Meaning and Method

How does one get at the meaning of things? How does one make sense of how people experience the world? How does one make sense of one’s own experience of the world? Is it possible to do rigorous research into human experience without dehumanizing that experience? Are there methods by means of which to study human experience that allow for the description of our discoveries in ways that share some of the nuance, luminosity, and breathtaking insightfulness that we sometimes encounter in poetry?

In this course we will consider these kinds of questions. Together we will explore phenomenologically-informed human science research practices that have been shaped by these kinds of concerns. We will experiment with our own small-scale research projects, which we will bring into juxtaposition with the exploration of meaning in key extracts from primary texts in the phenomenological philosophical tradition, in some poetry that explores concerns similar to those of the phenomenological tradition, and in the work of the environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy.

As we craft our research projects we will consider how the phenomenological tradition has informed four different contemporary approaches to doing human science research (and how our own research craft might be honed in interaction with these approaches): reflective lifeworld research as pioneered by Karen Dahlberg, interpretative phenomenological analysis as pioneered by Jonathan Smith, Mark Vagle’s post-intentional approach to phenomenological research, and Max van Manen’s phenomenology of practice.

ICSD 132501/232501 F15
Dr. Gideon Strauss
Distance

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

"They Looked for a City": Biblical, Theological and Sociological Perspectives on the City from Ancient times to the Global Era

More people live today in cities or metro-urban regions than in the countryside, and many cities today are megalopolises of ten million persons or more.  Is the city sustainable?  Can we live hopefully, faithfully and imaginatively in extreme urban contexts characterized often by inequality, poverty and violence; yet alive with vibrant cultural production?  This course will look at the meaning of the city in history, using the lens of ancient and contemporary philosophical, historical, theological, and sociological writings, even as we seek to understand our role in anticipating urban challenges for a global age.

ICSD 132201/232201 F15
Instructor: Dr. Clinton Stockwell
Distance

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Christianity and the Ecological Crisis

Critics often blame Christian culture, and sometimes rightly, for ignoring and even contributing to the global ecological crisis. This course explores the gap between a biblical view of creation and Christianity's current response to the threats and opportunities posed by our ecological crisis. In this course, we will study the work of thinkers and practitioners who desire to address this perceived gap in Christian practice and reflection. In doing so, we will consider the ideological factors that have contributed to the emergence of this crisis as well as the normative question concerning the role a robust environmental ethic should play in a Christian’s walk of faith.

ICSD 130509/230509 F15
Instructor: Chris Allers
Distance

(MWS, MA)

Syllabus

Curriculum: Organising the World for Learning

Curriculum is the selection and organisation of experience for pedagogical purposes. The criteria that determine what is selected and how it is organised articulate fundamental values about the nature of the world and our calling in it. This course will encourage critical evaluation of the criteria that are commonly employed and of how the curriculum can be shaped to better reflect a Christian worldview. Curriculum is conceived not as a static collection of materials, but as a dynamic plan that directs the learning process and governs the organically developing relationship between teachers and learners. Teachers are curriculum workers, charged with reflective responsibility as they conduct themselves in their profession. Whether adopting and adapting an externally prescribed curriculum or designing a curriculum from its inception, Christian teachers have a responsibility to ensure that the curriculum reflects a biblical worldview, in structure as well as in content, and that learners are invited to respond from their hearts in obedience to the call of God in Christ, Scripture and creation.

ICSD 120307/220307 F15
Dr. Doug Blomberg / Elaine Brouwer
Distance

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Charles Taylor and the Religious Imaginary

The notion of a “social imaginary”—the way people come to understand their social surroundings by way of images, stories, and legends—has come to play a key role in Charles Taylor’s thought. This is especially true of his most recent book, A Secular Age, in which Taylor attempts to trace the historical development of Western secularism as we experience it today. This seminar will be devoted to an in-depth study of this intellectual tour de force. Through this study, seminar participants will also consider what role Taylor’s Roman Catholic religious commitment plays in his thought, as well as the role a religiously-informed “social imaginary” might play in a pluralized global society that is deeply impacted by, but also largely at odds with, the particular social imaginary of Western modernity.

ICS 220507 F15
Dr. Ron Kuipers
Thursday 1:30pm-4:30pm

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

The Divine (at) Risk: Open Theism, Clasical Theism and Beyond

Did God take a risk in creating the world?  How are divine and human freedom related?  Can we confess God’s sovereignty in the face of evil?  This course will explore the different ways in which the God of history is viewed by advocates and critics of “Open Theism.”  Our examination will stimulate our own reflections on how we might best understand and, indeed, imagine God’s love, knowledge and power.

ICS 120803/220803 F15
Dr. Nik Ansell
Thursday 9:30am-12:30pm

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Twentieth-Century Postmodern Theories of (Inter)Subjectivity

This seminar will examine the philosophical anthropologies of four  20th Century  post-modern  Continental philosophers:  Emmanuel Levinas, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray and Jacques Derrida.  In addition to focusing  on how each thinker develops a view of the human self in reaction to the modernist over-reliance on the thinking self, attention will be paid to considering each of the thinkers contributions to an anthropology in which “be(com)ing a “lover” is the epitome and mark of authentic humanity. Throughout this course we will look to the social and political implications of our anthropological theories and the conception of (inter)subjectivity they espouse.

ICS 220903 F15
Dr. Jim Olthuis
Wednesday 6:00pm-9:00pm

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

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.

ICS 1108AC/2108AC F15
Dr. Nik Ansell
Wednesday 9:30am-12:30pm

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Beauty: Theology, Ethics, or Aesthetics?

Is beauty simply “in the eye of the beholder” or is it something more? Is it a way to God, a moral precept, or the specific locus for a unique kind of pleasure? This course examines a variety of subjective and objective views of beauty in the history of Western philosophy and theology from antiquity to the present (e.g. in the thought of Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Kant, Weil, Barth, and Balthasar). It will also consider the implications of these views of beauty for the production of the visual arts, music, and literary culture in Western religion and society.

ICS 220105 F15
Dr. Rebekah Smick
Tuesday 1:30pm-4:30pm

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Aristotle, Aquinas and the Scholastic Approach to the History of Philosophy

This seminar examines the scholastic approach to the history of philosophy exemplified by Etienne Gilson against the background of its foundation in the thought of Aristotle as it was appropriated by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century. It examines the role that philosophy or theology's history plays in the conceptual constructions of scholastic thinkers, and what they think is truly first and deepest in the history they so study.

ICS 220401 F15
Dr. Robert Sweetman
Tuesday 9:30am-12:30pm
(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

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.

ICS 1107AC/2107AC F15
ICT3702HF L0101 / ICT6702HF L0101
Dr. Robert Sweetman
Monday 6:00pm – 9:00pm
(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

ART in Orvieto Summer Intensive

The Art in Orvieto advanced summer studies program will take place in Orvieto, Italy between June 29 and July 24 in the Summer of 2015. The intensive will include the Art, Religion, and Theology seminar, led by Dr. Rebekah Smick, as well as and artist's workshop and a writer's workshop (led by Paul Roorda and John Terpstra, respectively).

For further details, please see the dedicated Art in Orvieto webpage. 

Religion and Philosophy at the Extremes of Human Experience

John Newton, who wrote the lyrics for “Amazing Grace” in 1772, was the captain of a slave ship prior to entering the clergy. In other words, the man to whom the words “a wretch like me” originally referred – was actually a thoroughgoing wretch, a man who bought and sold human beings for profit. The grace that saved him, meanwhile, first appeared over the course of an extended brush with death: the ship he was on almost sank in a violent North Atlantic gale, then floated at the  mercy of the winds and currents for nearly a month before drifting fortuitously onto the coast of Northern Ireland.

We live most of our lives in a state of relative equilibrium, calmly passing through more-or-less predictable sequences of habit and custom, work and play, activity and rest. This course will explore what happens when these predictable sequences vanish, when we no longer know where we are or where we are going, what we should do, who we should strive to become. We will focus in particular on how religion and philosophy operate, both experientially and discursively, when the normal equilibrium of our lives has been shattered. This will involve a comparison between two opposing approaches to theses edges: in short, the very suffering that often seems necessary to open the soul out unto God is often cited as evidence that God cannot possibly exist, that religion is nothing more than a retreat into illusion spurred by the fear of death. Thus, beginning with a comparison between Victor Frankl’s account of his experiences in the Nazi death camps, Man’s Search for Meaning, and Freud’s classic denunciation of religion in The Future of an Illusion, this course explores how the tension between devastation, hope, and despair has played out in various other extremes of human experience.


ICSD13210 W15
Instructor: Joe Kirby
(MWS)

Syllabus

Leadership: Vision and Mission

This course is designed to enable participants to understand, develop and encourage faithful leadership in Christian schools. School leaders are a vital link in the translation of parents’ hopes and priorities into the life of classrooms. The vision of Christian schooling that leaders seek to sustain, is not simply their own, but that of the supporting community. This is both exciting and challenging. Where does the vision come from? What are the components of an educational vision? How is a vision articulated? How does a vision inform the educational agenda? How does a vision grow and flourish through generations of parents, teachers and students?

Christian schools have developed a variety of management structures to support their vision for Christ-centred education. This course gives participants the opportunity to examine these structures critically in the light of:

• the school’s and their own educational focus and values
• the need to nurture Christian community
• the need to sustain a dynamic vision for Christian schooling.

ICSD120301/220302 W15
ICP3443HS L6101 / ICP6443HS L6101
Instructor: Dr. Doug Blomberg / Dr. Clinton Stockwell
(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Liberating Theologies: Talking about God in the Context of Social (In)Justice

This course will focus on the way our attention to the poor, oppressed, and marginalized influences the way we talk about God. The content is practically focused, recognizing that while not all are interested in the language used by academic theology, most desire to reflect on the ways that theological concepts influence social and economic relationships. This class will explore the way theological tenets and practical action meet in the face of poverty and inequality. This goal will be accomplished through interaction with the centering text, Leonardo Boff’s When Theology Listens to the Poor. Course readings will also include contemporary works on the topic as well as selections from the biblical narrative. Together, these readings will challenge us to question how compassion, justice, and mercy are demonstrated in our theologizing as well as in our ethical action.

ICSD 132001 W15
Instructor: Jeffrey Hocking
MWS

Syllabus

Birthpangs of the New Creation: Judgment unto Salvation in the Book of Revelation

In our culture, “apocalypse” typically refers to a cataclysmic, catastrophic ending, real or imagined. Often this meaning, in which fear eclipses hope, is traced back to the biblical tradition. But what if the book from which we derive the term, i.e. the “Apocalypse”—or “Revelation”—of John, refers less to the end of the world than to a transition between the two Ages? What if that transition is characterized as double-edged: as both ‘the death throes of the old world order’ and ‘the birthpangs of the new creation’? Attentive to the nature of apocalyptic discourse, this course will seek to develop a key area of systematic theology by exploring the topics of death, judgment, heaven, and hell—the ‘four last things’ of traditional eschatology—as they are portrayed in the book of Revelation. In allowing intertexual and intratextual webs of meaning to emerge, we will pay special attention to the way in which Old Testament echoes, together with the book’s own symbolic coherence and narrative logic, can open up new avenues for exegesis, and for theological reflection. The topic of Final Judgment will be a special focus. How is this to be conceived in the light of the apocalyptic transition? If the first reference to Babylon in the biblical canon, the Babel narrative of Gen 11, refers to a judgment that does not bring history to an end but opens it up once again to the dissemination motif of Gen 1:28, is it possible to detect a parallel ‘judgment unto salvation’ theme in the final book of the New Testament? Our discussions will explore the interface between biblical studies, the “theological interpretation of Scripture,” and contemporary eschatology. Familiarity with New Testament Greek is an advantage but is not a prerequisite.

ICS 120809/220809 W15
ICT37XXHS L0101 / ICT67XXHS L0101
Dr. Nik Ansell
Fridays 9:30am-12:30pm
(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

“To the Unknown God”: Paul and Some Philosophers

This course explores the current fascination with the writings of Paul among non-Christian thinkers engaged in the study of political theology. How has this turn to Paul changed secular thinking on political matters? How has the work of these philosophers affected the Christian understanding of scripture?

ICS 220510 W15
ICT5764HS L0101
Dr. Ron Kuipers
Thursdays 1:30-4:30pm
(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Grace as an Aesthetic Concept

For much of the Western art tradition, the concept of grace has been an important critical concept for its ability to capture the often elusive quality of artistic affect. Often referred to as the “je ne sais quoi” of art - that something extra that cannot be explained – grace even supplanted beauty for many writers (from Giorgio Vasari to Friedrich Schiller) as the highest artistic ideal. Often missing from modern analyses of the concept, however, are its theological foundations. This seminar style course will exam the concept of grace within its theological, philosophical, literary, and art theoretical contexts in an effort to understand both its historical significance and its potential usefulness for the philosophy of art today. We will look at a variety of texts (e.g. from Plato, Cicero, the Pseudo-Dionysius, Dante, John Calvin, Alexander Pope, Friedrich Schiller, Martin Heidegger) as well as works of art for which grace is an important and defining aesthetic concept.

ICS 220103 W15
ICH3758HS L0101 / ICH6758HS L0101
Dr. Rebekah Smick
Thursdays 9:30am-12:30pm
(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

The Radical Theopoetics of John D. Caputo

This seminar will explore John D. Caputo’s theopoetics at the interface between deconstruction and the religion as an alternative to both classical theism and classical atheism.

Wednesdays, 6:00 - 9:00pm
Dr. Jim Olthuis
ICS 150907/250907 W15
MWS, MA, PhD

Syllabus

IDS: Aristotle’s Political Philosophy at the Crossroads of Ethics and History

This course examines the intimate relationship between Aristotle’s Nichomachean and Eudemian Ethics, his historical/reflective account the Constitution of Athens, and his Politics.  We will use Aristotle’s own interdisciplinarity to examine how it has served to inspire and challenge modern political-theoretical understandings of human communal life marked by sharp bifurcations between public and private, fact and value, political and ethical, systematic and historical. We will end by asking investigate what and how our reading of the  two Ethics, the Constitutions and Politics can serve or challenge a faithful Christian political witness in the context of contemporary Western political culture.

ICS140411/240411 W15
Dr. Robert Sweetman
Wednesdays, 9:30am-12:30pm
(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Reconsidering Kant’s Aesthetics

Until recently, it was customary to regard Kant as the thinker who gave definitive form to the notion of aesthetic judgment and who succeeded in explaining why aesthetic experience is something essentially distinct from other kinds of experience. The postmodern rejection of the practice of aesthetic theory, however, has done much to undermine Kant’s position vis-à-vis the arts. This course aims to re-examine Kant’s aesthetic theory from the vantage point of the art theoretical literature that preceded it. In an effort to better understand Kant’s contribution to the history of thought about art, it will seek to contextualize such “Kantian” themes as judgment, taste, genius, beauty, sublimity and purposiveness. It will also consider to what degree our understanding of Kant has been shaped by later modernist assumptions about the character of his contribution.

ICS 220107 W15
ICH 3761HS L0101 / ICH6761 HS L0101
Dr. Rebekah Smick
Tuesdays 1:30-4:30pm
(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Albert the Great, Meister Eckhart and Women’s Spirituality

This seminar examines Meister Eckhart’s mystical discourse and its conceptual configuration as a ‘contradictory monism’ against the backdrop of the “Dionysian” tradition of Albert the Great (and Thomas Aquinas) and the current efflorenscence of women’s mysticism represented by Marguerite Porete.

ICS 220409 W15
ICH5155HS L0101
Dr. Robert Sweetman
Mondays 1:30-4:30pm
(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Faithful Thinking and World Orientation: Augustine, Aquinas, Dooyeweerd, Olthuis

This course is designed to examine four examples of Christian thinking about God, self and world within a religiously heterogenous imaginative and thought world.  The effort to think integrally within and about such a world is a throughline to be followed from any point in the ongoing tradition of Christian thought.  The character of the world changes inexorably but its religious heterogeneity both imaginatively and conceptually is reaffirmed in and through all such changes.  What it means to think in accord with one’s faith, to think faithfully, then, will change as the world in which such thinking takes place changes, but the task of negotiating faithfulness in the context of imaginative and conceptual heterogeneity continues to challenge, bless and curse by turns.  Augustine, Aquinas, Dooyeweerd and Olthuis illustrate both the challenge and opportunity of such an enterprise within the context of ancient Roman, high medieval, high modern and postmodern imaginative and conceptual contexts, respectively.

ICS130405/230405 W15
Dr. Robert Sweetman
Tuesdays, 9:30am-12:30pm
 (MWS, MA, PhD)

 Syllabus