2008 Summer Courses for Weeks 3-4

Science & Christianity: Retrospect & Prospect

This course examines critical historical episodes in the interaction between Christianity and science from the sixteenth century to the present. A major goal is to show how deeply embedded in specific cultural situations are all “encounters” between Christianity and science. A second goal is to subvert the notion that talking about any religion-science issues (including “creation,” “intelligent design,” and “evolution”) can ever be a simple matter. A third goal is to suggest Christian strategies for a more fruitful interchange between science and faith. From this course, students should be able to take away both enriched historical understanding and better theological balance for approaching critical questions relating science and Christianity.

HIST/INDS 550: July 14-25, 8:30-11:00 am
2 or 3 graduate credit hours

Mark Noll
Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History, University of Notre Dame. BA (Wheaton), MA (Trinity Evangelical Divinity School), PhD (Vanderbilt).

David Livingstone
Professor of Geography and Intellectual History, Queen’s University, Belfast. BA, DipEd, PhD (Queen’s University, Belfast).

Mark and David have team-taught at Regent before. Mark is professor at Notre Dame and a prolific and award winning author. David is the author of Putting Science in its Place, Science, Space and Hermeneutics and other books and articles in the area of history and theory of geography, and scientific culture.

“Personable, funny, and thoroughly conversant in their subject areas.”

Philip Ryken
Senior Minister, Tenth Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, PA. BA (Wheaton), MDiv (Westminster Theological Seminary), DPhil (Oxford).

Philip received his DPhil in Historical Theology from Oxford University and is the author of more than twenty books including commentaries on Exodus, Jeremiah and Lamentations.

Preaching Old Testament Narrative

The goal of this course is to promote the teaching and preaching of biblical narrative by providing a theological rationale and developing exegetical and homiletical skills for delivering practical, Christ-centred expositions of stories from the Old Testament. Pastors, teachers and other students of Scripture will learn practical methods for understanding the stories of the Bible in their literary contexts and for connecting these stories to the gospel of Jesus Christ as the main story line of the Bible as a whole.

APPL 600: July 14-25, 8:30-11:00 am
2 or 3 graduate credit hours

David Hempton
Alonzo L. McDonald Family Professor of Evangelical Theological Studies, Harvard Divinity School. BA (Queen’s University, Belfast), PhD (St. Andrews).

David is the author of many books including Methodism: Empire of the Spirit. His latest book, Evangelical Disenchantment, is forthcoming from Yale University Press.

Evangelical Conversion and Disenchantment Narratives

The course will concentrate on discourses and processes of religious conversion and disenchantment within the evangelical tradition in both Europe and the United States from the early eighteenth to the later twentieth centuries. Questions addressed will include: what was the appeal of evangelical religion and spirituality to different religious and social groups? How were religious conversions understood and expressed? And what factors promoted subsequent disenchantment? We will examine conversion narratives, various expressions of disenchantment (in art and literature) and some examples of reconversion. By exploring these categories, the course hopes to shed light on wider themes such as the nature of the evangelical tradition, the emergence of a concept of self in the early modern period and causes of secularization in later periods.

HIST 593: July 14-25, 8:30-11:00 am
2 or 3 graduate credit hours

Laura Smit
Dean of Chapel, Associate Professor of Theology, Calvin College. BA (Calvin College), MDiv (Calvin Theological Seminary), PhD (Boston University).

Laura is ordained in both the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Christian Reformed Church and is the author of Loves Me, Loves Me Not: The Ethics of Unrequited Love.

The Theology of Beauty

In his Confessions, Augustine cried out to God, “Late have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you!” It seemed natural to Augustine and to many thinkers since to understand God as Beauty Itself, the source of everything beautiful. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change” (James 1:17). Among the good and perfect gifts God has given us is the experience of beauty, an experience that shows us something of God’s own nature. This course will examine the theology of beauty through the work of theologians such as Augustine, Anselm, Bonaventure, Edwards and Balthasar. We will also consider the insights of artists and poets, such as Fra Lippo Lippi, Dante, Rembrandt, J. S. Bach, John Milton, Gerard Manley Hopkins, C. S. Lewis and Wendell Berry. However, this is not a course in the theology of art, but in the theology of beauty. We will be concerned first of all with what it means to understand God as Beauty and then with the question of how the beauty of the creation, most especially the beauty of other people, may serve to direct us back to God.

INDS 529: July 14-25, 1:15-3:45 pm
2 or 3 graduate credit hours

Ivan Satyavrata
President, Buntain Theological College Kolkata, India. BA (Union Biblical Seminary), ThM (Regent College), DPhil (Oxford).

Ivan is an ordained minister of the Assemblies of God and plays an active role in evangelical theological education in India as Chairman of the Asia Theological Association in India.

“He combines personal experience & academic training in just the way I’d hoped Regent professors would.”

Jesus & the Religious Experience of People of Other Faiths

Is Jesus for Christians only or for all people everywhere? Few would deny the universal relevance of the person and message of Jesus, but how is Jesus’ universality to be understood and applied in the context of our growing awareness of religious plurality in the twentyfirst century? The deepening conflict between people of different faiths due to growing religious fundamentalism has caused some Christians to espouse a socially tolerant and pluralistic view in which Jesus is reduced to a Christian “tribal” god—one alternative among many. Others believe Jesus’ universality entails asserting his uniqueness as the “only way” in direct opposition to the religious aspirations of people of other faiths. This course will evaluate the experience of select Christian converts from Hinduism in outlining an approach to sharing Jesus with people of other faiths that affirms his absolute and universal lordship, while remaining respectful to the religious experience of people of other faiths.

INDS/THEO 518: July 14-25, 1:15-3:45 pm
2 or 3 graduate credit hours

Robert Gagnon
Associate Professor of New Testament, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. BA (Dartmouth), MTS (Harvard Divinity School), PhD (Princeton Theological Seminary).

Robert specializes in Pauline literature and biblical sexual ethics. He is the author of The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics, and co-author of Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views.

The Bible, Homosexuality and Sexual Ethics

This course will examine the Bible’s views on homosexual practice in the context of a broader discussion of human sexuality. Particular attention will be given to the creation texts, the Sodom narrative and related stories, the Levitical prohibitions, the witness of Jesus on human sexuality, and several key texts in Paul (Rom 1:24-27; 1 Cor 6:9; 1 Tim 1:10) in the broader context of Pauline sexual ethics. The three main arguments for dismissing the biblical witness on homosexual practice will be assessed and critiqued (the exploitation, orientation and misogyny arguments). The course will also deal with philosophic nature arguments, current socio-scientific information and church and public policy issues. Students will be equipped to think through the issue of homosexual practice and to make a reasoned and compassionate case for the importance of a male-female prerequisite for valid sexual unions.

BIBL/THEO 589: July 14-25, 1:15-3:45 pm
2 or 3 graduate credit hours

Roger Lundin
Blanchard Professor of English, Wheaton College. BA (Wheaton), MTS (Gordon- Conwell), MA, PhD (University of Connecticut).

Roger has taught at Calvin College and the University of Notre Dame, and has written numerous books on American literature, hermeneutics and the intersection of religion and literature.

“Enthusiasm for his subject is evident, which leads to a wonderful analysis of the literature and how we as Christians can respond to it.”

Modern Literature and the Question of Belief

“On subjects of which we know nothing, or should I say Beings—” Emily Dickinson wrote to a friend in 1882, “we both believe, and disbelieve a hundred times an Hour, which keeps Believing nimble.” In making this observation, Dickinson was pointing to one of the pivotal developments in modern culture, that being the late nineteenth-century emergence of unbelief as an intellectually viable and socially acceptable option. We will study the dynamic interplay of belief and unbelief in some of the greatest poetry and fiction of the past 150 years. Our journey will take us across national, cultural and confessional lines, as we read the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Czeslaw Milosz, as well as portions of The Brothers Karamozov by Fyodor Dostoevsky and short stories by Flannery O’Connor. Our goal will be to think through the theological significance of the new dynamics of belief, and we will do so with the help of Karl Barth, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This course is meant to serve as both an exercise in literary, theological and cultural understanding and as an occasion for Christian self-reflection and growth.

INDS 569: July 14-25, 8:30-11:00 am
2 or 3 graduate credit hours

Earl Palmer
Minister of University Presbyterian Church, Seattle, Washington. BA (University of California, Berkeley), BD (Princeton Theological Seminary), DD (Hon.) (Whitworth).

Earl has authored a number of books, including Alive from the Center: Commentary on 1 & 2 Corinthians, 1, 2, 3 John, Revelation, A Faith that Works, The Book that John Wrote and others. Earl presents “a refreshing approach combining pastoral wisdom and scholarship with no compromise on either.”

Come Before Winter: 2 Timothy – St. Paul’s Final Letter

This remarkable letter gives us a chance to learn from St. Paul near the close of his ministry as he writes from Roman imprisonment to his young friend, Timothy. The book is profound as an encouraging letter to a young disciple in the first century. Its discipleship and ministry teaching also have vital theological relevance for our present understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ and therefore its encouragement themes resonate for our generation just as they gave courage to believers in the first century. Our goal in the course will be to explore the book of 2 Timothy expositionally. Credit students will write their own theological commentary on texts that they will select.

BIBL 572: July 14-18, 8:00-11:00 am
1 or 2 graduate credit hours

Michael Pucci
International Director of Educational Programs, Food for the Hungry. BA (California State University, Chico), PhD (University of Nottingham).

Ben Homan
President, Chief Executive Officer, Food for the Hungry. BA (Biola), MA studies (University of Nebraska), MA studies (Washington University, St. Louis).

The Gospel and Human Poverty

To end worldwide spiritual and physical hunger, we must begin with individuals who discover their own poverty, embrace God’s abundant grace and are being transformed to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God. In this course, we will explore what Scripture defines as poverty, analyze how current theories advocate and attempt to alleviate poverty and suggest that community transformation will only happen as a result of gospel understanding, individual change and collaboration between churches and leaders and other elements of civil society. Case studies will cover partnerships with all types of leaders ranging from leaders of churches to political, military and governmental leaders. Illustrations from the 35-year history of a relief and development organization will supplement biblical and theological reflection. Specific attention will be given to the Reformation truths of grace alone and semper reformanda or the fact that we are all works in progress and always reforming to the image of Christ and the truths of Scripture.

APPL 543: July 21-25, 1:15-4:15 pm
1 or 2 graduate credit hours

Ross Hastings
Associate Professor of Mission Studies, Regent College. BSc (Witwatersrand), PhD (Queen’s, Kingston), MCS (Regent College), PhD (St. Andrews).