Systematic Theology

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Open to students who have already completed the two-course general education Theology and Religious Studies requirement. The Jesuit Bernard Lonergan describes the task of systematics, one of theology’s functional specialties, as promoting an understanding of the religious realities in which Christians believe, a task that includes attempting to arrange those realities into an intelligible whole. This course will do the work of systematics, not simply observe how others have done it, by carefully examining the religious realities affirmed in five particular doctrines – the doctrine of God (i.e., the Trinity), creation, Christology, ecclesiology, and eschatology. The instructor is open to altering this list based on the interests of enrolled students. In the end, doing systematic theology, as Lonergan wrote, “is difficult, as also are mathematics, science, scholarship, philosophy. But the difficulty is worth meeting.”