Religion, Life and Society: Reformational Philosophy

An exploration of central issues in philosophy, as addressed by Herman Dooyeweerd, Dirk Vollenhoven, and the “Amsterdam School” of neoCalvinian thought. The course tests the relevance of this tradition for recent developments in Western philosophy. Special attention is given to critiques of foundationalism, metaphysics, and modernity within reformational philosophy and in other schools of thought.

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Biblical Foundations

This course will explore the Bible as the ongoing story of and for God and creation, paying special attention to the way in which God’s story is intertwined with that of humanity and the world. In asking whether and in what way the Bible is also our story, we will attempt to identify which hermeneutical methods might help us discern its significance for present day life, including the academic enterprise.

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Theologies of Art: Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox

The course will explore significant ways that Christians have theologized the arts, artistry and art culture. The course will compare the varieties of theologies that have emerged from within the Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox traditions. The study will involve looking at paintings, icons, altarpieces, and socially and culturally engaged works of art as well as pertinent theological writings.

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Who Put the Capital A in Art? Aesthetics, Art, and Virtue

Kant’s concept of the disinterested aesthetic is often presented as the idea that finally clinched the secularization of art that had begun in the Renaissance. The seminar seeks to refine this view by contextualizing Kant’s separation of the moral and the aesthetic within the virtue ethics of the Western poetics tradition. Through an examination of relevant late medieval and early modern texts, the seminar considers how late medieval reception of Aristotle’s Poetics set the stage for art’s secularization in the West.

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Hermeneutics and Deconstruction

After giving brief attention to the hermeneutic theories of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer, this seminar will focus on Derrida’s “deconstruction” as a hermeneutic theory.   Attention will also be given to John D. Caputo’s exploration of religious themes in Derrida.

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Pragmatism and Religion: Rorty and Stout

How does pragmatism's central tenet that the meaning and worth of ideas lies in their practical consequences comport with religious forms of life and the understandings of morality they fund? Does pragmatism's suspicion regarding traditional “supernaturalist” theologies leave any space to think alternatively about God and the human relationship with God? What role do pragmatists see for religion in a democratic society, if any? In addressing these questions, this seminar will focus on the work of Richard Rorty and Jeffrey Stout.

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Nature, Supernature and Miracle in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas

This seminar examines Thomas Aquinas’s distinction between nature and the supernatural from the perspective of key texts in his Summa theologiae and its most important parallels. It does so in order to address the phenomenon of miracles and the role they play in his philosophical and theological construction. The seminar explores thereby the value of historiographical plotting of theoretical discourse at the intersection of perduring thought tradition(s) and current intellectual vogue.

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The Self and Its Others: Identity, Difference, and Responsibility

This course explores the notion that subjectivity is not merely given but produced through an encounter with society, language, and other selves, and explores the ethical and political consequences of this possibility. We will examine the construction of ethnic, religious, racial, and gendered difference, the forces that have constituted them as “other” instead of “same,” and the consequences this has for the construction of the self and its obligations and responsibilities. We will set up the theoretical issues by reading Kant, Sophocles, Hegel, and Levinas, but will focus especially on readings from Frantz Fanon, Jean-Paul Sartre, Luce Irigaray, and Gayatri Spivak.

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Facing the Darkness: the (Human) Nature of Evil

We shall discuss the origin and nature of evil by engaging various biblical, theological, and anthropological resources. Topics will include lament literature (e.g. Job), idolatry and the demonic, original sin and the correlation between victim and agent, and the relationship between justice and mercy.

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Scripture, Faith & Scholarship

One of the hallmarks of the Reformational tradition is its commitment to scholarship that is integrally and radically Christian. This course, designed specifically for PhD students, explores the three foci identified in the title and the interrelations between them. Through the examination of various models of the way in which Scripture and faith function as a guiding orientation in Christian scholarly work across the disciplines, participants will be challenged both to reflect on their vocation and to grow in their practice as Christian scholars.