Tag Archives: patristics

Christian humanism seminar outline (follow-up to the “sketch”)

Posted on August 23, 2022 | Leave a comment

Michelangelo, “The Creation of Adam,” ca. 1511; wikimedia commons, public domain

This follows up from the more sprawling “sketch for a seminar on Christian humanism.” We seem to be getting close here:

  1. Prologue:  marks of the current crisis
  2. Classical origins:  virtues – character and education for citizenship:  What is human excellence?
  3. Patristic phase:  anthropology – Incarnation, soteriology (theosis):  How does God prepare us for full human flourishing?
  4. Medieval phase:  the sectors – education, sciences, arts, and healthcare:  How can reason and tradition help us foster flourishing in response to God?
  5. Early modern phase:  common good – vocation, the family, the polis, the markets, and secularization:  What values will guide our life together?
  6. 19th & early 20th century:  anti-humanisms – the fruits of secularization:  What are we without God? (the “abolition of man”)
  7. The post-WW II phase:  the humanities – literature, “great books,” beauty:  How can we reclaim our common humanity and train our imaginations & affections?
  8. Epilogue: lessons for the current crisis and a closing look at inter-traditional dialogue in a postsecular age

Now we have to ask (1) do these pieces work well together? (coherent whole? logical flow? right size?), (2) would this framing serve faculty seminar participants well? and (3) what readings would support each unit?

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A sketch toward a seminar on Christian humanism

Posted on August 21, 2022 | 1 comment

Michelangelo, “The Creation of Adam,” ca. 1511; wikimedia commons, public domain

Some friends and I are beginning to plan a multi-day seminar on Christian humanism to be given to a group of scholar-teachers from across the country next spring. As we consider themes that might prove both interesting and helpful to such a group, I’ve framed some elements (still well short of an outline) as follows:

Nascent learning outcomes

  • Definitions:  What, simply defined, is Christian humanism (hereafter, “CH”)?
  • Warrants
    • Scriptural warrants:  What are some key scriptural foundations of CH?
    • Doctrinal warrants:  In what key Christian doctrines has CH been grounded?
  • Chronological scope, depth in the tradition:  How has CH been present and active in all periods of Christian history?
    • Patristic roots and forms:  How were the Church Fathers Christian humanists?
    • Medieval roots and forms: How were the scholastics and renaissance thinkers Christian humanists?
    • Reformation roots and forms:  How were the Reformers Christian humanists?
    • 20th century:  CH as a tradition reclaimed during times of crisis:  What social circumstances and intellectual contexts led WW II – era thinkers to attempt to reclaim facets of CH for their time? Are there parallels between the crisis of that era (to which some thinkers responded by looking to re-excavate CH) and our own moment of multifaceted crisis?
    • 21st century:  Application today:  If CH is appropriately considered as a “crisis philosophy” that has something to say to our moment, then do we need to recapture CH today – particularly in contemporary North American culture?
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Social justice, early-church style

Posted on March 16, 2011 | 1 comment

Giotto's Franciscan allegory of poverty: Poverty is a winged gaunt woman dressed only in rags, at whom children throw stones or brandish sticks. Christ himself marries this woman to St Francis. Numerous angels, as well as the personifications of Hope and Chastity, are present as witnesses. As offerings, two angels carry worldly goods heavenwards. The reactions of the world are depicted at either side: on the left a young man imitates Francis, and on the right the rich express ridicule.

The most recent issue of neoconservative Acton Institute‘s organ, Religion & Liberty, brings an interesting interview with “paleoorthodox” pundit Thomas C. Oden. Actually it is an excerpt of the interview; other bits of interview, dealing with Marxist liberation theology and the current condition of Oden’s United Methodist Church, can be found here.

The excerpt printed in Religion & Liberty ranges from early Christian treatment of the poor to global South missionaries coming to the West. Here are some of Oden’s comments on the value of patristic exegesis for today’s Christians–in particular where such exegesis was applied to social issues:

Why do you think many evangelicals, in their searching, are drawn to patristic thought and commentary? What can churches do to encourage those that are searching?

They’re drawn to patristic thought because it is wise. They are hungry for wisdom. They are looking for reliable Christian teaching and, in many cases, evangelicals have not been exposed to these documents because they have been focused on Christian doctrine since the Reformation. Continue reading →

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Posted in Medieval Wisdom for Modern Protestants, Resources for Radical Living

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Two talks: Why study early Christian history? (Everett Ferguson); The church fathers as wise exegetes (Robert Louis Wilken)

Posted on May 11, 2010 | Leave a comment

From the Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies, check out these talks by Everett Ferguson and Robert Louis Wilken on the whys and wherefores of patristics:

3-18-2010 | Center for Early Christian Studies Spring Gathering Keynote Address by Dr. Everett Ferguson
“Why Study Early Christian History and Literature? ” (MP3)
10-30-2009 | Center for Early Christian Studies Inaugural Lecture by Dr. Robert Louis Wilken
“Going Deeper into the Bible: The Church Fathers as Interpreters” (MP3)

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How evangelicals have rediscovered the treasures of early Christianity, and what to do next

Posted on November 6, 2009 | Leave a comment

Further to my previous post on the new center for early church studies at Wheaton: In Spring, 2007, Wheaton College hosted a conference on how evangelicals are re-engaging with the wisdom of the early church. I attended the conference and wrote a feature article on it, published in Christianity Today in February 2008. The trends I describe here are certainly continuing, and the wise encouragements and warnings of the scholars who presented at that conference still apply. Let us rejoice in “treasures old” as well as new, and let us also display and use these treasures with discernment:

The Future Lies in the Past
Why evangelicals are connecting with the early church as they move into the 21st century.
Chris Armstrong

Last spring, something was stirring under the white steeple of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College.

A motley group of young and clean-cut, goateed and pierced, white-haired and bespectacled filled the center’s Barrows Auditorium. They joined their voices to sing of “the saints who nobly fought of old” and “mystic communion with those whose rest is won.” A speaker walked an attentive crowd through prayers from the 5th-century Gelasian Sacramentary, recommending its forms as templates for worship in today’s Protestant churches. Another speaker highlighted the pastoral strengths of the medieval fourfold hermeneutic. Yet another gleefully passed on the news that Liberty University had observed the liturgical season of Lent. The t-word—that old Protestant nemesis, tradition—echoed through the halls.

Just what was going on in this veritable shrine to pragmatic evangelistic methods and no-nonsense, back-to-the-Bible Protestant conservatism? Had Catholics taken over? Continue reading →

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Posted in Medieval Wisdom for Modern Protestants, Patron Saints for Postmoderns, Resources for Radical Living

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Wheaton College opens its Center for Early Christian Studies

Posted on November 5, 2009 | 3 comments

The Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies officially opened a few days ago, on Oct. 29. The center, through which students can study early Christianity at an undergraduate, masters, or doctoral level (one doctoral-level student will be accepted per year), welcomed the distinguished Robert Louis Wilken of the University of Virginia to give its inaugural lecture.

Wilken is one of my favorite scholars, and I’m not alone: according to David Neff at Christianity Today’s history blog, the large majority of Wilken’s graduate students over the past ten years at UVA have been evangelicals. Wheaton has taken note, and the center, announced this spring, will accommodate many students of evangelical sympathies who would otherwise have had to do their study of the church fathers (“patristics”) at schools outside the evangelical orbit.

Even if you are not ready to rush out and enroll in an undergraduate or masters program on early Christian history, I strongly recommend Wilken’s book The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God. There’s no better book to get you inside the mind of the early Christian–and the prose is readable, even lyrical, to boot!

http://blog.christianhistory.net/2009/11/evangelicals_and_the_church_fa.html#more

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