Seminar: Christian Personalism
Course Description
This course introduces students to the central tenets of Christian personalist philosophies that emerged mainly during a perceived crisis of human identity during the late nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth century in Europe and the United States. The practical relevance of personalism may be seen in its immense influence on human and civil right movements from the formulation of the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights (1948) to Martin Luther King’s struggle against racial discrimination. According to the personalist Emmanuel Mounier, personalism “does not imply the formation of a new school of thought, or of a new cult, or the invention of a closed and fixed system.” Rather, personalism encompasses “any doctrine or any civilization that affirms the primacy of the human person over material necessities and over the whole complex of implements man needs for the development of his person.” This course will familiarize students with the central aspects of personalism by covering seminal figures like Mounier, Borden Parker Bowne, Abraham Heschel, Nikolai Berdyaev, Gabriel Marcel, John Macmurray, and Karol Wojtyła.| Offered | 2025 Fall |
| Dates | Sep 8 - Dec 19 |
| Days | Wed |
| Format | Onsite Only |
| Credit Hours | 3 |
| Room Number | Rm 013 |
Teaching Faculty
Jens Zimmermann
J.I. Packer Professor of Theology
Dr. Jens Zimmermann was born and raised in Germany. He studied at the University of British Columbia, earning his first PhD in Comparative Literature in 1997. He taught at UBC briefly before moving on to Trinity Western University, where he held the Canada Research Chair of Interpretation, Religion and Culture from 2006 to 2016. In 2010, Jens earned a second PhD in Philosophy from the Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany. While continuing at TWU, he also served as Visiting Professor of Philosophy, Literature & Theology at Regent College from 2016 to 2019. He was also a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge (Trinity Hall, 2017–2018), and a British Academy Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford (Christ Church College, 2018–2019). He is currently Visiting Fellow at the Center for Theology and Modern European Thought at The University of Oxford.
