1. learningobjectives2010.doc
2. Lecture 10: Rational Orthodoxy (6 October)
   1. Describe and characterize the Westminster Confession’s claims about the Bible as the sole source of revelation as a response to the political destabilization precipitated by reforming versions of the bible.
   2. Compare and contrast the strategies of Westminster and Rational Orthodoxy (Catholic and Protestant versions) in their responses to destabilized symbols.
   3. Explain how various Protestant forms of Rational Orthodoxy buttressed attempts to order the state via the divine ordering.
   4. Compare and contrast Protestant and Catholic positions on the role of the will in advancing the divine/human ordering as understood in the Calvinist, Lutheran, and Roman Catholic traditions. Be sure to take specific geo-political constellations into account.
3. Lecture 11: Pietism, Quietism, and Puritanism (8 October)
   1. Define and assess a spectrum of 17th-century Puritanisms with attention to how each group navigated the tension between institutional and individual reform while remaining oriented to the values of family.
   2. Explain how the Pietist valuing of family as the basic political unit and the ecclesiola in ecclesia as the basic religious unit allowed them to re-envision or reinvigorate Christ, bible, and politics in light of Rational Orthodoxy and destabilization. Be sure to give examples of Pietist practice, and to explain ecclesiola in ecclesia.
   3. Characterize Pietist conversion, preaching, and missions as responses to Rational Orthodoxy, and a consolidation of family values.
   4. Compare British Quietists (Quakers (e.g., Bathurst)) and Continental Quietists (Roman Catholic (e.g., Molinas and Guyon) and Protestant Quietists (e.g., Simons) on the soul’s relationship to God and Christ. Be sure to address the political implications of their positions.
4. Lecture 12: Enlightenment (13 October)
   1. With special attention to revelation, characterize Herbert of Cherbury's method for picking out common notions and his account of why they are common as responses to an expanding picture of human religious practices.
   2. With specific reference to the British Museum, compare Calvin’s pre-enlightenment and Cherbury’s Enlightenment systems of classification and explain some of their principal differences.
   3. Compare and contrast Deism and Luther's Deus absconditus. Be sure to explain what is at stake in the Deist assumption that God’s relation to human order is knowable, and what is at stake in Luther’s sense that God’s relation to human ordering is a mystery.
   4. In lieu of creedal or liturgical principles for biblical interpretation, Spinoza proposes an historic-critical method. Describe the features of his method and their theo-political implications.
   5. Both Reimarus and Lessing challenge the ways in which theologians draw inferences from biblical materials. Give examples of how their claims pave the way for German Enlightenment thinking.
5. Lecture 13: John Wesley (15 October)
   1. Compare Wesley's conception of church with that of the Pietists. Be sure to explain how biblical interpretation influenced their conceptions, how the Patristic and Anglican traditions Wesley used differ from the Pietists’ Lutheran traditions, and how they envisioned the relation of preaching to church.
   2. Compare and contrast Wesley's notions of grace and salvation with Trent's. Characterize them as distinct forms of inward turn, and pay special attention to their political and theological contexts.
   3. Compare Wesley's Christian perfection with the new idea that humans can set and pursue their own ends. Explain how perfection opposes the modern emphasis on self-preservation.
6. Lecture 14: Kant and Hegel (20 October)
   1. Explain how Kant's definition of Enlightenment and his limits on human knowledge are emblematic of reflection; contrast this with a picture of the inner Light, and explain how Kant modifies the inward turn.
   2. Compare and contrast Kant's conscience and Luther’s notion of simil iustus et peccator est. Explain how these relate to their ideas about Scripture.
   3. Describe Kant's re-envisioned Christ, and explain how Kant imagines this Christ might figure in the development of a political unity. Be sure to include an account of Kant's subordination of God to human freedom and his assessment of the Symbol.
   4. Given Kant’s claim that we are no longer suspended from heaven nor anchored on earth, we have recourse only to the character of human subjectivity in all of its manifestations (four modes of awareness). Describe how Kant identifies the four tropes of Christ with the four modes of human awareness, with particular attention to the trope of Christ as moral hero.
   5. Compare and contrast Christ as the moral hero in Kant and Christ as the moral hero in Hegel. Pay particular attention to the differences between their notions of eternal life (i.e., the difference between principle-driven life and the lived relational expression of morality.).
7. Lecture 15: F.D.E. Schleiermacher (22 October)
   1. Compare Schleiermacher's picture of the relation of God-remembrance and God-forgetfulness to God consciousness (the feeling of Absolute Dependence) to Calvin's thoughts on the relation of self-knowledge and knowledge of God. Explain how Schleiermacher's picture is an example of reflection, in contrast to earlier forms of the inward turn.
   2. Using their images of Christ and Schleiermacher's definition of piety, explain Schleiermacher's claim that Kant misunderstood the nature of religion. Pay particular attention to the distinction between Schleiermacher’s Christ-consciousness (consciousness of redemption) and Kant’s conception of morality.
   3. Compare and contrast Schleiermacher and Kant on the purpose of prayer.
8. Lecture 16: Schelling, S.T. Coleridge and Romanticism (27 October)
   1. Compare and contrast Kant and Coleridge on Bible. Be sure to explain the differences between Kant’s regulative vision of reason, and Coleridge’s conception of reason as the capacity to apprehend spiritual truths.
   2. Characterize Coleridge's poetic, creative, imaginative theology as an expansion and modification of Kant's use of the trope of Christ as moral hero, and Schelling’s trope of the incarnate Christ.
   3. Compare Hodge, Bushnell, and Coleridge on Scripture. Be sure to address inward and outward forms of interpretation, and bibliolatry.
9. Lecture 9: The Exalted and the Humiliated Christs: The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) (29 September)
   1. Explain how the Thirty Years War, English civil unrest, increased awareness of non-book religions, advances in Semitic philological studies, and the Galileo affair destabilized the newly re-formed symbols of Christ, Bible, and Christendom, thereby precipitating renewed fractiousness.
10. Lecture 8: English Reformation (24 September)
    1. Explain how political and ecclesial fractiousness and the rise of humanist ideals contributed to the inception and development of English reformation.
    2. Compare and contrast Pope Damasus’ request for the Vulgate (and Theodosius’ interest in it) with the English crown's calls for the Book of Common Prayer and its revisions. Be sure to comment on specific characterizations of the 1549 and 1552 versions.
    3. Compare and contrast the ways in which Zwingli and the English reformers used scripture and liturgy to promote or create a political unity. Be sure to explain what the via media is, how it unfolded, and how it reflects a different theological ordering than that of the Zwinglian state. Make use of Cranmer’s views in your description of the via media.
    4. Describe the three main phases of English Reform, with specific reference the relation of church and state. Be sure to refer to the following documents: (Henry VIII) the Act of Supremacy (1534), Ten Articles of Religion (1536); (Mary) Revival of Heresy Acts (1554); (Elizabeth) New Act of Supremacy (1558); Act of Uniformity (1559).
11. Lecture 7 : John Calvin (22 September)
    1. Compare and contrast Zwingli's and Calvin's visions about how Scripture permits Christians to see or realize the ordering of God in the world.
    2. Compare and contrast the ways in which Trent and Calvin envision the role of Scripture in forming a right relationship to God.
    3. Show how Calvin’s depiction of Christ as prophet, priest, and king expands on the humiliated, defeated Christ of previous reforming traditions. Be sure to include Calvin’s conception of piety and Michelangelo’s Pieta in your assessment.
    4. Compare Calvin's views of justification and sanctification with Luther's. Explain how these are both examples of an inward turn, and identify one or two assumptions that might account for their differences.
12. Lecture 6: Zwingli, Zurich, and the Anabaptists (17 September)
    1. Explain how Zwingli's and Luther's approaches to Scripture relate to their suggestions for liturgical and political reform.
    2. Zwingli and Luther had different assumptions about the reliability of human perceptions and human (ecclesial, political, and natural) orderings. Explain how their assumptions, and hence, their ‘inward turns,’ and their conceptions of the light of Christ relate to their interpretations of Eucharist as remembrance and real presence.
    3. Describe Zwingli’s and Sattler’s positions on church and state. Given that both are inward turns, characterize their differences and make explicit one or two theological assumptions (perhaps about Scripture or Christ) that might account for these differences.
    4. Where Zwingli based his views about church/state relations upon the correctness of Scripture, the Anabaptists formed a paradigm for interpreting church/state relations and the character of Christian life upon the humiliated Christ. Given this thesis, contrast their responses to social, political, and ecclesial instability.
13. Lecture 5: Martin Luther, Council of Trent, Ignatius and Teresa (15 September)
    1. Compare and contrast Luther and Trent on justification, with particular attention to 1) how they read scripture; 2) the status of human beings; and 3) the humiliated, defeated Christ.
    2. With attention to social and political contexts, compare and contrast the strategies of the “inward turn” and aims for ecclesial reform of Ignatius and Teresa with those of Erasmus and the humanists.
    3. Compare and contrast Ignatius' use of imagination in biblical accounts to Erasmus' attempts to get at the originals and Luther's use of a primary interpretive principle (justification by faith/law and gospel). Explain how these methods relate to different images of Christ, different kinds of inward turn.
14. Lecture 4: Luther (10 September)
    1. Compare, contrast, and relate Luther's and Erasmus' methods for interpreting Scripture with their ideas about the role of Scripture in ecclesial reform. Be sure to include descriptions of Luther's vision of law and gospel, and his concept of sola scriptura.
    2. Compare and contrast Luther's and Byzantine images of Christ, and explain why Luther’s images figure in his views of justification and human salvation. Be sure to contrast theosis and justification in the course of your answer.
    3. Explain how Luther's theology is characteristic of the inward turn, and how it differs from the inward turn of humanism. Draw your examples from his debate with Erasmus about the freedom of the will, his idea about the Deus absconditus, and his characterization of the human as simil iustus et peccator.
    4. Explain how Luther imagines the relations of Scripture, church authority, and political authority to the Christian life with constant reference to his theme, "the Christian is perfectly free lord of all, subject to none, and servant of all, subject to all."
15. Lecture 3: Catholic Renewals and Humanism II (8 September)
    1. Compare and contrast the political and theological commitments of Jerome's Vulgate with those of Erasmus' New Testament in an effort to explain how Erasmus' translation figured in ecclesial reform.
    2. Characterize Devotio Moderna, Reform of Religious Orders, Reform of Spirituality, and Conciliar reform as responses to humanism and late-medieval/early modern global-political events.
16. Lecture 2: Catholic Renewals and Humanism I (3 September)
    1. Describe some of the global and political events in early modern Europe and illustrate how they precipitated a shift from the exalted imperial Christ to the humiliated, defeated Christ. Be sure to compare and contrast the Byzantine political ordering with that of the humanist republican Italian city-states within your answer.
    2. Explain how the rise of humanism and reforming efforts exploited the light of Christ in their efforts to address changing global and political conditions. Explain the relation of the collapse of the empire to new humanist images of authority (particularly those in Cusanus, Pico, Ficino) and their critics (Savonarola and Machiavelli) in the course of your answer.
    3. Topic
17. INTRODUCTION
    1. Identify and describe the principal features of the four Christs and Bibles; explain how they reflect certain political arrangements
    2. Explain what it means to say that Christianity is “a religion of the Book.”
    3. Identify four different notions of faith, together with the Bibles and historical contexts with which they are associated.
    4. Explain the difference between recollection and remembrance.