THEO 83002 - Section 01: Advanced Hebrew (CRN 28913)

Course Description:
The course builds on the lessons learned in Elementary Hebrew and offers the opportunity to increase one's knowledge of Hebrew by reading and analyzing passages from the Hebrew Bible. There will also be some reading selections from other texts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

THEO 83009 - Section 01: Elementary Akkadian II (CRN 28914)

Course Description:
The second in a two-semester sequence, this course completes the introduction to the grammar of Akkadian, specifically the Old Babylonian dialect of that language, using still the grammar by J. Huehnergard, A Grammar of Akkadian, 2nd edition (Eisenbrauns, 2005). Via the grammar and its exercises we will begin to familiarize ourselves with the some of the genres of writings from Mesopotamian civilization, a "stream of tradition" whose legacy can hardly be overestimated for students of later Near Eastern cultures and literatures. Readings will include selections from contracts and other legal/administrative texts, laws, letters, omens, royal inscriptions, prayers, and epics. Finally, we will also pay attention to the place of Akkadian within the Semitic-language family, especially by way of a(n inductively based) comparison of the Aramaic material with that found other Semitic languages, especially Hebrew.

THEO 83102 - Section 01: Hebrew Bible Sem: Genesis (CRN 25139)
Long Title: Hebrew Bible Seminar: Earliest Interpretations of Genesis

Course Description:
The seminar will center on a study of the Book of Jubilees as an interpretation of Genesis. Although Jubilees will be very important to the research, the members of the seminar will also examine interpretations of Genesis in other sources such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, the pseudepigrapha (e.g., 1 Enoch, Aramaic Levi), Philo, Josephus, the New Testament, and midrashic texts.

THEO 83111 - Section 01: New Testament Seminar (CRN 25141)
Long Title: New Testament Seminar: First Corinthians

Course Description:
The seminar will center on the history of Paul's relationship with the church at Corinth. Attention will be given to the city of Corinth, the establishment of the Corinthian church by Paul, his correspondence with Christians in that city, his use of co-workers in dealing with the church, and his own subsequent trips to Corinth. The focus of the course will be on Paul's so-called "first" letter to the church at Corinth, our First Corinthians. The two major purposes of the course are (1) to provide an in-depth examination of 1 Corinthians, and (2) to develop skill in the exegesis of Pauline literature.

THEO 83204 - Section 01: Early Christianity Seminar (CRN 25142)
Long Title: Early Christian Seminar: Patristic Ecclesiology

Course Description:
You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation; once you were no people, but now you are God’s people? (I Pet 2.9-10) So the author of the First Letter of Peter addresses a group of Christian congregations across Asia Minor (see 1.1) towards the end of the first century. It is striking that while reflection on the structures and boundaries of the Church, on the articulation and purpose of authority within it, and on the importance and limits of community in our human sharing of God’s work of salvation, have all been central topics of reflection and argument for Christian theologians of all persuasions since the time of the Reformation, there are, arguably, no early Christian treatises simply on the reality of the Church, as there are on the being of God or the person and identity of Christ - no obvious Patristic essays in ecclesiology. This seminar will be based on the assumption that the reality of Church is nevertheless a central object of theological meditation in early Christianity, integral to the Fathers? understanding of God’s salvation in history. We will study just how the community of life in Christ was imagined and spoken of by the Church Fathers, by reading works by a series of major theologians, Eastern and Western, from the end of the first century of our era to the middle of the seventh. We will ask what images and categories they used to speak of the Christian community, what Biblical texts they drew on, and what conclusions they drew for how the community is to be shaped, nourished and led. We will also hear reports on several influential modern theologians whose vision of the Church has been shaped by reading Patristic literature.

THEO 83206 - Section 01: Our Lady of Guadalupe (CRN 28915)

Course Description:
Our Lady of Guadalupe has been at the heart of Mexican and Mexican American faith and identity for nearly five centuries; within Roman Catholicism she is officially acclaimed as the patroness of the Americas. This seminar explores the origins and development of the Guadalupe tradition; the Nican mophua, which millions of devotees acclaim as the foundational narrative of that tradition; and theological writings about Guadalupe from Miguel Sanchez's Imagen de la Virgen Maria, Madre de Dios de Guadalupe (1648) down to the present day.

THEO 83209 - Section 01: Theology of Kierkegaard (CRN 28916)

Course Description:
This course will examine the development of Kierkegaard's understanding of the genuine Christian life from the time of his first works written after his break-up with Regine Olsen, to his final statement of the ideal of being a Christian just before his final "attack on Christendom." We will focus in particular on those works that discuss his understanding of sin and faith in Christ. The works to be read will include his Journals (edited by Hannay), Fear and Trembling, The Concept of Anxiety, Philosophical Fragments, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Works of Love, The Sickness Unto Death, and Practice in Christianity. We will also use the new biography of Kierkegaard written by Hannay. The written requirements may be fulfilled either by a series of six page essays on the different readings for the semester, or a short paper and one longer research paper on a theme or work of Kierkegaard's.

THEO 83227 - Section 01: Hagiography (CRN 28917)

Course Description:
In recent years, a burgeoning scholarship on medieval and early modern hagiography has explored its literary conventions; its expression in a variety of forms: chronicles, romances, sermons, legenda, sequences, hymns, drama, (auto)biography, visual art, and parody; its social, cultural, and political uses; its relationship to historical and biblical writing; its complex authorship; and its depiction of gender. Less frequently has hagiography been studied in relation to specifically theological questions (biblical, moral, liturgical, and dogmatic). Drawing upon the theoretical resources of narrative theology, dialogical hermeneutics, and theo-aesthetics (in combination with the resources of other disciplines) participants in the seminar will seek answers from various perspectives to the question: "What is the theological significance of the saint's Life?"

THEO 83229 - Section 01: On being "Interreligious" Relg (CRN 28918)
Long Title: On Being "Interreligious" Religiously

Course Description:
The large question that looms most portentiously over all modern projects of interreligious dialogue, and that confers on the "Theology of Religions" its present urgency, is the question of whether or not attentive and respectful engagement with other religions demands of Christians the attenuation, in one way or another, of their own faith. This course will bring to bear on the theological discussion of this question certain extra-theological resources that are not always sufficiently exploited by theologians - viz., the reflections of modern thinkers who work at the intersection of philosophy and the social sciences (e.g., Ernest Gellner, Leszek Kolakowski, Charles Taylor, et al.) and the work of historians of particular religions whose fine-grained familiarity with other religions throws up necessary but also salutary barriers to hasty, albeitbien-pensant, ecumenical conclusions. Our purpose will be to suggest ways through the current impasse between "pluralism" and "triumphalism." Particular attention will be given throughout to the issue of what Christians can/should/must make of Buddhism.

THEO 83402 - Section 01: Eastern Liturgies (CRN 28919)

Course Description:
This seminar begins with an introduction to the Christ East and the phenomenon of its multiple rites. We survey the extant liturgical traditions of the Christian East, their origin, historical evolution and distinctive features. Our aim is to discover the main factors influencing the development of the rites, and to discern aspects of the distinct Christian witness codified in each rite. A close reading and analysis of the Eucharistic Liturgy of the Byzantine Rite follows. By studying this liturgy, reviewing the relevant secondary literature, and making comparative observations from other rites where appropriate, our goals are twofold: to gain greater familiarity with the Byzantine Rite; and to engage in a kind of apprenticeship in the structural and comparative study of liturgy. A research project invites deeper insight into specific aspects of one eastern rite and some of the scholarship pertaining to it.

THEO 83407 - Section 01: Ritual Studies Seminar (CRN 28920)

Course Description:
Rituals reveal societal values at their deepest level. Thanks to the Second Vatican Council, the study of liturgy now incorporates the results of the human sciences. For the pastoral liturgist that fosters critical praxis of the liturgical life of a local church community, ritual studies are indispensable.

This seminar will introduce students to ritual, symbol and myth; ritual, language and communication (ritual and body language, ritual and creating meaning); ritual as building or transforming community. These dimensions of ritual will be related to Christian practice; especially to the historical experience of liturgical inculturation in the church.

THEO 83614 - Section 01: Catholic Social Teaching (CRN 28921)

Course Description:
This course involves close reading of the official documents of Catholic social teaching from Rerum Novarum to Centesimus Annus. Emphasis is on intense seminar discussion. Students do a number of shorter analyses of the documents.

THEO 83650 - Section 01: Theo, Ethics, Responsibility (CRN 29163)
Long Title: Theology, Ethics, Responsibility

Course Description:
Throughout the 20th and into the 21st century, theologians and philosophers have discussed the meaning and relevance of moral responsibility at a time when human dignity is threatened and the destructiveness of human power is on clear display. Yet the language of responsibility, especially for theologians, implies not only moral integrity and accountability in our obligations to other people, but also the form and fittingness of our response to them as fellow creatures responding to God. Theologians have therefore seen fit to consider the importance of moral responsibility in light of longstanding theological questions about the form of human relation to the divine, the interpretation of theological tradition, the meaning of human freedom under the sovereignty of God, the formation and judgment of conscience, and the cultivation of virtue. The purpose of this class will be to introduce students to the contemporary ecumenical discussion of Christian responsibility ethics with these questions in mind, while also tracking how this discussion intersects with work in moral philosophy. Our reading will include work by H. Richard Niebuhr, Josef Fuchs, Hans Jonas, Klaus Demmer, Karol Wojtyla, Judith Butler, William Schweiker and Darlene Weaver.

THEO 83651 - Section 01: Theology and Peacebuilding (CRN 29767)

Course Description:
The course explores the Christian contribution (or difference) to efforts towards peace in the world. The course has two parts. Part one is a theoretical exploration of the history and assumptions that sustain the discussion of theology and peacebuilding. Behind this formulation is the assumption that theology and peace-building constitute two independent disciplines each with its own field of investigation, unique methodologies and criteria for rational inquiry. However, once the discussion is set up within these parameters, theology cannot but be reduced to simply providing a usefulcontribution- an add on to an independently derived and more primary realm of peace. The critical thrust of this first section will be to show that the political and ideological assumptions of peacebuilding (and thus peace studies generally understood) do not often allow for a full appreciation of theology as a way of life, grounded in and shaped by a matrix of practices and disciplines, whose overall effect is meant to shape the Christian into a vision and patterns of peace in the world. The constructive direction of the section will be to point to a more complex, multi-layered and at times contested relationship between theology and peacebuilding. In the second part, using representative stories of individuals and communities, the course will explore the theological matrix that informs and sustains the Christian practice of peace. Among others, the scriptural imagination, lament, hope, and conversion will be identified as key disciplines within this matrix. But because these disciplines are produced and reproduced in the habitual practices of the church, it makes Christian peacebuilding a form of improvisation which takes place within particular, local and specific contexts. The stories display not only the inner logic of a Christian theology of peace, but the multiple possibilities of Christian peacebuilding efforts in the world.

THEO 83804 - Section 01: Systematics Seminar: God (CRN 28922)

Course Description:
This seminar focuses on contemporary understandings of the Trinity that operate in terms defined by Rahner's paradigm shift to the economy of salvation. Besides Rahner's classic work, The Trinity, we will read works by LaCugna, Moltmann, Balthasar, Pannenberg, and Milbank. The selection of authors is made with a view to underscoring the variety of emphases that this paradigm shift allows, their varying degrees of hospitality to talk of the immanent Trinity, and in the event of hospitality their different emphases in figuration. Given the economic turn in contemporary discussion of the Trinity a leitmotif in the course is the topic of divine passibility. Does the economic turn make it either necessary or advisable to surrender, or at least to seriously qualify, the Patristic axiom of divine impassibility.

THEO 83805 - Section 01: Systematic Seminar: Christ (CRN 28923)

Course Description:
Seminar on selected topics concerning Jesus.

THEO 83816 - Section 01: African Christian Theologies (CRN 28924)

Course Description:
This course is a systematic and critical exploration of the origins, content and trends in contemporary African Christian theologies. We will study in some detail the work of some of the more prominent African theologians who are working or who have worked in biblical studies, moral theology, liturgy, systematic theology, Christology and ecclesiology. Our aim would be to see how these various scholars have articulated and furthered the efforts of the African faith communities to come to terms with both their traditional African religious heritages and their Christian faith. Some of the themes to be explored include (but are by no means restricted to) the emergent christologies which constitute the cornerstone of African theologies and the contribution these christologies as well as the challenges they pose to world Christianity; the meaning scope and biblical foundations of inculturation in contemporary African theologies; the dialogue between Christianity and African religion; the challenge of the NRMs to Christian theology and praxis in the main line churches; the moral methodology and concerns of African Christian theology; the intersection of liturgy and spirituality in African theology and ecclesial patterns, etc.