The Spirituality of Paul

This course will examine the nature of Paul’s spirituality—the transformative, lived experience of participating in Christ by the power of God's Spirit—as it applies to believing communities, individual believers, and ministers in Paul’s own day and in the life of the contemporary church. The class will combine close reading of selected passages and themes with critical and creative reflection on the relationship of these texts and themes to the students’ own experience of church life and ministry. Among the topics to be discussed from Paul’s letters are the Trinitarian nature of spirituality; dying and rising with Christ; the means and goals of spiritual transformation; prayer; the reality and significance of suffering; spiritual fruit and gifts; the church as holy and missional community; images of ministry (apostle, steward, mother, father, reconciler, etc.); and the paradox of strength in weakness. Students will also be introduced to such terms as cruciformity, Christoformity, kenosis, and theosis.