Faith, Freedom, and the Meaning of Politics: Liberalism and Its Discontents (IDS)

The political liberalism that has shaped the constitutional arrangements of many nations and that has been hegemonic in international relations since 1989 is currently facing the most serious challenges of recent decades. In international relations the liberal world order is facing challenges from autocratic states like China and Russia and from movements like political Islam. In the North American context liberal democracy is facing serious challenges from a new nationalism and from Christian integralism. In this interdisciplinary seminar we will focus on reading key texts in the current debate conducted in the English language between contemporary proponents of liberalism, nationalism, and integralism, engaging these texts with help from the work of the critical theorist Raymond Geuss and two pluralist philosophers in the Reformational tradition, Jonathan Chaplin and Lambert Zuidervaart, and with contextualizing reference to the work of one Canadian political philosopher, James Tully.

Drs. Ron Kuipers, Gideon Strauss

ICS 2400AC W23

Remote (Online Synchronous)

Tuesdays, 6pm - 9pm ET

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register January 13, 2023. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

Finding Joy in Learning

Finding Joy in Learning is a course that will inspire and support K-12 educators in their own personal journey of learning. Participants will consider a deeply Christian vision for their lives as educators and reflect on teaching practices in light of faith and spiritual practices. It is intended to guide educators on an inner journey as they pursue a path of refreshment and renewal in their work within Christian education.

This course seeks to answer the following questions:

• What is my calling as an educator?
• How should I intentionally live out my calling to teach?

Dr. Edith van der Boom

ICSD 260001 W23*

Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

(MA-EL)

Syllabus

*NOTE: Approved for Area 4 of the CSTC

How to Coach A Strong Team: Leading People, Building Institutional Capacity, and Securing Accountability

How to Coach A Strong Team is a course for current and aspiring school administrators who want to cultivate their people skills. The course will focus on the competencies involved in having crucial conversations and coaching colleagues for professional development purposes, while also providing opportunities for learning about the competencies relevant to talent acquisition and employment termination. The backbone of the course will be a series of meditations (in the Reformational philosophical tradition) on being human: imaging God in the world.

How to Coach A Strong Team is a remote learning course consisting of six synchronous sessions including three school visits and a debriefing session with an expert practitioner, thirteen weeks of asynchronous online interaction, and the writing of a playbook by each student taking the course for credit. All of the synchronous sessions will be by means of online video, with the possible exception of one of the school visits. The exception may include an on-site, in-person option as part of a hybrid package, depending on circumstances. Team auditors will have access to five of the six synchronous sessions (including the school visits and the expert practitioner debriefing) and a team audit study guide for reading and talking through the course materials in their team contexts.

Dr. Gideon Strauss

ICSD 260005 W23

Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

Dates TBA

(MA-EL)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register January 13, 2023. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

Nothing Can Separate Us…!: The Dialectical Materialism of Slavoj Žižek

This seminar will map out the Dialectical Materialism of Slovenian philosopher, psycho-analyst, and cultural critic Slavoj Žížek. A communist and atheist, Žižek's thought is an original Lacanian inspired repeat of Hegel that recalibrates Materialism. Žížek's incisive structural insights will be explored even as his faith in the Void as the eternal traumatic Real is contrasted with faith in the steadfast Love of God.

Dr. Jim Olthuis

ICS 140908 / 240908 W23

ICT5704HS L0101*

Remote (Online Synchronous)

Wednesdays, 6pm - 9pm ET (Starting January 18, 2023, and finishing April 19, 2023.)

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register January 13, 2023. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*Attention TST students: if you are interested in taking this course for credit, you must petition your college of registration to count the course credit toward your degree program.

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.

Dr. Bob Sweetman

ICS 1107AC / 2107AC W23

ICT3702HS / ICT6702HS L0101*

Remote (Online Synchronous)

Tuesdays, 10am - 1pm ET

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register January 13, 2023. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*Attention TST students: if you are interested in taking this course for credit, you must petition your college of registration to count the course credit toward your degree program.

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.


Dr. Bob Sweetman
ICS 120402 / 220402 W23
ICH5017HS L0101*
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Thursdays, 6pm - 9pm ET

(MWS, MA, PhD)


Syllabus


Enrolment Notes:
To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register January 13, 2023. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.


*Attention TST students: if you are interested in taking this course for credit, you must petition your college of registration to count the course credit toward your degree program.

Deeper Learning: From Wonder to Inquiry to Practice

CANCELLED

Deeper Learning: From Wonder to Inquiry to Practice is a course which seeks to help Christian educators develop deeper learning. We will consider what it means to be image-bearers of God called to care for our neighbours and to be engaged in real work that is part of God’s story. Our consideration of these ideas will inform classroom practices and signature pedagogies in apparent, unintended, and even transformative ways. Together we will examine the importance of global citizenship as a form of deeper learning and the impact it has on developing a caring and just world.

Dr. Edith van der Boom

ICSD 260004 W23*

Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

(MA-EL)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register January 13, 2023. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*NOTE: Approved for Area 3 of the CSTC

CANCELLED

Biblical Foundations: Narrative, Wisdom, and the Art of Interpretation

How can we read and experience the Scriptures as the Word of Life in the midst of an Academy that believes the biblical witness will restrict human freedom and thwart our maturity? How may we pursue biblical wisdom as we “re-think the world” when our Christian traditions seem convinced that biblical truth may be disconnected from—or simply applied to—the most pressing and perplexing issues of our time?

This course will explore the Bible—from Genesis to Revelation—as the ongoing story of and for God and all God’s creatures, paying special attention to the way in which humanity’s attempt to find its way is interwoven with the story of the Divine presence and with the wisdom and promise of creation-new creation. In asking whether and how the biblical story may find its future in our ongoing narratives, we will attempt to identify which hermeneutical methods and sensitivities might help us discern its significance for present day life, including the academic enterprise.

If Jesus is the Living Word at the heart of Scripture, does that change our understanding of where biblical truth is coming from and where it is going? Does the Bible have an implicit, sapiential pedagogy that we have misconstrued? Can the familiar Reformed themes of creation and covenant, election and eschaton speak to us in new, reformational ways? These are some of the questions we shall explore together as we reintroduce ourselves to the biblical writings.

Dr. Nik Ansell
ICS 1108AC / 2108AC F22
ICB2010HF L0101*
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Tuesdays, 4:15pm - 7:15pm ET

(MWS, MA, MA-EL, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:
To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register September 16, 2022. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*Attention TST students: you have to contact the ICS Registrar to complete your registration.

**NOTE: Approved for Area 1 of the CSTC

Grace as an Aesthetic Concept

Following Ephesians 2:8, grace is, for Christians, a free gift of salvation bestowed on humankind by God regardless of human merit. "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.” As the means by which humans participate in God’s plan for humanity, grace is a central theological concept in all forms of Christianity. 

In the history of Western aesthetics, the term "grace" is also of considerable importance. Generically it indicates beauty in movement and expresses the lightness, spontaneity, and naturalness of this movement together with the charm it exerts. By the 18th century, parallel to the birth of modern aesthetics, the achievement of grace in art was routinely considered art’s highest ideal, the “je ne sais quoi” - the inexplicable something extra - that guarantees artistic success. 

At first glance, these two meanings for this one term seem very far from one another. One attempts to account for the quality of God’s interaction with humanity, while the other seeks to describe the surface effects of expressly material goods. It is thus not surprising that these two understandings of grace are rarely thought to intersect, a state of affairs compounded by the fact that the academic study of grace has traditionally only taken place in discrete fields of research. Because of doctrinal differences in the theology of grace, the teaching of grace in Christian seminaries is often part of systematics. Among  historiographers of the arts, the historical concept of grace is often reduced to a matter of style. 

By contrast, this interdisciplinary seminar style course will exam the concept of grace within its theological, philosophical, literary, and art theoretical contexts in an effort to more fully understand its historical significance, the points of intersection between its contemporary uses,  and its potential usefulness for the philosophy and theology of art today. We will look at a variety of texts (e.g. from Plato, Cicero, Augustine, John Calvin, Alexander Pope, Friedrich Schiller, Martin Heidegger, Karl Rahner) as well as works of art and literature for which grace is an important and defining aesthetic concept.

Dr. Rebekah Smick

ICS 120103 / 220103 F22

ICH3758HS / ICH6758HS L0101*
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Thursdays, 10:00am - 1:00pm ET

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:
To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register September 16, 2022. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*Attention TST students: you have to contact the ICS Registrar to complete your registration.