination, students in this course will be asked to complete three short assignments and to participate in a final group project.

Students embark on a journey into medieval rabbinic theology through a close study of The Book of Knowledge. This canonical work, composed in twelfth-century Cairo by the Andalusian emigre Moses Maimonides, distills the vast domain of rabbinic theology into a concise legal code. The book treats central topics of religion—divinity, prophecy, cosmology, angelology, moral character, physical regimen, education, idolatry, repentance, and eschatology—in a philosophical vein. Students not only gain access to these central topics in medieval Jewish theology, but also consider the codification of these topics within the evolution of rabbinic thought, and its broader intellectual context within the medieval Islamic world. Maimonides (who was studied by a host of Christian scholastics) is of central importance for students of medieval theology and philosophy, and similarly relevant for students of comparative theology, systematic theology, as well as those researching the cultural history of the medieval Mediterranean. *Course contains a graduated study component to accommodate students learning at the advanced undergraduate level, graduate students, and any developing proficiency in medieval Hebrew.

This course offers an introduction to the Qurʾan, with particular attention to scholarship on its origins and to the Qurʾan’s relationship with the Bible and early Christian literature. No prior background in the Qurʾan, Arabic, or Islam is required.

The Eucharist stands at the heart of western European Christianity in the high middle ages. The insistence of church officials on regular reception of the Eucharist; the numerous scholastic treatments of the theoretical issues associated with the Eucharist; the recourse by spiritual authors, especially women, to the Eucharist to express their most profound religious and devotional insights; the pointed reference to the Christ Eucharistically-present to establish Christian identity and to distinguish the members of Christ from others, both within and outside of western Europe; the development of new rituals focussed on aspects of the Eucharist; the burgeoning of artistic representations of Eucharistic themes—all testify to the centrality of the Eucharist in medieval theological and religious consciousness. Through the close reading of representative texts by a wide variety of 13th-century authors, and, the study of the different kinds of 'Eucharistic' art, this course examines the uses made of the Eucharist by a broad spectrum of high medieval Christians. A special concern of the course is the relation between Eucharistic doctrine and religious practice—to what extent have teachings about transubstantiation and real presence shaped religious expression? how has religious experience itself occasioned the refinement of these doctrines?

This course explores medieval thinking about the church: its unity, its boundaries, the diversity of cultural traditions within it, its place in the world, and the ways in which the church is organized and governed. Students will be introduced to the major texts, authors, and ideas of medieval ecclesiology from St. Augustine through the period of the Gregorian reform in the eleventh century to the age of conciliarism and the early reformers in the fifteenth century. Special attention will be given to the role of the Roman Pope on the one hand, and the Church Councils on the other. The significance of medieval ecclesiology for the modern discourse on the Church will also be addressed.

This course introduces students to the biblical, patristic, medieval, early modern, and modern self-understanding of the church up to and including the Second Vatican Council. It covers the study of some of its main metaphors such as 'body of Christ' and 'people of God', some of its worship practices, the celebration of the sacraments, and the study of the offices (hierarchy) and vocations within the church. Hubert Jedin viewed ecclesiology as the church's self-expression throughout history. Thus, this course is historical and systematic at the same time.

Latina and Latino Catholics have lived their faith in what is now the United States for almost twice as long as the nation has existed. This course explores the development of Latino Catholicism in the United States, the ways Latinos are currently transforming the U.S. Catholic Church, Hispanic faith expressions related to Jesus and Mary, and especially the theological contributions of contemporary Latinas and Latinos.

This course introduces students to major theological sources, themes, and debates of the Byzantine Christian East. Beginning with formative texts of the Greek patristic era, students proceed to cover key areas and "moments" of Byzantine theology: Christological debates in the aftermath of Chalcedon; iconoclasm and icons; ascetic and monastic theology; developments in Liturgy and sacramental theology; approaches to Scripture; East-West relations; theological interactions with Islam; Hesychasm; and Byzantine Theology after 1453. The goal of the course is to equip upper-level undergraduate and Master's-level students with an accurate overview of this vast, intricate, and fast-growing field of study.

In the Liturgical Year, the Church recalls and makes present the saving mysteries of Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension, combining feasts which celebrate these mysteries with seasons which prepare for their worthy celebration and explore their depths of meaning. In this course, we will explore the origins, development, contemporary practice, and theological meaning of the Liturgical Year. The course focus on the chants, readings, and orations for liturgical feasts and seasons in historical and contemporary liturgical books, and will consider the testimony of sermons and homilies for the feasts and seasons from a variety of historical eras.

A broad survey of purpose-built spaces for Christian worship, from the beginnings to the present. The course will attend to questions of form and aesthetics and the functionality of these spaces for liturgy or other church activities. Finally, the course will consider the social, economic, and political dimensions of church building projects.

Survey of liturgical history and sources with regard to both Eastern and Western rites. Fundamental liturgical sources including basic homiletic and catechetical documents of the patristic period and the liturgical books of the Middle Ages. Basic introduction to the methodology of liturgical study.

From antiquity to today, Christian women have shaped and been shaped by liturgy. This course examines the relationship between ritual and the female body across history and Christian traditions, from the biblical period, through late antiquity and the middle ages, to the present. Topics covered include the female body in sacred space (veils, gender separation, etc.), the issue of bodily (im)purities (menstrual and postpartum blood), medieval rites for childbirth and child loss, representations of the female body in liturgical texts and iconography, and women's ritual agency and authority in monastic communities and beyond. Our methods will be interdisciplinary and draw from liturgiology, theology, history, and anthropology. Class field trips will include a visit to a female monastic community.

A study of the place of the image in religious practice, beginning with pre-Christian critique of images and continuing through the broad Christian tradition. Topics include the role of images in Greco-Roman religion, philosophical censure of representational art, Jewish attitudes toward pictorial art, Christian repudiation of idolatry, the emergence of portrait icons, the iconoclastic controversies in the 8th and 9th centuries (both East and West), the theological defense of image veneration, and the various Reformation perspectives on the role of visual art in Christian worship and devotional practice.

This course integrates historical, theological, and pastoral approaches to general sacramental theology and considers as examples the rites of particular sacraments of the contemporary Roman Catholic Church. The course will examine the nature of sacramental symbol in both the tradition and the modern, multicultural world.

A study of the music composed for the Mass, the Office hours (primarily Vespers), and the Requiem Mass from the Middle Ages to the present day. The musical repertoire of each era is examined both from a purely musical standpoint and in light of the reactions of various popes, from John XXIII through Pius X, to the sacred music of their day. Documents on sacred music issued after Vatican II also are examined in relation to postconciliar church music for both the choir and the congregation.

When is music truly Christian? What kind(s) of music are ideal for Christian worship, entertainment, artistic creation? Can music be sinful or un-Christian? We will read what major Christian thinkers have written about music in all its varieties, from the Bible, through the Church Fathers, medieval Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theologians, Protestant reformers, Popes and Councils through Vatican II and its aftermath. Come prepared to debate.

The Church makes the Eucharist and the Eucharist makes the Church. The goal of this course is a comprehensive understanding of the nature and development of the Christian Eucharist. It provides perspective on the origins and historical development of the eucharistic liturgy across traditions, examines the structure and content of eucharistic liturgies (esp. the Roman Mass, but also other liturgical rites), the historical relationship between the Eucharist and the arts (esp. music and architecture) and undertakes a systematic reflection on various theological issues (e.g. real presence, transubstantiation, the role of the priest, excommunication, etc.). Illumined by historical and theological reflection, students will also engage in critically examining contemporary pastoral issues as well as current debates in the "liturgy wars".

“The only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely the saints the Church has produced and the art which has grown in her womb” (Joseph Ratzinger). In this course, we will examine the relationship between liturgy and the arts, considering how artistic beauty reflects and reveals the glory of God. Attending to a variety of artistic traditions, including music, painting, sculpture, and literature, we will consider how the liturgy draws on and inspires artists working both within and outside of a liturgical context.

This course studies the central sacrament of the Christian rite: the Eucharist. Taught primarily from within a Roman Catholic perspective, the course traces the historical evolution of the Eucharistic liturgy while focusing upon theological attempts to understand the nature and mystery of the Eucharist. Specific topics to be addressed include: Jewish roots of the Eucharist; New Testament accounts of the Eucharist; patristic reflection/mystagogia on the Eucharist; Eucharistic prayers; sacrifice; real presence and transubstantiation; Eucharistic adoration; ecclesial questions about the Eucharist; and, Eucharist and eschatology.

Throughout the twentieth century, theologians grappled with the impact of the development of mass technologies on human life. This theological concern is intensifying with Pope Francis and Pope Leo’s concerns with AI and the environmental effects of technological society. This course will explore Catholic theology’s engagement with mass society. It will start by exploring secular influences on the theology of technology, like Max Weber and Martin Heidegger. It will then explore theological reflections on technology, such as those of Romano Guardini and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, before turning to other Catholic reflections on technology in areas such as the media, global development, and AI.

In this course we will study the Catholic theological foundations for sexual ethics and bioethics. Topics in sexual ethics will include love and marriage, contraception, homosexuality, and gender identity. In the area of bioethics, we will first consider the moral dimensions of the creation of human life by examining Catholic teachings on reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization, gamete donation and commercialization, surrogacy, and genetic testing and screening. We will also cover end-of-life issues, with special attention to Catholic resources on the topics of euthanasia, assisted suicide, palliative care, and artificial nutrition and hydration. The formats will be lecture and discussion, with regular consideration of cases and scenarios. Requirements include several short perspective/reflection papers, a mid-term exam, and a final research paper on a topic of interest to the student.

Christian reflections on sexuality comprise one of the richest yet most controversial aspects of the Christian moral tradition. In this course, we will examine Christian sexual ethics from a variety of perspectives through a study of historical and contemporary writings. Topics to be considered include Christian perspectives on marriage and family, the ethics of sex within and outside of marriage, contraception, divorce and remarriage, and homosexuality. Course requirements will include four or five short papers and a final examination.

This course provides an introduction to the history of and recent work in Christian ecological ethics through an examination of three sources: environmental philosophy, Christian ecotheology, and the ecological ethics developed from the Benedictine and Franciscan Christian spiritual traditions. Among the topics to be explored are: the relationship between human beings and other forms of life; the relationship between land and place; the relationship between conservation and development; the connections among water, food and community; and the relationship between solitude and cooperative social action. Course requirements include two class presentations and a final paper.

The primary goal of this course is to familiarize students with the tradition of Catholic social teaching with a view toward developing skills for critical reading and appropriation of these documents. We will examine papal, conciliar, and episcopal texts from Rerum novarum (1891) up to the present time, identifying operative principles, tracing central theological, ethical, and ecclesial concerns, and locating each document in its proper historical context. We will also hold recurring themes in conversation with the broader theoretical framework of Catholic social thought and relevant secondary literature.

The Catholic Church boasts a rich tradition of reflection and action on war and peace. This course introduces students to the most well-known and well-developed part of that tradition: just war and pacifism. But it goes further and considers the relationship between the just war-pacifism strands of the tradition and the development of a theology, ethics and praxis of peacebuilding - i.e., the Church's approach to conflict prevention, conflict transformation and post-conflict reconciliation. In considering these topics, the course will emphasize (1) the "living" nature of the tradition, the link between theory and practice, principles and policy; and (2) the importance of grounding ethics and action on war and peace in an understanding of Christian vocation. Drawing on my seventeen years as a senior official of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and my current role as coordinator of the Catholic Peacebuilding Network, the course will examine these broad topics in light of specific cases and issues, including the Iraq interventions, humanitarian intervention, nuclear disarmament, the landmines campaign, the role of the UN, conscientious objection, the Church's role in Track Two diplomacy and truth and reconciliation processes, and other issues. Students will have an opportunity to engage directly with Catholic leaders who are working on these issues. This course will also afford students the opportunity, primarily through a research paper, to contribute to the Catholic Peacebuilding Network's (cpn.nd.edu) work in the Philippines, Colombia, the Great Lakes region of Africa, and South Sudan. Other course assignments will help students develop their written and oral skills in applied ethics through policy memos, opinion pieces (or blogs), homilies, and video-taped media interviews. There will be no in-class exams.

Catholicism and Politics poses the question, both simple and complex: How ought Catholics to think about the political order and political issues within it? The first part of the course will survey major responses to this question drawn from Church history: the early church, the medieval church, and the modern church. The second part applies these models to contemporary issues ranging among war, intervention, globalization, abortion, the death penalty, religious freedom, gender issues, and economic development. The course culminates in "The Council of Notre Dame," where teams of students, representing church factions, gather to discover church teachings on selected controversial political issues.

This course is taught by a professor with training in the sciences, philosophy, and theology; students from any of these disciplines are welcome to enroll, for I will give serious attention to that which each of these fields can contribute to our understanding of morality. Participating in this course will provide you an occasion to contemplate how diverse academic disciplines address the stringency of the moral demand and the possibilities for social mammals to fulfill that demand. I will motivate this inquiry by introducing you to the work of several authors who advocate that recent discoveries in evolutionary history, primatology, psychology, and neuroscience provide a strictly biological "basis" for morality that leaves theology irrelevant to ethics. You will evaluate this literature in class discussions and written essays by using the tools of historical comparison, philosophy of science, and theology of nature. Previous participants in this course report that they gained a newfound appreciation for both the scientific character of Christian theology and the theological significance of the natural sciences.

Since the beginning of humankind, people have asked, why am I here? Where am I going? And how am I called to live my life? What is God calling me to do? In more recent times these enduring questions have been rearticulated around issues of meaning, purpose, human flourishing, and the search to know God's will. Although the culture holds out images of success, fulfillment, and happiness, the quest to discover our heart's desire and make a lasting impact on the world is often elusive. Not infrequently we can make professional, material and financial progress, but at the same time regress in spiritual, ethical and human development. How can we tap into the deeper rivers and sometimes muddy waters within us and wade into the current that leads us to find our most authentic selves and discover the flow of our life's calling? This course is about the inner and outer development that leads into these waters. It will involve both personal reflection and communal connection. When we experience a deep connection to our work and a consistent flow between our life's energies and our daily tasks, we are the most alive, at peace, and whole. "The place God calls you," Frederick Buechner once wrote, "is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." But how do we discover our own unique gifts and respond to the hungers of our world? What decisions must we make, and what discernment must we undertake, to find our way? How do we encounter the path that will lead us to integrate both our heart's desire and our desire for social change? This course is designed to help you with these questions. Drawing on Theology, Spirituality, Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, and Design Thinking, we will explore how others have asked these questions before us and how we can explore these questions today. We will use readings, lectures, class discussions, films, learning exercises, papers, and guest speakers to help you discover your talents, values, and vocation, and dream about how you can make a difference in the world. Although we will look to others for insight, the primary text of this course is your own life, and you will be expected to thoroughly and regularly examine who you are, what you believe, and what you feel called to live out as a human being. In addition to human experience and the expertise of the social sciences, we will look to the wisdom of the great religious traditions to aid you in the process of self-discovery. Our goal is not just to give you more information but to assist you in the process of formation that is directed towards personal and social transformation. As you work at integrating the heart, the mind, the will, and the spirit, we wish to foster a vision of justice, which—from a theological point of view— is about seeking right relationship with God, others, ourselves, and the world around us.ld.

To imagine is to form a mental concept of something which is not present to the senses. Imagination therefore deals with "framing". Like everyone else, Africans ponder over their condition and their world on the basis of their experience, history, social location and other realities which provide the "frame" through which they construct and address reality. In this course, through the study of some significant African literary works and some literary works about Africa we will study the self-perception of the African and the way the African has ethically viewed his / her reality and tried to grapple with it over a period of time (colonialism, post colonialism, apartheid) with regard to various issues on the continent (political challenges, religion, war and peace) and over some of the social questions (class, urbanization/ city life, sex and sexuality, relationship of the sexes), etc. We will read such authors as Joseph Conrad, Amos Tutuola, Chinua Achebe, Athol Fugard, Wole Soyinka, Cyprian Ekwensi, Chimamanda Adichie, Syl Cheney-Coker, Tsitsi Dangaremga, Nawal El Sadawi, Ferdinand Oyono , and some others. Using these and many authors we will ask questions about what constitutes the moral imagination, how such an imagination is manifested in or apparent in the social, personal and religious lives of the various African peoples or characters portrayed in these literary works; to what extent the moral sense has helped/ conditioned or failed to influence the lives of these peoples and characters. We will also inquire into the extent and in what ways the writers in our selection have helped to shape the moral imagination of their people.

In this course, we will critically consider, in light of Catholic Social Teaching, three normative questions regarding the purpose, priorities, and practices of corporations. First, what does the dignity of the human person, as made in the image and likeness of God, mean for people working in business? Second, what do businesses owe to their own workers and the society writ-large, and how do we foster solidarity among those working in business? Third, how can businesses promote authentic human flourishing and integral human development? To answer these questions, we explore certain foundational concepts of Catholic Social Teaching - the dignity of the human person, solidarity and subsidiarity, the virtues of charity and justice, and the common good - and ask how these concepts can be integrated into business practices and corporate governance. To accomplish this end, student wills engage in a close reading of selections from central papal encyclicals on the "social question," including Rerum Novarum, Quadragesimo Anno, Laborem Exercens, Centesimus Annus, Caritas in Veritate, and Laudato Si', as well as contemporary scholarship in business ethics that discusses different models of corporate governance.

This course is exclusively for students admitted to the Summer Service Learning Program (SSLP) who participate in eight-week summer service learning placements sponsored by the Center for Social Concerns and domestic Notre Dame Clubs. The application period for the SSLP is open from November 1 to February 1 and can be found online at https://socialconcerns.nd.edu/sslp. All students in the SSLP must register for an SSLP-specific theology course. Most students take THEO 33936: Kinship on the Margins, a three-credit course graded Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory. Theology majors and minors may elect to instead take THEO 40642: Theology of Kinship, a three-credit letter-graded (A-F) course with additional academic requirements, which counts towards the theology major or minor. Students enroll in the course for the semester when they return to campus following their summer immersion, but the academic work of the three-credit course takes place before, during, and after student participation in the eight consecutive week summer immersion. The goals of Theology of Kinship are threefold: 1) Reflect theologically on one's daily service experiences using assigned course readings, 2) Critically apply the language and perspectives of Catholic social tradition to social issues encountered in contexts of marginalization, and 3) Construct a theological account of human kinship--the inherent relatedness, equal dignity, and mutual responsibility that all human persons share--in light of key concepts of theology, such as the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity, the privileged place of the poor in the Bible, the relationship between liturgy and justice, and recent statements within the Church's social doctrine. Coursework includes: class sessions in April, weekly assigned readings, viewing recorded lectures, and daily writing assignments throughout eight-week summer immersion; completion of SSLP Capstone Project and theological essay, and participating in follow-up class sessions on campus following the immersion. COMMENTS: Permission required to enroll. Must apply to the SSLP online at http://socialconcerns.nd.edu and be accepted to the SSLP before enrolling.

The capitalism and consumerism that now influences the entire world arose within a religious culture-that of Western Christianity-whose central figure extolled poverty and self-denial, and whose most important early missionary wrote that "the love of money is the root of all evils." How did this happen? This course takes a long-term view of the emergence of modern economic life in relationship to Christianity beginning with the upturn in commerce and the monetization of the European economy in the eleventh century and continuing through the relationship between markets and Christian morality in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It pays particular attention to the ways in which the religio-political disruptions of the Reformation era laid the foundations for the disembedding of economics from Christian ethics and thus made possible modern Western capitalism and consumerism.

What role does work play in human life? To what extent is it part of our creation in the Imago Dei? The role of work in human life has come up for renewed reflection in light of the rapid changes in the landscape of work. How do we think about justice in work? How should we think about the role of work in an affluent society? In this course we will look at theological reflections about work through the tradition with the aim of crafting a theological understanding of work in the contemporary world.

This course is the seminar version of ECON 30150. In this course we will discuss the relationship between economics and Catholic social teaching. We will learn about key principles in Catholic social thought, read key Papal encyclicals and other writings. We will then discuss key economic concepts and empirical facts known from the field of economics, and how these relate to Catholic social teaching. Finally, we will apply these ideas to discussions on labor, capital, finance, the environment, globalization, and development

Gustavo Gutiérrez famously posed a fundamental question for theological inquiry: how can we talk about God in the face of crushing poverty that leads to death? This course explores that foundational question through an examination of biblical perspectives on poverty, early Christian understandings of poverty, and contemporary theological and social scientific analyses and responses to poverty. The contemporary portion of the course tracks and draws on the earlier Christian tradition and its developments in Catholic Social Teaching, putting these sources into critical dialogue with recent social scientific studies of poverty, its causes, and policy solutions.

Economics and theology are often thought of as competing or contradictory explanations of human nature and behavior. By beginning with the theological premise that God's creation must hold together as a coherent whole, this course will instead show how economics rightly understood can illuminate our understanding of God's providential activity in the world. We will discuss the fundamental principles and insights of economics, relate them to a philosophical and theological vision of the human person in community, and show the central implications for ethics and political economy.

This course examines theology and poetry as two forms of attentive living directed toward love of God and neighbor through a comparative consideration of the meaning of work and the experience of time. These issues are examined in each of the four main parts of the course. In the first part, we examine attentiveness as a distinctive intellectual and spiritual problem for our time. In the second part, the focus will be on social scientific theories of work and how these relate to recent studies about subjectivity and the valuation of work in digital spaces (especially workplaces). In the third part of the course, the focus will shift to the construction/disciplining of subjectivity in Christian liturgical and monastic practices, focusing especially on the interplay of communal prayer and manual labor that has traditionally been part of Christian monastic discipline. In the fourth part, we conclude with a consideration of the work of creating and "reading" art (especially poetry and painting) in light of the social changes to work and the theological interpretations of work studied in the preceding parts of the course.

This course examines the dynamic and distinctive contributions of Latin American theology during the last half century through the writings of Pope Francis focused on poverty and creation. Beginning with the reception of Vatican II in Latin America at the region’s episcopal meetings, the course explores the theological currents that emerged in response to the socioeconomic, cultural, political, and ecological challenges of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Pope Francis’s Argentine “theology of the people” in conversation with liberation theology, Catholic social teaching, and eco-theology introduces students to an array of theologians such as Juan Carlos Scannone, Gustavo Gutiérrez, Maria Clara Bingemer, St. Oscar Romero, Leonardo Boff, and Ivone Gebara. Topics to be considered include ecclesiology, option for the poor, theological method, martyrdom, religious pluralism, popular piety, structural sin, integral ecology, spirituality, human rights, and Indigenous wisdom. Overall, the course considers Latin American theology as a source of reform, renewal, and reflection on the signs of the times for the global Church.

The human drive to struggle for victory against opponents, whether in military battles or athletic contests, runs throughout human history. Theologians and philosophers from ancient times until today have considered the implications of this struggle for the human quest for excellence and for meaning which, at its limit, involves the search for God. More recently, scholars have considered the behavior and discourse of sports fans as something close to a religion. This course will examine each of these topics, beginning with early philosophical and theological views of struggle, embodiment, and the quest for excellence before engaging more recent writings about the relation of sports to virtue, theological accounts of athletics in its relationship to community identity and flourishing, and the ethical analysis of modern college and professional sports. Course requirements include a series of short reflection papers and a final group project undertaking a theological and ethical analysis of one particular example of modern athletics in a specific social context.

This course provides an in-depth and comprehensive overview of modern Catholic social teaching emerging from key papal writings on the question of labor inside and outside Western Europe. With special attention to ecclesial documents and social movements, the course explores the theological, ethical, and historical foundations of Catholic social doctrine and its modern papal development in response to the Industrial Revolution and economic globalization. As universal shepherds of the world’s largest faith tradition, the modern popes have proclaimed the transcendent dignity of the human person made in God’s image, the preferential option for the poor identified with Christ, and the integral ecology of God’s creation. The course explores the social teachings of the popes both as an evangelical challenge to Christian lifestyles in the West and as a safeguard against the modern idolatries of the market, partisan and statist politics, and technology.

Rethinking Religion.

In our course we will consider Christianity's encounter with Islam, from the Islamic conquests of the 7th century to the internet age. The first section of the course is historical. We will examine how various historical contexts have affected the Christian understanding of Muslims and Islam, from the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad to September 11 and beyond. The second section of the course is systematic. How are Christians today to respond to Islam, in light of recent world events and recent Church teaching? In addressing this question we will analyze primary theological sources that express a range of responses, from pluralism to dialogue to evangelism. Students in this class will be introduced to the Quran, to the life of Muhammad, to the difference between Sunni and Shi'ite Islam, to Church teaching on Christianity's relationship with Islam, and to trends in the theology of religions.

Religious diversity is a social fact. As the world has become more interconnected, most people are much more aware that no one can live in isolation from others who follow different religious beliefs and practices. Although the word has always been pluralistic, we experience this pluralism today in a new way to the extent that we can no longer avoid the question of how to deal with it. This course is designed to address that question, namely, how religious pluralism has been dealt with in the scholarly discussion of what is known as the theology of religions. Religious pluralism is not meant the sheer fact that there are many living faiths in a society or country, but a positive response to that diversity. What do the Bible and the Qur'an say about religious others? How should the believers think about and interact with them? This course will also examine critical issues such as salvation and truth claims. In addition to identifying the commonalities of religions and the irreducible distinctiveness of each tradition, we will discuss the question of diversity within a particular religious tradition. No prior background in Islam or Arabic is required for this course.

From a Christian theological point of view, peace is both a gift and a mission. Using life stories of exemplary Christian peace builders from around the world, the course will highlight five practices and disciplines: scriptural imagination, lament, hope, advocacy and spirituality, which define the Christian vision and practice of peace. The course is meant to serve as an extended argument for why and how the church matters for peace in the world, but also to display that the pursuit of peace is not the reserve of a few experts (peacebuilders), but the gift and mission of every Christian - "anyone in Christ."

This course explores the ways in which religious ethicists, social critics, and activists have employed conceptions of love and violence for the purposes of criticizing and resisting oppressive political conditions, and for radically transforming existing social arrangements. We begin by exploring the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau concerning the moral status of civil disobedience in the context of the U.S. abolitionist struggle, with particular attention to the influence of the Bhagavad-Gita upon their thinking. We will examine the ways that both Thoreau's writings and the Gita influenced Mahatma Gandhi on questions of non-violent civil disobedience, Gandhi's exploration of the power of non-violence in light of the Sermon on the Mount from the Christian New Testament, and his correspondence with the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. We will investigate how this entire mosaic of influences came to inform Martin Luther King, Jr.'s work and the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. during the 1960s, Malcolm X, and the black power movement. We will engage critical perspectives on these thinkers and ideas, such as criticisms of Gandhi by George Orwell and Arundhati Roy, Frantz Fanon's claims that colonialism is an essentially violent phenomenon that requires an essentially violent response, Malcolm's criticisms of Martin, arguments against pacifism on the basis of political realism by Max Weber. We conclude by brief examination of principled vs. strategic and revolutionary forms of non-violence in the work of Gene Sharp.

In 1965, the Second Vatican Council issued a "Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions", which contains a statement that Muslims "submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God." While the Declaration can be understood as recognizing the possible validity of Islam's claim to Abrahamic status, some scholars have introduced the notion of "Abrahamic religions" as a way of associating Judaism, Christianity and Islam as related faiths. This course will explore the defining features of the Abrahamic religions that tie them closely together as well as their particularities and differences. As the youngest of the three Abrahamic religions, Islam has a lot of things to say about Abraham which largely correspond to the Biblical story although the Qur'an also contains some novel features, including the claim that Abraham, together with Ishmael, built the Ka‘bah. This course will discuss how the scriptures of the three religions emerged within the same cultural milieu, and explore their intertwined histories and the ways in which Jews, Christians, and Muslims developed their own independent religious identities from their early encounters to the present. Students will also be introduced to some basic teachings of Islam. No prior knowledge of Islam is required.

Various religions in the first millennium debated whether hell was permanent and whether all people might be saved. Beginning with the New Testament passages that are used to argue for and against universal salvation, this class will introduce students to debates about universal salvation in Christianity, Manichaeism, Buddhism, and Islam, with special emphasis given to the comparison of Catholic debates on universal salvation with Indian, Tibetan, and Chinese Buddhist sources.

Christianity arose in a diverse religious environment. Originally in competition with other sects of Judaism and various Greco-Roman religions, Christianity encountered rival Gnostic sects, Manichaeism, and Islam as it spread, eventually entering dialogue with the various religious traditions of Asia and the Americas. This class introduces students to the theology of religions that developed over this long and eventful history. Topics addressed include the presence of God in other religious traditions, explanations of non-Christian virtue, the salvation of non-Christians, the possibilities of universal salvation, and contemporary Inter-religious dialogue, with special emphasis given to magisterial documents after the Second Vatican Council. Readings will include St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Karl Rahner, Jean Danielou, Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Joseph Ratzinger, and Jacques Dupuis, among others.

Abraham Heschel’s assertion that “no religion is an island” is especially true of modern Judaism. From Moses Mendelssohn’s defense of religious freedom to Heschel’s support of the civil rights movement, modern Jewish theology is characterized by an ongoing dialogue with other faith traditions, especially Christianity. This course explores the diverse manifestations of modern Jewish theology and its dialogical contextualizations from the eighteenth century to the present. We will read and analyze seminal works by Heschel, Mendelsohn, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Margarete Susman, and Emmanuel Levinas, among others. In each case, we will analyze their reliance on diverse ancient, medieval, and modern traditions. Topics to be discussed include the theology of praxis, modern messianism and mysticism, political theology, theological ethics, theories of religious language, and Jewish existentialism. In addition to providing access to texts and ideas that continue to shape contemporary Judaism, the arc of the course invites reflective wrestling with its core definitions: What should we consider modern in the context of Jewish thought? What speculation amounts to a system we can call theology? Does modern interreligious dialogue blur the boundary between Christian and Jewish theology? And if so, what makes certain ideas Jewish?

In AD 1095, the Roman (Byzantine) Emperor Alexius Comnenus sent a letter to Pope Urban II, asking for succor from Latin Christendom in order to repel the Muslim invaders who were overrunning his empire. Pope Urban II did not merely comply with this request, but transformed it into a call to restore to Christendom the lands of Christianity's origin, which had been lost to Muslim rule in the seventh century. In doing so, Pope Urban inspired and unleashed an outpouring of religious fervor- and bloodshed- unique in the annals of Christian history. This course will be dedicated to the examination of this extraordinary movement, from the initial overwhelming response it aroused among Christians across Europe through the fall of Acre in 1291. Among the issues it will explore are the historical, political, and ideological background to the Crusades, in Byzantium, Europe, and the Islamic world; The Peasants' Crusade and the Children's Crusade; the Latin principalities in the Near East, their organization and societies; interactions between Muslims and Christians; the status and treatment of religious minorities; the legend of Prester John and how it inaugurated the beginning of the European exploration of Central and Eastern Asia; the Italian communes and growth of commerce; the military orders; the career of St. Louis in the Near East; the Ayyubid and Mamluk sultanates and the geopolitical consequences of the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century; and more. Students will spend the second half of the course researching and writing a capstone research paper utilizing primary sources in translation.

In this interdisciplinary course, students will trace the development of Christian theology and culture in Eastern Europe—from the baptism of Rus in 988 to the classic novels of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, and from the liturgical theology of Alexander Schmemann to the religious cinema of Putin’s Russia. Throughout the course, students will grapple with the “accursed questions” that have long defined Russian religious thought, while also examining the diverse and divergent images of Christ put forward by Russia’s greatest theologians, artists, philosophers, and writers.

This course focuses on the distinct ways Christians and Muslims relate to Jesus and Muhammad. In the Islamic tradition, Muhammad is revered as the final and often the greatest prophet, whose scripture, teachings, and example guide Muslims along the "straight path" to paradise. Through a reading of classical Islamic texts and modern content (on youtube), we will examine how Muslims express love and reverence for Muhammad. (No prior knowledge of Islam required.) With this understanding in place, we will turn next to Christianity's relationship to Jesus. In the Gospels, Jesus does ask us to follow him (Mat 4:19, 9:9; Luke 9:23 etc.) but the Church also calls us to be in relationship with him (CCC 2565). Even more, Christ Himself, by giving the Church the Eucharist, invites us to unify ourselves to Him in a spiritual bond (CCC 1391). In this second part of the course we will read Christian spiritual masters and Christian novels, and analyze modern Christian content (again on youtube) that explores the theme of relationship and union with Christ. We will read from Bernard of Clairvaux, Catherine of Sienna, Teresa of Calcutta, and Hildegard of Bingen. In the third and final part of the course we will look at a few Catholic writers (including John Paul II) who have studied Islam and ask what lessons Islam (and Islamic spirituality) has for the Christian life.

Imagine a world stripped of magic, where cold rationality reigns supreme and the supernatural has been banished to the realm of fiction. Now consider our own world, where Silicon Valley technocrats consult AI oracles, where political ideologies inspire quasi-religious fervor, and where the “spiritual but not religious” seek transcendence in everything from meditation apps to psychedelic retreats. Which of these worlds more accurately describes our modern condition? This course challenges the notion that modernity and secularization have disenchanted our world, proposing instead that enchantment persists and even thrives in unexpected corners of contemporary life. From Weber's Protestant ethic to UFO believers in the American Southwest, commodity fetishism in South America to Islamic modernities in Lebanon, we will ask fundamental questions: How do myths and rituals shape our understanding of the world, even in ostensibly secular societies? What role does enchantment play in science, technology, and politics? How do different cultures negotiate the boundaries between the sacred and the profane, the rational and the magical? Drawing upon ethnographic studies and theoretical texts, we will explore how the categories of “religious” and “secular” are constructed, contested, and reimagined in various cultural contexts.

This course will examine the translation of the sacred on the Island of Ireland. It will offer an introduction to translation theory, examining many of the key issues linked to the translation of the sacred texts in a global context before turning its attention to the Irish context. Central to the course will be the translation of the bible into the Irish language, known as Bedel’s bible, undertaken at the behest of Queen Elizabeth I. It will examine how translation lay at the heart of the colonial project. Other topics examined will be the issue of Vatican 2 and the question of the vernacular, the Irish language masses composed by people like Seán Ó Riada or Tomás Ó Canainn, and the recent projects which offer a version of the gospels in Ulster-Scots.

In an age of growing polarization, how should human beings relate to one another, as members of families, social communities, professional callings, and civil society? This course explores ways that Catholic theology and Western political thought, particularly feminist thought, can engage each other on a fundamental aspect of human relationships: sexual difference. Though these traditions are often in tension, conversation between them will richly inform our study of the course’s core questions: How should we think about sexual difference, and how ought contemporary men and women live and work together in the family and the public sphere? We will take an interdisciplinary and historical approach, moving from the earliest days of Christianity through the medieval, Enlightenment, and modern periods and culminating in the present day. Theological sources will be drawn from Scripture, The Catechism of the Catholic Church, papal encyclicals, and writings of various Catholic theologians and philosophers. We will bring these sources into dialogue with ancient and modern political thinkers, their relationship to the tradition of feminist thought (with particular focus on first and second wave feminism), and constitutional law. Throughout the course, we will study underlying theories that inform our core questions: ideas about human nature, the meaning of sexual difference, equality, freedom, marriage and the family, human rights, and the ends of government and law. We will aim to discover areas of compatibility between Catholicism, as a tradition of faith seeking understanding, and feminism, considered as a philosophical, political, and legal movement centrally concerned with sexual difference and its implications. The course will conclude with discussion of contemporary American debates about the relationship and roles of the sexes in marriage & the family, the home, the workplace, and public life. Students will learn both how to distinguish the modes of thought that characterize theology and political science as disciplines, and how to integrate them in order to draw conclusions about reality. They should emerge from the course not only well-formed in their own views on our focal questions, but able to engage robustly and charitably with perspectives that differ from their own.

To belong to a religion often means more than just sharing in a common cosmology and belief in the supernatural, adhering to a set of collective rules for behavior and action, or participating in public rituals that performatively and symbolically carry out a particular way of life; it also means being part of a community—and, sometimes, even a culture. As the renowned French sociologist Émile Durkheim pointedly observed in his 1912 work The Elementary Forms of Religious Life: “A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community . . . all those who adhere to them.” While much theological and religious studies scholarship has focused on the beliefs, ethics, and performative practices (or rituals) within particular religious traditions, this course takes a broader view. Instead, it focuses on fundamental questions pertaining to the notions of belongingness within—and across—three of the world’s major religious traditions. Specifically, this course examines the notions of religious communality, and the subsequent ethical principles that stem from them, in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, approaching this topic from a reflexive Christian theological perspective centered on the following questions: What does it mean to be part of a religious community? What is the meaning of religious belonging in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam? How do these traditions’ notions of religious communality relate to their professed doctrines and subsequent ethical principles? And what might a comparative examination of these traditions’ various understandings of religious communality teach Christians about what belonging to the Church means today? Beginning with an overview of the terms “belongingness” and “Abrahamic religions,” the first part of this course situates the notion of religious communality within the theological sub-disciplines of comparative theology and religious ethics, introducing students to valuable theoretical tools upon which the remainder of the course is built. Next, the second part of this course systematically compares various historical and contemporary notions of religious belongingness within the Christian Church to Jewish and Muslim notions of the Synagogue and Ummah, exploring how these traditions’ respective understandings of belongingness relate to their derived ethical notions of what religious communality morally entails. Finally, the third part of this course examines the ongoing phenomena of religious belongingness within shared, pluralistic contexts and asks: What might a Christian comparative theological approach to the ethics of religious communality look like in our day and age? And what might such an ethics entail for how Christians imagine the Church in itself and in relation to other forms of religious communality?

This course explores the contours and implications of Christianity as a global reality. It will examine some of the rich explosion of scholarship that is now pouring forth on the recent and remarkable world-wide expansion of Christianity, while also putting such growth in a historical and theological perspective. The course readings will draw from fiction, theology, history, and the social sciences. In addition to sampling major general interpretations by scholars like Dana Robert, Mark Noll, Andrew Walls, and Lamin Sanneh, readings will concentrate on certain regions of startling change over the last century as well as places for which scholarship is burgeoning. Some of the course readings come from the standpoint of missionary activity, but more reflect new expressions of indigenous faith. Studies of Protestant, Catholic, and independent movements are included; readings come from a wide variety of Catholic, Protestant, and secular perspectives.

Spirit possession in Africa, Catholic piety in Mexico, and mortuary rituals in Borneo could all be described as manifestations of religion. But what do we mean by the term “religion,” and how might we compare different religions (and their corollaries, myth and magic) across the globe? By building upon these examples and many others, this course will help you think about religion from a comparative perspective, both across various cultures and between your own beliefs and those of others. Along the way, you will encounter and evaluate core concepts in the anthropology of religion such as purity and pollution, the sacred and the profane, ritual, sacrifice, and witchcraft. You will learn to articulate prominent theories of religion, and, by pairing foundational texts in anthropology with select case studies, you will grow in your ability to think and see as a budding ethnographer of religion.

In the anthropological study of religion, does having a religious background benefit a researcher or does it introduce bias? Where does theology belong in the anthropology of religion, and what might the two learn from each other? Can one critically study a faith and live it at the same time? This course addresses these questions through a review of the lives and work of prominent anthropologists who identified as Catholic and drew inspiration from their Catholic faith. In examining how these anthropologists shaped the discipline, students will learn about the wide breadth of the anthropological study of religion, an endeavor that stretches from the origins of our species to the high-tech world in which we now live. This disciplinary survey will also lead to questions of how, through these particular anthropologists, insights from the anthropology of religion intersect, complicate, and enrich the Catholic intellectual tradition.

This class introduces students to the Incarnation and divine embodiment in comparative perspective by contrasting theologies of incarnation in Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Daoism. Topics discussed include the purpose or reasons for the incarnation, its relationship to salvation and deification, and its presence in the community through the sacraments. Readings from the Christian tradition will include Origen, St. Athanasius, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Maximus the Confessor, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, Bl. John Duns Scotus, Maurice Blondel, Teilhard de Chardin, Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Sergius Bulgakov. Readings from non-Christian authors will include Ādi Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, Vedāntadeśika, Rūpa Gosvāmī, Abhinavagupta, Aghoraśiva, and several Mahāyāna Buddhist authors. Special attention will also be given to analogues of the devotion to the Sacred Heart in different religious traditions.

The goal of this course is to introduce the basic realities of Confucianism and Christianity, seeking to find, as Lee Yearley puts it, “similarity in differences, and differences in similarities.” This course also aims to follow the example of the preeminent Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci, the pioneer in exploring possibilities of dialogue between Christianity and Confucianism.

A major source of conflict – increasingly so – is environmental issues; both climate change-related conflicts about (more and more scarce) resources as well as secondary conflicts (conflicts that arise because of the resource conflict, i.e. climate migrants) pose a major challenge to the planet. Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si has offered ways to think about an “integral ecology” that takes the environment, life on the planet, the human condition and culture seriously. The cry of the earth and the cry of the poor cannot be separated. Laudato Si has to be read against the background of the concept of “Integral Human Development.” This concept, inspired by the works of Joseph Lebret, OP, was introduced by Pope Paul VI in his encyclical Populorum Progressio (1967). It refers to “the development of the whole person and the development of all persons. The course explores the connection (intersectionality) between peace, (integral) ecology, and (integral human) development. It will do so with in-class room teaching sessions and working with select case studies on integral ecology.

A comprehensive theological survey of Christian teaching on the destiny and end of all things and especially ourselves. Topics include: the kingdom of God; Christ's resurrection and ascension; Mary's assumption; the resurrection of the body; heaven and everlasting life; God's plan B (purgatory) and plan Z (hell); controversies about salvation and predestination; death; judgment; the soul between death and resurrection; the end of history and the return of Christ; liberation theology; theology of history; theology of hope; the communion of saints.

This class introduces students to Mariology, with a special emphasis on the four Marian dogmas—divine motherhood, perpetual virginity, Immaculate Conception, and Assumption. Topics discussed will include the relationship of the Virgin Mary to the Holy Trinity, the Virgin’s primacy in the spiritual life, and controversies over the definition of the dogma of Mary’s Co-Redemption in the twentieth century. Special attention will also be given to the role of Marian apparitions in the development of Church teaching and the Church’s theology of private revelations. Readings will include St. Thomas Aquinas, Bl. Duns Scotus, Gerard Manley Hopkins, St. Maximilian Kolbe, Pavel Florensky, Sergius Bulgakov, Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Adrienne von Speyr, and Pope St. John Paul II (among others).

This course will explore how Christians understand the meaning of human life in the context of the larger community of creation and in relation to the mystery of God. In an evolutionary context and a globalized world, what is the meaning of the Christian beliefs that human persons are created in the image of God, impacted by original sin, offered grace and redemption in Jesus Christ, and promised a future that includes resurrection of the body and a new creation? Related questions to be considered: Do we have a vocation and destiny? What is human freedom and how has it been affected by human sin and by scientific and technological developments? What insight does Christian faith shed on sexuality, gender, and what it means to live in right relationship with others? What wisdom does Christian faith have to offer about the meaning of suffering and death?

Christians say that there is one God, and this one God is a Trinity: one nature, three persons. But what does all this mean? Does anyone really know? And how did Christians come to believe that God is a Trinity in the first place? This course provides an introduction to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, with attention both to the history of trinitarian theology and its contemporary appropriation. It also covers topics such as our knowledge of God and its limitations; God and religious language; God and creation; God’s knowledge of the future; God and the problem of evil and suffering; and our own incorporation into God’s triune life through the person of Jesus Christ. Throughout the course, we will keep an eye on the personal relevance of trinitarian doctrine to every Christian, recalling with Karl Rahner that “the Trinity is a mystery of salvation; otherwise it would never have been revealed.”

This course introduces students to theology of the spiritual life, that is, of human life lived divinely, in union with the Trinity, now and unendingly. The course will treat the scriptural and sacramental foundations of spiritual theology and will emphasize particular historical expressions of this theology that have been found especially fruitful in the modern world, such as those that trace their lineage to St. Teresa of Avila and St. Ignatius of Loyola.

This course offers an expansive treatment of the work of Cardinal John Henry Newman, arguably the foremost Catholic thinker of the nineteenth century. While it will not ignore Newman's wonderful homilies, in the main it will concentrate on texts such as the Apologia, The Development of Doctrine, Oxford University Sermons, and Grammar of Assent, all of which have assumed classic status..

An exploration of how the voices and lives of women have contributed to the development and transmission of the living Christian tradition. After consideration of the impact of gender, intersectionality, and social location on theological method, the course will focus on the areas of theological anthropology, Christology/soteriology, the mystery of God, and women's spirituality. Readings will include selections from contemporary Christian theologians who identify their work as feminist, womanist/African American, Latina/Latine, mujerista, Asian and Asian American, queer, post-colonial or from the global South or “Third/Fourth World.”

The course examines the history, spirituality, and philosophy of education of the Holy Cross family of Catholic religious orders, including the Congregation of Holy Cross which founded the University of Notre Dame and the Sisters of the Holy Cross which founded Saint Mary's College. The focus will be on discerning the shape and central themes of Holy Cross spirituality as this affects the approach to education characteristic of Holy Cross institutions. The first part of the course will examine the historical origins of the Holy Cross religious communities, including the work of their founder Fr. Basil Moreau and the early Church and modern theologians whose writings deeply influenced Moreau's theology and spirituality (Augustine of Hippo, Benedict of Nursia, Ignatius Loyola, and the theologians of the French School, among others). The second part of the course will examine Holy Cross philosophy of education in conversation with other religious approaches and also early 20th century secular philosophies that influenced higher education in the United States. The third part of the course will examine the ways that Holy Cross spirituality and philosophy of education influenced but were also transformed by Saint Mary's and Notre Dame, especially in the work of two past presidents of these institutions: Sr. M. Madeleva Wolff, C.S.C. who served as president of Saint Mary's from 1934-1961 and Fr. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C. who served as president of Notre Dame from 1952-1987. The class will alternate weekly meetings between the Saint Mary's and Notre Dame campuses and will include visits to important Holy Cross sites on both campuses. The class will also host a number of guest lectures and attend the annual Madeleva lecture at Saint Mary's. Course requirements include weekly short reflection papers and a final paper on a historical or contemporary Holy Cross educational figure.

Gerard Manley Hopkins has a strong case for being the greatest Roman Catholic poet after Dante. He is certainly among the greatest among those who have written in English. This class introduces students to Hopkins’s greatest poems and theological essays, his education at Oxford, his formation in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, and his relationship to theologians such as St. Thomas Aquinas, Bl. John Duns Scotus, and Hans Urs von Balthasar. Supplementary readings will include the nineteenth-century Anglican and Catholic divines that influenced Hopkins, such as H. P. Liddon, Benjamin Jowett, Frederick William Faber, and St. John Henry Newman (among others).

Is it possible that God might save everyone without exception? Or is it Christian belief that at least some people will be damned? This class introduces students to the history of debates about universal salvation in Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and ancient Greco-Roman religions, with an emphasis on Roman Catholic theological approaches to the problem. Topics discussed will include the nature and extent of postmortem punishment, the paradoxes of God’s justice and mercy, and the importance of free will in debates about heaven and hell. Readings will include Origen, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Bl. John Duns Scotus, Bl. Julian of Norwich, George Tyrrell, Henri de Lubac, Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Joseph Ratzinger, Avery Dulles, David Bentley Hart, and James Dominic Rooney (among others). This class will also include representative samples of debates about universal salvation in non-Christian religions, especially the great debate about icchantikas, the “incorrigibles” or “hopeless” beings who can never escape suffering in Yogācāra and Tathāgatagarbha Buddhism.

This course offers an introduction to the theology of the human person, the field of theology known as “Christian anthropology” or “theological anthropology.” It focuses especially on topics such as the nature of human nature, our experience of divine grace, and the doctrine of original sin, with attention to practical and pastoral implications for the spiritual life and ecclesial community. The course aims to provide a comprehensive, historically contextualized overview of the field and to help students think with rigor and creativity about the human person in light of Christian faith. We begin by situating the topic of Christian anthropology in our contemporary context. Then, we consider the philosophy and theology of emotion, as a practical foundation for constructing a holistic Christian understanding of the human person, using the thought of Thomas Aquinas on emotion as a touchstone. With this foundation in place, we turn to thematic discussions of three central topics: human nature, original sin, and (especially) divine grace. At the end of the course, students should have a good knowledge of: the principal scriptural themes concerning the human person and the human condition and our divinization in Christ; the history of the Church’s reflection on nature, original sin, and grace; the relevance and significance of contemporary science for theological reflection on the human person and human origins; the enduring value of Christian reflection on human affectivity and human flourishing; the philosophical and theological elements necessary for an adequate contemporary Christian anthropology; the relevance of Christology to Christian anthropology; and the practical and pastoral importance of getting nature and grace right.

In A Secular Age, Catholic philosopher of religion Charles Taylor traces the rise of secularity in the West, examining how we have come to inhabit an age where disbelief in the transcendent is not only optional, but the default setting for many. Through the vantage point of literature, this course will consider the arc traced by Taylor and explore how the shift from enchanted cosmos to disenchanted universe is manifest in the content and form of literary works themselves. Assigned works of fiction and poetry will be enjoyed and discussed in their own right, and also in light of Taylor’s narrative of secularity. A key focus of the course will be encountering modern literary responses to what Taylor calls “the immanent frame,” with particular attention to texts that seem to crack open that frame and recover--or at least glimpse--a reenchanted cosmos.

This course provides a first introduction to some of the more influential spiritualities practiced by Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, and Eastern Orthodox Christians down through the ages and seeks to determine their significance for contemporary Roman Catholic spiritual praxis and theology. In order to properly understand the practices of Hindu yoga and bhakti, of Buddhist vipassana and Zen, of Muslim salat/namaz and Sufism, of the Eastern Orthodox Jesus Prayer/Hesychasm and the accompanying place of human effort in asceticism and morality, it will be necessary to examine underlying convictions about the nature of the human person and the supreme reality, of divine presence and grace, as well as the declared ultimate goal of spiritual endeavor, whether it be expressed more in terms of a communion of love or of enlightened higher consciousness. During the semester we will not only study important spiritual texts of other religions, but we will also practice meditation, visit a local mosque for Friday prayers and sermon, and be instructed by expert guest speakers who represent religious traditions other than our own.

Is religion necessary to live a moral life? If so, are all religions basically the same when it comes to the moral norms contained in them? If not, how do we account for the differences among religious values, norms and principles? How do religions justify their distinctive moral claims in the face of alternative proposals? Can we study the ethical thought of a religious tradition that is different from our own in a responsible manner and, if so, how should we proceed? This course will take up these and other related questions through an examination of ancient and contemporary Christian and Buddhist texts in dialogue with recent theoretical options for the comparative study of ethics. We will begin with an assessment of the importance and distinctive quality of religious voices in moral debate and then look at some of the ways that contemporary scholars have approached the investigation and assessment of similarities and differences in moral world views. The course will end with a comparative consideration of certain Buddhist and Christian options in environmental ethics.

G. K. Chesterton was a man with many sides, but this course will confine itself to only one, and that is his theological front. About his conversion to Catholicism he wrote to a friend, "As you may possibly guess, I want to consider my position about the biggest thing of all, whether I am to be inside it or outside it." We will consider his position by reading primary works in theology that led up to and followed his decision, among them "Orthodoxy, The Everlasting Man," biographies of St. Thomas and St. Francis, "The Thing," and "What's Wrong with the World." In these we will follow his own advice that "To become a Catholic is not to leave off thinking, but to learn how to think. It is so in exactly the same sense in which to recover from palsy is not to leave off moving but to learn how to move."

The aim of the course to give an overview of the theology of Pope Benedict XVI, as this expressed both in his encyclicals and other recent writings, but also in his theological reflection as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. The course has essentially three foci. Roughly equal treatment means that each topic will receive a week of treatment. The first of the three foci concentrates on the Papal encyclicals God is Love, Charity in Truth, Saved in Hope. The second of the three foci looks at the work of the present Pope as instructional and catechetical. Here we will concentrate on Jesus of Nazareth, God's Word, and Ten Commandments for the Environment. The third and last of our three foci concerns the Pope as a public intellectual, specifically as intervening in the public square to provide a sense of what the church has at stake in the modern world, what it can and must do in terms of dialogue, what it must do in terms of identity and continuing to be a witness. Among the texts that we will read are Truth and Tolerance, The Regensburg Lecture, and Values in a Time of Upheaval. Requirements include involvement in discussion, and either two eight page papers or one 15 page paper

This course will engage the concept of race and the phenomenon of racism from a theological perspective, with the central goal of enabling students to formulate their own account of what it means to do theology and practice Christian faith (personally and communally) in today's world. The course will explore the origins of racial discourse in modernity, the general history of slavery, racism, and segregation in the United States, Church teachings and practices in relation to race and racism, and influential black theological voices from throughout U.S. history. The core goal of the course is to empower each student to articulate their own vision, grounded upon a clear sense of history and developed through a respectful engagement with diverse theological voices, for living in an antiracist way.

This course is offered as an introduction to Christian Spirituality (or Spiritual Theology) with a systematic focus on its nature, stages, and goal; an historical focus on different traditions and representative figures; a thematic focus on the kinds of language and literary figures that are used to describe the spiritual life (e.g., in terms of a journey, mountain-climbing, kinds of relationships, etc.), and a practical focus on the disciplines that cultivate the spiritual life and are conducive to its end. Other than Scripture, various saints, poets, and spiritual authors to be read and discussed include: Augustine, Guigo II, Gregory of Nyssa, Antony of Egypt, the Desert Fathers, Symeon the New Theologian, Catherine of Siena, Gregory Palamas, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Thérèse of Lisieux, and Elizabeth of the Trinity.

What does it look like for the Church to faithfully carry out its mission in the midst of the modern world? In what ways do the philosophical and cultural presuppositions of modernity undermine or oppose fundamental Catholic beliefs and ways of living? What positive opportunities are offered in modernity for strengthening the Church and Catholic life? This course will explore the Catholic Church's relation to the modern world, with particular attention to the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Vatican II greatly impacted almost every aspect of Catholic life and thought, including the practice of the liturgy, the role of the laity in the Church, the relationship between the Church and politics, teaching on religious liberty, the Church's relation to other religions, and much else. The course will center on a close reading of the actual texts from Vatican II and will give students the opportunity to explore the teachings, debates, and developments that arose from the Council throughout the world as pastoral and theological responses to the diverse challenges of modernity.

This 3 credit hour seminar course is designed to explore how helping professionals articulate, cultivate, and rely on their spirituality or philosophy of caring as they participate in the work of helping and healing others. We will study how helping professionals rely on a spirituality of caring in order to help them maintain and cultivate their compassion in their work in the face of suffering and the problem of evil. An overall model for a spirituality/philosophy of caring will be presented and then explored as it is exemplified in various spiritual and philosophical traditions. The course is not intended to be an exhaustive survey of all spiritual traditions, but as an introductory opportunity for the student to understand the role of spirituality in helping work and to begin to articulate their own spirituality of caring in preparation for helping professions. The course is designed especially for the preprofessional student as well as anyone who is preparing for work in a helping profession. We will rely on readings from Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism as well as other traditions and philosophies, and also will examine writings by people who have reflected on the practical aspects of living out a spirituality of caring.

This course explores the relationship between the Judeo-Christian conceptions of salvation and the human desire for liberation from oppression and avoidable hardships. From a biblical perspective, salvation is about more than "getting into heaven." Contemporary theologians, primarily from the Global South and among the marginalized within "First World" countries, have led the way in reviving this biblical insight and applying it to the suffering and political struggles of today's world. This course traces the meanings of salvation as articulated in the Bible, early Christian history, and Christian movements among the marginalized in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. If you perceive the need for social change, this course will provide you with a better sense of thinking theologically and spiritually about salvation in relationship to both God's call for liberative social transformation and current human activity corresponding to that call.

The Christian confession of a God of infinite love and goodness seems to be severely challenged by the immensity of suffering and evil. This course explores different theological responses to the theoretical and practical problems presented by suffering and evil. Attention will also be given to how Scripture, psychology, and film have addressed these issues. The format of the course will consist of lectures, discussions, and the close reading and analysis of seminal texts. (Students who have attended the 2xxxx version of the course will not be eligible for registration.)

This course is an extended study of beauty as it relates to the nature of being and the nature of God, with considerations of the divine nature as trinitarian as well as certain Christological and pneumatological dimensions. Alongside Plato, Plotinus, Basil of Caesarea, St. John of Damascus, Augustine, Bonaventure, Dante, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Joseph Ratzinger (as well as engagement with art, novels, and poetry), we will explore themes which include the coincidence of the transcendental of beauty with truth and goodness, as well as the intersections between beauty and nature, beauty and creativity, beauty and suffering, beauty and sanctity/sainthood, and beauty and structures of human desire. The course seeks to overcome notions inherited from modern aesthetic developments of what the category of beauty can in fact signify: that is, it will presuppose an understanding of beauty that is not merely superficial, frivolous, or subjective, but rather a category and a phenomenon with immense ontological and theological depths.

What makes a work of literature "beautiful"? What makes it "ugly"? Is it really in the eye of the beholder or is there an objective dimension to our aesthetic judgements? And what role might theological modes of thinking play in our perception of the beautiful in contemporary culture? In this course, we will trace the development of these aesthetic questions, paying particular attention to works that complicate the binary between beauty and ugliness, a binary that frustrates (or simply does not interest) many purely literary critical approaches but finds an echo in a range of rich theological aesthetic imaginaries. In the course of our investigation we will consider various conceptions of beauty, from the classical confluence of form and splendor to the "pleasing terror" of the Romantic sublime, reading authors ranging from John Donne to T.S. Eliot, William Wordsworth to James Joyce on our way to cultivating a nuanced theo-aesthetic vocabulary attuned both to art that attracts and repels.

This course is an extended study of the phenomenon of death as it relates to human being, human experience, and the human relationship with God. Alongside sources from the Jewish and Christian theological traditions, we will engage philosophical, theoretical, spiritual, and comparative religious perspectives. The course will be composed of four units: (1) Death and Finitude, which concerns death as a structural feature of human nature and existence, (2) Death and Subjectivity, which concerns the manner by which conduct ourselves and compose our self-understanding with respect to our mortality, (3) Death in Comparison, which concerns the role and understanding of death in other religious traditions, and (4) Death and the Theological Virtues, which will explore the relationship between death and faith, hope, and love. The course seeks to cultivate an intellectually robust, conceptually sophisticated, yet distinctly Christian theory of death, its meaning, and its inevitability.

Discussion section that accompanies the THEO 40641 lecture section. Students taking this discussion section must concurrently enroll in the main THEO 40641 lecture section.

The Theology Proseminar is a one-credit course required of Theology majors and open only to Theology majors. It is designed to expose majors to the range of the field and its diverse methods, to encourage them to consider research possibilities as potential writers of honors theses or other large projects, to help them appreciate the efforts of their peers who are writing honors theses, and to connect their academic education in theology to the broader global contexts in which they live.

The lay vocation in the Church is an ecclesiological and therefore christological reality grounded in the salvation of the human race. Because the Catholic Church has a ministerial priesthood, one can get the sense that the laity, especially those with careers outside of the church, are passive recipients of the active elements (ie the ministerial priesthood) of the Church. This course seeks to challenge such thinking and to come to a fuller vision of lay involvement in the church, especially a laity trained in, though not necessarily having a career in, theology. This course will explore the theological task as part of one’s appropriation and reception of the Catholic faith by reading through the relevant documents on the laity (e.g. Aposotolicam Actuositatem), treatises by lay theologians on what it means to do Catholic theology, and exploring the history of lay involvement in the church. We will ask the question about the responsibility of the laity as something asked of them in and through their baptism.

In this class we will read two of the great thinkers of the 19th century, Søren Kierkegaard and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Writing during a time of increasing prosperity, liberty, and enlightenment, both found much that was troubling or naïve in the age’s conviction in the liberating and transformative power of reason, and provided analyses of the human condition and the self whose power and insight continue to provoke and challenge. We will focus on three themes that unite this analysis of the human condition: suffering, freedom, and transformation through love. Suffering makes us conscious of our limitations, our helplessness, our lack of control, and yet every human being must form the self in freedom. Can suffering lead to increased self-knowledge and transformation? When does suffering lead us closer to God? Does suffering purify love, or poison it? What is the relationship between suffering and freedom? To what extent does one's suffering limit the exercise of freedom? Can the suffering self make choices out of love that increase one's freedom, transforming the self? When freedom is made subject to nothing but reason it becomes trapped in its own irresolvable perplexities concerning its origin and its destination. The course will raise the question of what “the self” is, how suffering, freedom, and love are related to the self; how relationships structure, limit, and potentially transform the self; in what sense the suffering of despair represents the disordered self; and the different ways that Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky envision faith and love as unifying and completing the self.

Plato's cosmology in his Timaeus was the definitive Greek account in Antiquity about human beings' place in the universe and their relation to a Maker God. The Stoics, as in the second book of Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods, took over many ideas from Plato to posit that God is maximally responsible for the order of nature and that there exists a very close kinship between human and divine reason. Already in the second century BC Plato's cosmology was read alongside the creation account of Genesis, and this pairing deeply influenced the Jewish-Greek author Philo of Alexandria, in his On the Making of the World, as well as the Gospel of John and the 4thc. Cappadocian Gregory of Nyssa, in his On the Six Days of Creation. Turning to the medieval and Renaissance periods, we will continue our investigation of philosophers and theologians who are concerned to understand the nature of the relationship between God and the world. To this end we will read selections from John Scotus Eriugena's Periphyseon. We will also listen to the music of Hildegard of Bingen, who attempted to represent music of the spheres. With Copernicus and Galileo, however, the general understanding of our place in a divine cosmos dramatically changed, and philosophers, more unsure of our place within it, sought more subjective foundations, most famously, with Descartes's cogito. In short, what used to be obvious to the ancients, the medievals, and even the Renaissance philosophers—that we belonged to a divine cosmos and economy—was no longer. And it took more than a century for philosophers to find some way "back to nature." Among the most notable of them was the young German Romantic philosopher, F.W.J. von Schelling (1775-1854), who, in his Ideas toward a Philosophy of Nature and later, his Bruno, set out to correct what he considered the one-sidedness of Descartes's view. Turning, finally, to the modern period we will read two works, one by C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image on ancient and medieval cosmology, and another by Hans Urs von Balthasar, who sought to overcome the dialectic between ancient-cosmological and modern-anthropological starting points with a phenomenology of love.

This course pairs two extraordinary Jewish women philosophers of the World War II period who died during the period of Nazi persecution—Stein (1891-1942) in Auschwitz, and Weil (1901-1943) in England. Both studied under (and with) noted male philosophers—Husserl, Heidegger, Scheler, Von Hildebrand, and Alain, among others—and they developed their original insights on empathy and education (Stein), decreation and affliction (Weil) partly in response to their teachers. Both women struggled with their Jewish identity—Weil exemplifying an unconventional Christian Platonism and mysticism, Stein becoming a Catholic nun and canonized saint. Both wrote autobiographies. Literary and artistic criticism, meditations on mystical writings and experiences, and creative expressions (poetry and plays), as well as important essays on politics, philosophy, and theology belong to their fertile writings. Their lives and letters have inspired, in turn, the creative expressions of others: novels, plays, and poetry. Their intellectual quests in the shadow of the Holocaust led them to take up theological questions, studying St. Thomas Aquinas, Dionysius the Areopagite, St. John of the Cross (Stein), St. Francis, Bernanos, Marx, Plato, and Pascal (Weil). The answers they gave to God and others testify to the heroism and brilliance of their spiritual searches for truth and help to explain their continuing influence within the Church.

Knowing is central to Thomas Aquinas’s thought. It not only serves to differentiate human beings from other material beings but renders humans members of a community of intellectual beings who are all ordered to a participation in divine knowing. This course explores cases of extraordinary knowing in Aquinas. After studying the groundwork that Aquinas lays in his broader theory of Divine, angelic, and human knowledge, we will examine special cases such as that of Adam, Christ, the separated soul, prophets, rapture, faith, and the beatific vision.

Independent research done while abroad.

This module aims at introducing students to the canonical writings of the New Testament, their texts, their content, their origins, their transmission and the history of their interpretation.

This course surveys the selected writings of Greco-Roman literature to help students articulate the New Testament text in its broader cultural corpus of Imperial period of Rome. To familiarize students with the environment in which the New Testament emerged, this course introduces the social, philosophical, and religious character of the Greco-Roman world in the first and second centuries. Then students will discuss about selected passages in the New Testament based on their comparison to the primary sources for drawing relevance and uniqueness of the New Testament writings.

This module explores memory in the Bible and recent scholarship on memory studies. It considers memory techniques (rote memorisation, shortened and miniaturised manuscripts), ritual commemoration, and historiography as communal formation. It also introduces students to the history and theory of memory studies, from Aristotle to recent work on social and cultural memory. Intended Learning Outcomes At the end of the module, students will understand the place of memory and memory techniques within the corpora of early Judaism and Christianity, including not only the Hebrew Bible but non-canonical texts from early Judaism and early Christianity, have a rudimentary understanding of the history and theory of memory studies, critically interact with complex arguments about memory and memory studies through class discussions and written work, and plan, research, and complete a structured and reasoned essay on a biblical, early Jewish, or early Christian text.

This course focuses on the early Christian Corinthian community. We try to learn about the cultural, economic, and religious outlook of the Corinthian community through the reading of primary sources (the Bible and other early Christian sources) and modern scholarship. Angers, France - This is a lecture and interactive class that is effectively focused on literary / poetic analysis of Psalms. Each class we learn specific ways to analyze a Psalm and glean and greater theological meaning from it, and then practice in small groups and share with the class. Furthermore, each student picks their own small to work on at home throughout the semester, with a student from time to time presenting to the class their progress, and the final grade is a analysis and commentary of a student's own psalm with sources. All in French

The aim of this course is to become acquainted with the Psalms and Wisdom books. The course will be divided into three parts. The first part shall introduce the concept of wisdom. We will then turn to the Psalms. Here, after introductory elements, we will study some psalms: lamentations, messianic, wisdom. Lastly, we will turn to wisdom books: Proverbs, Qoheleth, Job, Daniel and Susana, Tobit, Song of Songs, Sirach, and the Book of Wisdom.

This module explores the Pentateuch, or Torah, a literary collection that has exerted a profound influence on Jewish and Christian religious expressions from antiquity to the present. Students will be introduced to the literary and theological features of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy as well as being offered an opportunity to develop skills of critical engagement in grappling with key texts such as the Creation and Flood narratives, the Akedah and their reception in antiquity and in contemporary culture. Emphasis will be placed on developing students' capacity to engage with subsequent scholarly and popular reflection on these texts and traditions as part of a process of forming and presenting their own interpretation.

This course represents an opportunity to explore the richness of the Wisdom tradition found in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. An introduction to critical and comparative issues in the study of Wisdom literature and the reading and discussion of texts from books such as Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes will be accompanied by an exploration of how these texts have been employed by later tradition to answer the question: where can Wisdom be found?

Who was the historical Jesus the Jewish Galilean whose activities and death resulted in the emergence of Christianity? This module explores questions about Jesus the man, his world, his social and literary environment, his disciples, and their literary activities.

This module aims to facilitate students deeper acquaintance and critical engagement with the phenomenon of prophecy as we meet it in the so-called Latter Prophets of the Hebrew Bible.

This module represents an opportunity to explore the richness of the Wisdom Literature found in the Hebrew Bible and later Jewish traditions. Following an introduction to the Wisdom tradition, the module will offer a close and critical reading of the books of Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes followed by an exploration of how traditions of Wisdom evolved not only in Judaism of the Second Temple Period including especially the Scrolls from Qumran, but also in the New Testament.

This module explores the question whether Paul's writings and ideas are reflective of, or discontinuous with, Jewish thought in the context of ancient Palestine. The ramifications of Paul's relationship with Judaism has had a profound impact on how Christian communities in the following millennia related to Jewish communities, often with dire consequences. Who was Paul from Tarsus and what were the cultures and intellectual movements that shaped his thinking? What tools are available for the historical study of this man and his writings? Key themes and current debates that have come to define Pauline Studies in the last decade, especially the so-called "New Perspective on Paul" (i.e. Paul's relationship to Palestinian Judaism), are given significant attention.

Using literary sources as well as material evidence (archaeological finds, artwork, inscriptions), this module explores customs, beliefs, institutions and identities of the early Christians within the social, political, religious and cultural context of the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity. The course will help students to think about central questions in the study of early Christianity such as: who were the early Christians? How did they articulate their identities across different languages and in different areas of the late antique world? How and where did they eat, pray and live? How did they understand their beliefs and interact with the cultures around them? What did their Roman, Greek or Syrian neighbours think about them? Students will reflect on different models of cross-fertilisation between emerging early Christian identities and the cultures and religious phenomena which characterised the later stages of the life of the Roman Empire.

The book of Psalms and the Wisdom Literature in the Old Testament contains expressions of the people of Israel's faith and worship. This course examines these expressions from the perspective of form, theology, themes, traditions, and quest for truth and meaning. Wisdom books are selected for detailed study.

This module aims to develop skills in the interpretation of the Gospel of Matthew, with particular attention given to appreciating the text's literary and theological contribution to the New Testament. While the module will focus primarily on the narrative interpretation of the text, important social and historical issues will also be considered. The module will explore (1) relevant background issues, including authorship, provenance, and purpose, (2) the Matthean narrative in its literary and theological context, and (3) selected textual issues that are important and/or disputed within contemporary scholarship.

This course surveys Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament with specific concentration on the mission and ethics. This course is designed to help students to read the biblical text within its historical and cultural context, so that students can articulate how early Christians offered an apology for the Pauline and Apostolic church through their ethos of missio dei, and how this early Christian rhetoric is still meaningful for the modern readers. Passages for reading will be chosen according to their featuring the main topic (mission and ethics) and class discussion will be examined in light of modern commentaries and other resource that provides historical contexts of the early Roman empire. The course hour (3 credit hours/week) is divided into three parts: asynchronous video recording session on Friday (1 credit), synchronous discussion on Wednesday (1 credit), and asynchronous online discussion (1 credit).

We are looking at spirituality from the 16th into the 21st centuries with a special emphasis on Jesuit and Carmelite spirituality. In this course, apart from a brief examination of the general relationship between poetry and Christian faith, attention will be given to a number of individual poets and their work.

This course will mainly focus on ancient paganism and the early Christian Church, from the 7th century BC until the 4th century CE). Special emphasis will be given on eastern Christian monasticism. A comparison with other monotheistic religions, such as Judaism and Islam, will be ventured towards the end of the semester.

This course examines the rich diversity that marks the medieval articulation of the Christian vision. The artistic and devotional inheritance of the Middle-Ages is set within the context of the Medieval Church's urgent need for institutional and theological reform.

Universita di Bologna - Bologna, Italy: This course is designed as an introduction to the academic study of religion. It is not intended to produce future specialists, nor necessarily aimed at fostering a primary or predominant intellectual interest in religion itself. Rather, its primary goal is to sharpen the analytical and critical skills of individuals who, regardless of their future roles and functions in society, will inevitable encounter the existence of religious facts and phenomena. While providing students with essential bibliographical tools and the historical coordinates necessary for a long-term understanding of the discipline's development and its main theoretical and methodological debates, the course prioritizes a problem-based and thematic approach. Its aim is to formulate questions and explore issues such as: What is religion? How do religions function? What distinguishes the academic study of religion from other disciplines that address religious phenomena? What are the fundamental operations and categories without which the scientific study of religion would not have been (or could not be) conceived? And how do these categories differ from similarly named or synonymous concepts used outside the academic context?

This is a lecture course taught in French with a final written exam at the end. It first introduced St. Thomas Aquinas in the time period in which he lived and described the impactful events of his life and what shaped his work. The class then focused on the Summa Theologica, explaining its organization into parts at the process that St. Thomas Aquinas takes to answer the questions within it. Finally, it went into those questions and followed the structure of the Summa Theologica to understand how St. Thomas Aquinas answered questions and the theological points that he made.

Study of Augustine's City of God, a foundational text in Western theology. Through selected readings, the course examines Augustine's responses to Roman ideology, paganism, and Platonism, as well as his views on sin, free will, and eternal life, highlighting his lasting influence on Christian thought. This seminar examines how emotions shape and interact with cognitive processes such as thinking, decision-making, memory, and language. Students explore psychological and neuroscientific studies addressing questions like how mood influences perception and judgment, how emotional valence affects memory, and whether emotional experiences are tied to language. Through readings, discussions, and short presentations, the course deepens understanding of the relationship between feeling and thought while fostering emotional awareness and analytical skills.

In the context of the 2025 jubilee, this course will consider the influence of Rome on the Catholic Church and vice versa from a multiplicity of complementary perspectives. It aims to offer a historical and theoretical introduction to the city of Rome and to the role that it has played and continues to play in the Catholic Church. This course will explore how Christians lived and continue to live their faith in the city of Rome yesterday and today through exploring the history, theology, art, and spirituality from the first centuries of the Church in Rome to today.

The history of the Catholic church is essentially intertwined with the history of Western Civilization over the past 2,000 years. The aspirations and struggles of Christendom constitute the fabric of the Christian tradition as it unfolds throughout time. This course represents an historical survey of the Church from its primitive beginnings in Jerusalem (c. 33 A.D.) to the Pontificate of John Paul II (1920-2005). The development of the course will trace the major events, ideas and people that went into the shaping of the Western Church, without ignoring the fundamental importance and influence of the doctrine of Jesus Christ regarding the institution he founded.

Intended to be counted as an upper-level theology major requirement course for undergraduate theology students The Book of Kells, one of the greatest treasures of Trinity College, is perhaps the most renowned illustrated manuscript of the early medieval period. This module will study the manuscript from the point of view of its theological importance, benefiting from several recent scholarly contributions, which will enable the students to learn both the theology and the iconography of this wonderful manuscript.

For millennia, Kabbalah - the Jewish mystical tradition - was a highly guarded, orally transmitted body of esoteric knowledge. Today, Kabbalah is everywhere, from the internet, to Madonna, to popular charms and amulets. This course presents both an introduction to the basic principles of Jewish mysticism, as they have changed and developed over the centuries, as well as the way in which Kabbalah has entered into diverse forms of contemporary spirituality, new-age thought, religious cross-fertilization (i.e. Buddhist Kabbalah), art, cinema, and even politics. Following an introduction into the nature of mystical experience, and a discussion of Biblical mysticism, the course will zigzag through history - jumping from earlier generations of thinkers to contemporary Kabbalists and Hasidic masters. In this way, the student will see how ancient, mythic ideas receive modern interpretation. We will examine Kabbalistic writings on such issues as the nature of the Divine, the reasons for creation, and humanity's role in the process of redemption in such seminal works as the Zohar, the Lurianic corpus and the works of R. Yehudah Ashlag. In comparison, we will examine the teachings of The Kabbalah Center and Bnei Baruch, contemporary Jewish meditation (Jay Michaelson), Kabbalistic theories of love and romance (and, perhaps, right-wing religious Zionists) (R. Yitzchak Ginsburgh), artists (Eliah Succot, David Friedman, Madonna), feminists, psychologists and environmentalists. Various perspectives on G-d and the universe, the human body and sexuality, meditation, ritual, and healing will be also examined. The question we will ask throughout is: Is Kabbalah just another fad, or does it add true and profound value to the various disciplines to which it is applied? Throughout the course, the rich picture of the Jewish mystical tradition will be complimented by frequent comparison to other great spiritual traditions of the world.

This module investigates the development of friendship and other human relationships (e.g. patronage and mentorship) in the Graeco- Roman world and their impact on the characterisation of human relationships in the New Testament and in early Christianity.

Art and religion have always been connected. In this module two related areas are examined through the visual arts, mainly the medium of art and architecture, firstly the distinctive Western European Christian tradition and secondly the historical formation of faith expressed in the theology of the European and Middle Eastern Civilisations and realized in some of the world's greatest artistic endeavours. In the 21st century, with a tension between the historical setting of Christianity and new political and social movements, the study of faith and religion through the arts is important. The rich resources found in London make this module an exciting and vibrant exploration of primary material.

Using literary sources as well as material evidence (archaeological finds, artwork, inscriptions), this module explores customs, beliefs, institutions and identities of the early Christians within the social, political, religious and cultural context of the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity. The course will help students to think about central questions in the study of early Christianity such as: who were the early Christians? How did they articulate their identities across different languages and in different areas of the late antique world? How and where did they eat, pray and live? How did they understand their beliefs and interact with the cultures around them? What did their Roman, Greek or Syrian neighbours think about them? Students will reflect on different models of cross-fertilisation between emerging early Christian identities and the cultures and religious phenomena which characterised the later stages of the life of the Roman Empire.

The purpose of this module is to survey the political, cultural and religious context in which Catholic theology developed in the medieval period. An important aim will be to introduce the student to some representative figures in the theology of the period. This period was particularly fruitful in the formation of theology in the Catholic tradition. The course will study: The theology of the Monastic and Cathedral schools The emergence of the University The significance of Aquinas' work The role of women in the medieval period

This course offers a general view of the history of the Church from the 4th to the 7th century, the evolution of dogmatic formulations with the study of the principal ecumenical councils that took place during this period, and the different currents of thought that marked late Christian antiquity in both the East and the West. In addition, this course constitutes an introduction to the reading and understanding of the Fathers of the Church, and proposes a presentation of the principal authors of this historical period.

The objectives are, firstly, to familiarize students with the living tradition of the Church in modern times and, secondly, to contribute to the development of their ability to trace, through reasoning, the causes of the phenomena and currents studied.

The course presents the sources of the liturgy and Christian prayer from the Scriptures and then from the eucological forms of the sacramentaries, the first collections of liturgical prayers, the liturgical space, the cults and cultures in the tradition of the ethos of the peoples. The history of the liturgy goes hand in hand with the history of kings and emperors who intervened in the government of the Church and the liturgy. A complex but enriching history to understand the evolution of the rites that still carry the faith of the Church through the contribution of the Councils. The course will also present other rites such as those of the Christian East which have influenced the Catholic liturgy. We will thus have all the elements to grasp how Tradition is alive, always evolving, never in rupture so that believers celebrate the cult in which Christ establishes them through baptism and makes them remain in the eschatological perspective.

The course studies the theological and philosophical background of Spanish mysticism, the characteristics of the mystical experience, and mysticism's relevance in Western culture.

The course will provide an introduction to the study of Sacred Liturgy. The study entails the five dimensions recommended by Sacrosanctum concilium is to be taught under its theological, historical, spiritual, pastoral, and juridical aspects,. Being an introductory course, the theological aspect will be emphasized, without excluding the other dimensions.

The course will introduce an understanding of sacred spaces in which the liturgy, the encounter with God, the realisation of the human being go hand in hand. The history of the theory of the sacred space and metanoia will be developed from Antiquity to the Contemporary time. The course will also introduce the spiritual, theological and anthropological thought on realization in the encounter of man, God and the world in the sacred space. Planned site visits are part of the course and offer an experience of the pedagogy of the sacred spaces. At the end of the course students will reflect and share their knowledge and experience gained from the course.