THEOLOGY

CRN

90266

Distribution

A/C

Course No.

THEO 208

Title

Ecstasy, Inspiration and Illumination

Professor

Paul Murray

Schedule

Tu Th 3:00 pm - 4:20 pm OLIN 303

Cross listed: Religious Studies

Prophets, shamans, visionaries and mystics exemplify the ways in which religious systems engage and channel the ecstatic dimensions of human experience, albeit sometimes with reluctance. Are there meanings in such experiences that point toward or represent transcendent truths? What are the implications such experiences hold for understandings of our world and such notions as person, self, individual nature, and society? How do they speak to the sources of creative imagination and analytic intuition? This course explores theological methods for questioning, examining and utilizing ecstatic and transpersonal experiences. Among the authors considered will be Dionysius the Areopagite, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, George Fox, William Blake, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Evelyn Underhill, Virginia Woolf, Paul Tillich, Karl Rahner, Colin Wilson, Edward Schillebeeckx and Matthew Fox. Methodological and cross-cultural contributions from the social sciences on altered states of consciousness, creativity, and spirit possession will be included. (Limited to 15 students.)

CRN

90454

Distribution

A/C

Course No.

THEO 215

Title

Trading Places: Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity

Professor

Bruce Chilton / Jacob Neusner

Schedule

TBA

Cross-listed: Jewish Studies, Religion

At the beginning of the common era, Judaism presented a view of God which was so appealing in its rationality, it competed seriously with various philosophical schools for the loyalty of educated people in the Graeco-Roman world. Christianity, meanwhile, appeared to be a marginal group, neither fully Judaic nor seriously philosophical. Six centuries later, the Talmud emerged as the model of Judaism, and the creeds defined the limits and the core of Christianity. By that time, Judaism and Christianity had traded places. Christianity was the principal religion of the Empire, and philosophy was its most powerful vehicle for conversion; Judaism was seen as a local anomaly, its traditions grounded in customary use rather than reflection.