Christology: Beauty and Salvation (CT3210T)

Content

In this unit students will engage Christological and soteriological questions through the end of the classical period into the middle ages. Students may engage with a number of key figures in medieval theology such as Thomas Aquinas, Anselm, Julian of Norwich, Peter Abelard, and Hildegard of Bingen. Through an engagement with such figures students will explore the ways monastic christologies, scholasticism, and the emergence of vernacular theologies come to develop key concepts from the patristic period. Particular attention will be paid to the ways that aesthetic concerns bind Christology and soteriology together in this period. This will be seen in the ways that both content of Christological claims are integrated into the formal structure of theological discourses.

Learning outcomes

Unit sequence

Prerequisite: foundational CT

Pedagogy

Face-to-face lecture with online activities. Online asynchronous lectures and activities with additional synchronous tutorials.

Indicative Bibliography

Anselm of Canterbury, The Major Works ed., Brian Davies & G. R. Evans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy trans., C. H. Sisson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, trans., Mother Columba Hart & Jane Bishop (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1990).

Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, trans., Barry Windeatt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

Peter Lombard, Sentences. Book 3: On the Incarnation of the Word. Trans, Giulio Silano. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2008).

Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ. Trans., Paul M. Blowers & Robert Louis Wilken (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003).

McGinn, Bernard, Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae: A Biography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014).

Meister Eckhart, The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defence. Trans., Bernard McGinn & Edmund Coledge (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1981).

Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologiae of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Ed., The Aquinas Institute (Stubenville: Emmaus Academic, 2012).

The Medieval Theologians ed., G. R. Evans (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2001).

Pelikan, Jeroslav., The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol 3: The Growth of Medieval Theology (600-1300) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).

Peter Abelard, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, trans., Steven R. Cartwright (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2011).

Assessment