Ways of Learning

Participants in the course will investigate and evaluate significant perspectives on the learning process in order to understand the assumptions of various theories and to interpret these from a biblically-informed standpoint. They will review current research into child development and learning (e.g. brain research, cognitive processes, multiple intelligences, learning styles) in seeking to develop a coherent understanding of the relationships between various learning theories, on the basis of a Christian view of the person and of knowledge. An action research project will enable participants to test an approach to learning in the context of their own classrooms.

ICSD 120305/220305 F16
CSTC1540
Instructor: Doug Blomberg / Joonyong Um

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Vocational Wayfinding

Study ONLINE in Continuing Education or Degree Credit mode.

“What am I to do with my life?” “Who am I?” There appears to be an inextricable connection between the work that we do and our sense of who we are. As the poet David Whyte has suggested, work is for all of us a pilgrimage of identity. It is not, however, a pilgrimage for which any of us are provided with a GPS device, allowing us to navigate in straight lines with comfortable certainty towards clear career objectives that cohere in obvious ways with an immutable sense of our identity. Instead, this pilgrimage is more like the experience of Polynesian sailors, who traversed the vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean with the help of the stars, memory, and close attention to the patterns of the waves on the surface of the ocean as these reflected features of the ocean (including far-off islands). Polynesian wayfinding was a way of navigating that required alert improvisation and frequent reorientation from within a perpetually shifting context. Our vocational pilgrimages require of us to find our way in a similar manner.

In this course we will explore particular practices, frameworks, and tools, by means of which we can engage in vocational wayfinding. Prompted by our readings we will consider some of the relationships between work and identity: How does my work prompt my discovery of my sense of self? How do I try out possible selves in relation to whatever in the world is calling me toward particular kinds of work? What am I to do with my life? We will give close attention to those passages in our lives (in particular young adulthood and the middle passage of life) when both our work contexts and our experience of our identity are most obviously in flux. In addition, we will consider how to contribute skilful leadership and insightful mentoring to others as they engage in their own vocational wayfinding, particularly in the contexts of the workplace and educational institutions.

Vocational Wayfinding is a two-part course that will equip participants to navigate the work-life journey. The first six-week module will focus more on frameworks for digging into the meaning of our work-life journeys, and will include a discussion of David Whyte’s book Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity. The second six-week module will focus more on practical tools for figuring out how to go about the next phase of our careers, and will include a discussion of Herminia Ibarra’s book Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career.

As a credit course Vocational Wayfinding is part of our Wayfinding Master of Worldview Studies program and is a credit level course for MWS, MA and PhD programs. The tuition fee in this mode is $900 for both modules.

As a continuing education course Vocational Wayfinding is oriented towards professional and personal development and has no particular academic prerequisites. It can be taken individually or as part of a small discussion group in your church or school with prices ranging from $150 to $500 (depending on the number of modules and options you choose).

Click here for more details and registration information.

ICSD 132502/232502 F16
Dr. Gideon Strauss
Distance
(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

First Module: Week of Sept. 19 - Oct. 24
Second Module: Week of Nov. 7 - Dec. 13

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 F16
Instructor: Chris Allers
Distance

(MWS, MA)

Syllabus

Community, Faith, and Judgment: Hannah Arendt and Religious Critique

This seminar explores Hannah Arendt’s reflections on judgment, especially as these were shaped by her experience reporting for The New Yorker at the 1961 war crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann. After exploring the issues Arendt raises in Eichmann in Jerusalem, and before turning to her most mature reflections on the theme of judgment in particular, we will examine Arendt's understanding of the human situation "between past and future" in the essay collection that bears the same name. These essays will help contextualize Arendt's last (and uncompleted) reflections on judgment as that 'faculty' which might yet help us think and act in unprecedented social and political situations where traditional wisdom has collapsed and universal rules have proved incapable of providing moral guidance. Arendt asks how we can come to understand our time, with its unprecedented crimes, and thereby reconcile ourselves to (without condoning) our past and present. Such understanding is essential, she says, if we are to be able to take up the possibility of an alternative future path amidst the various crises of culture, tradition, and authority that characterize modern existence. This exploration will finally lead us to Arendt's latest thoughts concerning judging specifically, a subject which she intended to form the subject matter of her third, uncompleted, volume of The Life of the Mind. In looking at the material collected in the volume Responsibility and Judgment, we will also ask what members of specifically religious communities might learn from Arendt's reflections (a question Arendt does not herself ask): Are faith communities prone to fostering ideological formations that inhibit their members' capacity to engage in the kind of thinking that Arendt says is a necessary condition of our ability to judge? Should members of faith communities be held responsible for engaging (or failing to engage) in the task of critical self-reflection? How do the beliefs and actions of different religious communities contribute to the ability of their members to become effective judges of a world that is shared and constituted by a plurality of persons who are members of different communities? How might Arendt's insights help religious adherents rediscover the spiritual and intellectual resources of their traditions that could awaken hope and reveal novel possibility for action?

ICS 220502 F16
Dr. Ronald A. Kuipers
Thursday 1:45pm-4:45pm

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

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. The course will consist of seminars in which participants will engage key readings relevant to the practice of interdisciplinary theology.

ICS 120801/220801 F16
Dr. Nik Ansell
Thursday 9:30am-12:30pm

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Hermeneutics and Deconstruction

This seminar will examine and compare Hans-Georg Gadamer’s “Hermeneutics” and Jacques Derrida’s “Deconstruction.” Attention will also be paid to the emphasis on hermeneutics in Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time. The seminar discussions will move toward developing a non-violent reading-with hermeneutic theory which features both trust and suspicion.

ICS 120901/220901 F16
Dr. James Olthuis
Wednesday 6:00pm-9:00pm

(MWS, 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 F16
Dr. Nik Ansell
Wednesday 9:30am-12:30pm

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

The Aesthetics of Compassion

In light of the recent renewed interest in the meanings and mechanisms of empathy in such areas as ethics, visual studies, and the philosophy of mind, this course examines the place and role of compassion in the development of the Western aesthetics tradition. Considering a range of art theoretical texts, literature, and images for which the theme of compassion has been crucial, the course aims to clarify the ways in which the concept of compassion has been thought able to account for certain of the emotional and cognitive links that exist between an artwork and its audience.

ICS 220104 F16
Dr. Rebekah Smick
Tuesday 1:45pm-4:45pm

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Nietzsche, Foucault, and the Genealogical Approach to the History of Philosophy

This seminar examines that philosophical approach to the history of philosophy that travels under the name of “genealogy”.  It does so in terms of selected texts of the tradition’s to major figures: its founder, Friederich Nietzsche and the presently ubiquitous Michel Foucault.  It examines the role that genealogical study of the history of philosophy has in the philosophical construction of its practitioners and what they think is truly first and deepest in the history they so study.

ICS 120406/220406 F16
Dr. Robert Sweetman
Tuesday 9:30am-12:30pm

(MWS, 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 F16
ICT3702HF L0101 / ICT6702HF L0101
Dr. Robert Sweetman
Monday 6:00pm – 9:00pm
(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Reading Romans in the Shadow of Empire

Paul’s letter to the Romans is seen by many as the centrepiece of his epistles, providing a summary of his theology and the key to his thought. We will, however, read Romans as a thoroughly situational letter, written to communities shaped by the culture and beliefs of imperial Rome, struggling not only with their own social contexts, but also with the place of Judeans and the story of Israel in their midst. The social status of the believing communities in Rome, as well as the social dislocation of many residents of Rome will provide a context for reading Romans from below, as a letter to communities struggling with what it means to be faithful in a context of slavery, poverty and violent distrust of the stranger.

ICS 150205/250205 S16
Dr. Sylvia Keesmaat
On-Campus Summer Intensive
July 11-15, 2016
9:30am - 4:30pm
Pre-course reading required

(MWS, MA, PhD)

CSTC Approved (Biblical Foundations)

Syllabus

Coming to Our Senses: Art, Faith and Embodiment

Many centuries of mind-body dualism have conditioned Christians to evaluate art primarily by its capacity to transcend our finite embodied existence in search of ‘the spiritual.’ By contrast, this course will focus on the way art, whether religious or secular, articulates lived human experience as a way to gain more intimate contact with the world, each other and, ultimately, also with God. In order to do so we will discuss the crucial role of the body in our pre-reflective understanding of the world; the importance of the sense of touch for sensing nuanced textures and timbres; and the notion of beauty understood as unfolding in time rather than as a timeless, captured moment. The course will conclude by assessing the implications of this approach for a fresh understanding of art, with particular attention to the recent return of religious references in contemporary art. The aim of the course is to enable participants to develop new Christian criteria by which to approach and evaluate works of art of our time.

ICS 151208/251208 S16
Dr. Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin
On-Campus Summer Intensive
CANCELLED

(MWS, MA, PhD)

CSTC Approved (Worldview)

Syllabus

Political Theology and the Secular State

‘God is back’, on the streets of a liberal democracy near you. But the return of public religion – its ‘de-privatisation’ – is generating deep anxieties among secularists who have long assumed that liberal democracy presupposes a ‘secular state’ and a religion-free public realm. Christians, too, are scrambling to make sense of the new but shifting spaces opening up for their own faith-based political engagement. Drawing on salient insights of contemporary political theology, the course will confront the challenges to, and opportunities for, the secular state presented by the resurgence of public religion in liberal democracies. It explores various concepts of ‘secularism’, ‘secularization’, ‘the secular’ and the ‘post-secular’, probes the nature and legitimacy of religious public reasoning, and reflects on the shape of constructive and critical religious citizenship in contemporary liberal states.

ICS 151309/251309 S16
Dr. Jonathan Chaplin
On-Campus Summer Intensive
CANCELLED

(MWS, MA, PhD)

CSTC Approved (Philosophy)

Syllabus

Practising Vocational Wayfinding

“What am I to do with my life?” “Who am I?” There appears to be an inextricable connection between the work that we do and our sense of who we are. As the poet David Whyte has suggested, work is for all of us a pilgrimage of identity. It is not, however, a pilgrimage for which any of us are provided with a GPS device, allowing us to navigate in straight lines with comfortable certainty towards clear career objectives that cohere in obvious ways with an immutable sense of our identity. Instead, this pilgrimage is more like the experience of Polynesian sailors, who traversed the vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean with the help of the stars, memory, and close attention to the patterns of the waves on the surface of the ocean as these reflected features of the ocean (including far-off islands). Polynesian wayfinding was a way of navigating that required alert improvisation and frequent reorientation from within a perpetually shifting context. Our vocational pilgrimages require of us to find our way in a similar manner. 

In this course we will explore particular practices, frameworks, and tools, by means of which we can engage in vocational wayfinding. Prompted by our readings we will consider some of the relationships between work and identity: How does my work prompt my discovery of my sense of self? How do I try out possible selves in relation to whatever in the world is calling me toward particular kinds of work? What am I to do with my life? We will give close attention to those passages in our lives (in particular young adulthood and the middle passage of life) when both our work contexts and our experience of our identity are most obviously in flux. In addition, we will consider how to contribute skilful leadership and insightful mentoring to others as they engage in their own vocational wayfinding, particularly in the contexts of the workplace and educational institutions.

ICSD 132502/232502 W16
Dr. Gideon Strauss
Distance

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Required Texts:
Ibarra, Herminia. Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career. Harvard Business School Press, 2004.

Parks, Sharon Daloz. Big Questions, Worthy Dreams: Mentoring Emerging Adults in Their Search for Meaning, Purpose, and Faith. Revised 10th Anniversary Edition. Jossey-Bass, 2011.

Smith, James K.A. Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation. Baker, 2009. 

Whyte, David. Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity. Riverhead Books, 2001. 

Neon Bibles and Broken Hallelujahs: Soundsings in Theology and Pop Culture

Popular culture is a “matrix of meanings”: a complex network of texts, images and “memes” characterized above all by its mass accessibility. In contemporary, media-saturated society, television, music, movies, sports, fashion and social media constitute much of the cultural atmosphere in which we live, breathe, and are formed as individuals – a social reality almost impossible to circumvent. In particular, a younger generation growing up in an age of ubiquitous social media, streaming video and various portable devices is saturated with music, images and information in a way unprecedented in human history. Moreover, pop culture is constantly evolving, with its constant emphasis on what is “in” always threatening to leave the less savvy on the margins. Theological engagement with “pop” or “mass” culture has traditionally been characterized by 1) avoidance; 2) a dismissal of popular culture in favour of “high” culture; or 3) a lack of vocabulary with which to discuss its patterns of meaning. However, a number of books over the course of the last decade have sought to creatively engage Western pop culture from a Christian perspective. Taking as methodological approach the idea that theology must always mediate between living Christian faith and a cultural “matrix,” this course aims to explore the nature of a dialogue between theology and pop culture, looking for theological “signs of life” in popular culture while effectively “mediating” the Christian gospel in a fluid social environment.

ICSD 132401 W16
Instructor: Brett Potter
Distance

(MWS)

Syllabus 

Required Texts:
Detweiler, Craig and Barry Taylor. A Matrix of Meanings: Finding God in Pop Culture. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003.

Romanowski, William. Eyes Wide Open: Looking for God in Popular Culture. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2007.

Turnau, Ted. Popologetics: Popular Culture in Christian Perspective. Philipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2012

In Medias Res: Media, Technology, and Culture

According to Michel Foucault, the “blueprint” of the 20th century was the prison or hospital.  However, we might say that the “blueprint” for the 21st century is the computer network: namely the Internet.  With the technological revolutions of the 21st century, we see the digitalization and informationalization of everything.  Learning to live, think and act within this sort of society is increasingly difficult and requires new diagnostics of culture, politics and the self.  This class will engage with these questions in light of the importance of materiality and embodiment in the community of faith’s ongoing reflection upon Christian life and mission.

ICSD 132301 W16
Instructor: Matt Bernico
Distance

(MWS)

Syllabus 

Required Texts:
Galloway, Alexander R. 2004. Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
McLuhan, Marshall and Quentin Fiore. 2001. The Medium is the Massage: an Inventory of Effects. Corte madera, CA: Gingko Press.
Sconce, Jeffrey. 2003. Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

Wisdom and Schooling

This course explores a biblical understanding of wisdom as an alternative to the theory into practice paradigm, which has dominated the way in which schooling is conducted at virtually all levels. According to the theory/practice story, schooling is the process by which theoretical insight and abstract academic understanding lay the foundations for an abundant life. The Christian gospel proclaims, however, that walking in the way of Jesus is truth and life. The challenge to the Christian school and the Christian teacher is how to be in the world of schooling while not being of it. The implications of a wisdom perspective for schooling in general will be considered; however, as learning and the curriculum are the foci of other courses, this course attends more closely to issues related to teaching.

ICSD 120306/220306 W16
Instructor: Dr. Clinton Stockwell
Distance

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus 

Required Text:

Melchert, C. (1998). Wise teaching: Biblical wisdom and educational ministry. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International. [NOTE: This title is no longer in print. ICS will have several copies available for loan. Please contact the library at library@icscanada.edu].

For the Love of Wisdom: Scripture, Philosophy, and Creation Order

If philosophy may be seen as “the love of wisdom,” how might this (western) wisdom be related to the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament) and to the sapiential sensitivities and concerns of the wider biblical canon? Is the focus on (creation) order that many OT/HB scholars find in the wisdom literature indicative of a kind of philosophical awareness? Or is this an imposition of a later western “wisdom” onto the biblical writings? Does biblical wisdom thinking naturally lead to the development of a Christian appreciation for, and development of, philosophy? Or does a potential clash between rival (biblical and western) wisdom traditions suggest that the notion of “Christian philosophy” is oxymoronic? In conversation with the writings of Gerhard von Rad, Roland Murphy, Pierre Hadot, and others, this course will explore how wisdom thinking, as disclosed in Scripture, provokes a re-examination of the roots of western philosophy and the scholarly implications of biblical revelation.

ICS 220810 W16
Dr. Nik Ansell
Friday 9:30am-12:30pm

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Philosophy at the Limit: Richard Kearney

A study of Kearney’s trilogy Philosophy at the Limit as well as his recent Anatheism, focusing on his exploration of that “frontier zone where narratives flourish and abound.” Participants will examine Kearney’s attempt to sketch a narrative eschatology that draws on the work of Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida, and Ricoeur.

ICS 220508 W16
Dr. Ron Kuipers
Thursday 1:30pm-4:30pm

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Required Texts:
Kearney, Richard. 2001. The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
_____. 2003. Strangers, Gods, and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness. London and New York: Routledge.
_____. 2004. On Stories. London and New York: Routledge.
_____. 2010. Anatheism: Returning to God After God. New York: Columbia University Press.

IDS: Problem-Historical Approaches to Philosophy, Theology, Psychology, and Art History

This course is designed to examine and appraise the critical practice manifest in the problem-historical tradition of reading texts in a variety of disciplines as to the ability of that practice to bring to the surface deep spiritual intuitions and concerns at play in those texts, and ability that fosters both a person of faith's open learning from and knowing criticism of those same texts.

ICS 2400AC W16
Bob Sweetman, James Olthuis, Nik Ansell
Wednesday 9:30am - 12:30pm

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Spiritual Exercise as Christian Philosophy from Augustine to Bonaventure

This seminar examines the notion of spiritual exercise as it evolved in Hellenic and Hellenistic philosophy to understand the emergence of ‘Christian philosophy’ as a cultural project within the Augustinian tradition of theology and spirituality, a tradition that begins in Augustine’s own writings and can be said to find its medieval high point in the work of St. Bonaventure.

ICS 220402 W16
Dr. Bob Sweetman
Tuesday 9:30am-12:30pm

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Democracy and Diversity

Modern democracies are not only made up of diverse individuals but diverse cultures. How ought liberal democracies address cultural pluralism, especially when the claims of cultures conflict? This question is explored principally by critically examining liberal multiculturalism, which argues that group-differentiated rights are not only consistent with, but required by, the basic liberal democratic values of freedom and equality. Ultimately the course goes beyond a secular multiculturalism by seeking to understand cultural pluralism within a political theological framework. Will Kymlicka and Nicholas Wolterstorff are among the theorists considered, and particular attention is given both to Quebec and Islam as case studies.

ICS 222601 W16
Dr. Phillip Shadd
Monday 9:30am - 12:30pm

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Note: Readings for the Week 1 have now been posted in the Syllabus.

Required Texts:
Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship. (Oxford, 1995)
Tariq Modood, Multiculturalism, 2nd ed. (Polity, 2013)
Nicholas Wolterstorff, Understanding Liberal Democracy: Essays in Political Philosophy, edited by T. Cuneo (Oxford, 2012)