Patristic Thought for Christian Life (CT9610Y)

Content

What does it mean to confess God as triune? What difference does this make to understanding the world as God’s creature, to salvation as the healing of all things, and to talking about human purpose within God’s who makes creatures flourish together? How does faithful thinking function when there has been a variety of Christian perspectives on each of these issues? The unit encourages the development of skills in thinking and believing, including understanding contextualising texts and theological reasoning, and it will facilitate those through the understanding of key doctrinal issues and questions in the critical study of many of the traditions’ most significant early theologians. Topics may include: the doctrine of God and apophaticism, christology and soteriology, the good life, and redemption.

Learning outcomes

Unit sequence

1x CT or AP unit

Pedagogy

synchronous and asynchronous lectures, and textually focused tutorials

Indicative Bibliography

• Popular Patristics Series (NY: SVS Press).
  
• Ayres, Lewis. Nicaea and its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
  
• Ayres, Lewis and Behr, John (eds.). Selected Essays, Volume I: Studies in Patristics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023.
• Fédou Michel. The Fathers of the Church in Christian Theology. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2019.
• Daley, Brian E. God Visible: Patristic Christology Reconsidered. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
• Ludlow Morwenna, and Douglass Scot (eds.). Reading the Church Fathers. London and New York: T&T Clark, 2011.
  
• Leemans, Johan; Matz, Brian J.; and Verstraeten, Johan (eds.). Reading Patristic Texts on Social Ethics: Issues and Challenges for Twenty-First-Century Christian Social Thought. Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011.
• Ortiz, Jared. Deification in the Latin Patristic Tradition. Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2019.
• Plested, Marcus. Wisdom in Christian Tradition: The Patristic Roots of Modern Russian Sophiology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.
• Studer, Basil. Trinity and Incarnation: The Faith of the Early Church.Michael Glazier Books, 1994.
• Trostyanskiy, Sergey and Gilbert, Jess (eds.). The Mystical Tradition of the Eastern Church: Studies in Patristics, Liturgy, and Practice. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2019.
• Usacheva, Anna; Ulrich, Jörg; and Bhayro, Siam (eds.). The Unity of Body and Soul in Patristic and Byzantine Thought. Brill Schoningh, 2021.

Assessment