Topic Religion Subtopic “Pure intellectual stimulation that can be popped into & Theology Christianity the [audio or video player] anytime.” —Harvard Magazine T The History of “Passionate, erudite, living legend lecturers. Academia’s h best lecturers are being captured on tape.” e H —The Los Angeles Times is Christian Theology t o r y “A serious force in American education.” o —The Wall Street Journal f C Course Guidebook h r i s t i a n T Professor Phillip Cary h eo Eastern University lo g y Professor Phillip Cary is Professor of Philosophy at Eastern University and Scholar-in-Residence at the Templeton Honors College. He holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and Religious Studies from Yale University. A former teacher at Yale, the University of Connecticut, and other prestigious universities, Professor Cary won Eastern University’s prestigious Lindback Award for his excellence in undergraduate teaching. THE GREAT COURSES® Corporate Headquarters 4840 Westfields Boulevard, Suite 500 Chantilly, VA 20151-2299 G USA u Phone: 1-800-832-2412 id e www.thegreatcourses.com b o Cover Image: © Norberto Mario Lauria/Shutterstock. o Course No. 6450 © 2008 The Teaching Company. PB6450A k PUBLISHED BY: THE GREAT COURSES Corporate Headquarters 4840 Westfi elds Boulevard, Suite 500 Chantilly, Virginia 20151-2299 Phone: 1-800-832-2412 Fax: 703-378-3819 www.thegreatcourses.com Copyright © The Teaching Company, 2008 Printed in the United States of America This book is in copyright. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of The Teaching Company. Phillip Cary, Ph.D. Professor of Philosophy Eastern University P rofessor Phillip Cary is Director of the Philosophy Program at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, where he is also Scholar-in-Residence at the Templeton Honors College. He earned his B.A. in both English Literature and Philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis, then earned an M.A. in Philosophy and a Ph.D. in both Philosophy and Religious Studies at Yale University. Professor Cary has taught at Yale University, the University of Hartford, the University of Connecticut, and Villanova University. He was an Arthur J. Ennis Post- Doctoral Fellow at Villanova University, where he taught in Villanova’s nationally acclaimed Core Humanities program. At Eastern University, he is a recent winner of the Lindback Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching. His specialty is the thought of Augustine, on whom he has written three scholarly books for Oxford University Press: Augustine’s Invention of the Inner Self (2000), Inner Grace (2008) and Outward Signs (2008). He has also written Jonah for the Brazos Press series, Theological Commentary on the Bible, as well as numerous articles for philosophical and theological publications. Professor Cary has published scholarly articles on Augustine, Luther, the doctrine of the Trinity, and interpersonal knowledge. Professor Cary produced the following popular courses for The Teaching Company: Augustine: Philosopher and Saint and Philosophy and Religion in the West. He also contributed to The Teaching Company’s third edition of the course titled Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition. (cid:374) i Table of Contents INTRODUCTION Professor Biography ............................................................................i Course Scope .....................................................................................1 LECTURE GUIDES LECTURE 1 What Is Theology? ..............................................................................3 LECTURE 2 Early Christian Proclamation ..............................................................6 LECTURE 3 Pauline Eschatology ...........................................................................9 LECTURE 4 The Synoptic Gospels ......................................................................12 LECTURE 5 The Gospel of John ..........................................................................15 LECTURE 6 Varieties of Early Christianity ............................................................18 LECTURE 7 The Emergence of Christian Doctrine ..............................................21 LECTURE 8 Christian Reading .............................................................................25 LECTURE 9 The Uses of Philosophy....................................................................28 LECTURE 10 The Doctrine of the Trinity ................................................................31 ii Table of Contents LECTURE 11 The Doctrine of the Incarnation ........................................................35 LECTURE 12 The Doctrine of Grace ......................................................................39 LECTURE 13 The Incomprehensible and the Supernatural ...................................43 LECTURE 14 Eastern Orthodox Theology ..............................................................47 LECTURE 15 Atonement and the Procession of the Spirit .....................................50 LECTURE 16 Scholastic Theology .........................................................................53 LECTURE 17 The Sacraments ...............................................................................57 LECTURE 18 Souls after Death ..............................................................................61 LECTURE 19 Luther and Protestant Theology .......................................................64 LECTURE 20 Calvin and Reformed Theology ........................................................68 LECTURE 21 Protestants on Predestination ..........................................................72 LECTURE 22 Protestant Disagreements ...............................................................76 LECTURE 23 Anabaptists and the Radical Reformation .......................................80 iii Table of Contents LECTURE 24 Anglicans and Puritans .....................................................................84 LECTURE 25 Baptists and Quakers .......................................................................88 LECTURE 26 Pietists and the Turn to Experience ..................................................91 LECTURE 27 From Puritans to Revivalists .............................................................95 LECTURE 28 Perfection, Holiness, and Pentecostalism .....................................100 LECTURE 29 Deism and Liberal Protestantism....................................................103 LECTURE 30 Neo-Orthodoxy—From Kierkegaard to Barth .................................107 LECTURE 31 Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism .............................................111 LECTURE 32 Protestantism after Modernity.........................................................115 LECTURE 33 Catholic Theologies of Grace .........................................................119 LECTURE 34 Catholic Mystical Theology .............................................................123 LECTURE 35 From Vatican I to Vatican II .............................................................127 LECTURE 36 Vatican II and Ecumenical Prospects .............................................131 iv Table of Contents SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL Timeline ..........................................................................................135 Glossary .........................................................................................148 Biographical Notes .........................................................................191 Bibliography ....................................................................................203 v vi The History of Christian Theology Scope: T his course surveys major developments in the history of Christian theology, which is the tradition of critical reasoning about how to teach the faith of Christ. Taking the centrality of Jesus Christ as the distinctive feature of Christianity, it focuses on theological concepts by relating them to Christian life and experience, including especially practices of worship. The course begins with the (cid:191) rst Christian theological writings, the books of the New Testament, the earliest of which, the letters of Paul, re(cid:192) ect a worship of the exalted Christ at the right hand of God, in light of which later documents, such as the Four Gospels, tell the story of the historical Jesus, his earthly life, death, and resurrection. The course proceeds to examine the theology of the early church, how it read the Jewish scriptures and how it used Greek philosophy, as well as how the very idea of of(cid:191) cial Christian doctrine and its opposite, heresy, arose in response to the large variety of early Christianities. The survey of ancient Christian theology concludes in Part I by presenting three key doctrines: Trinity, Incarnation, and grace. Part II covers medieval and Reformation theology. The distinctive features of Eastern Orthodox theology are discussed, including the use of icons, the theology of the Trans(cid:191) guration, the distinction between divine essence and energies, and the disagreement with the Western churches about whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father “and the Son.” Key developments in medieval Catholicism are examined, including scholastic theology, the use of logic and analogy, the seven sacraments, and the soul’s existence in heaven, hell, or purgatory in the time between death and resurrection. Reformation theology begins with the doctrine of justi(cid:191) cation by faith alone and the Lutheran distinction between Law and Gospel, followed by the Reformed tradition and the development of Calvinism, with its distinctive commitment to the knowledge of eternal salvation, from which (cid:192) ows its embrace of the doctrine of predestination. The Anabaptists, such as the Mennonites, form a third and radical wing of the Reformation, while the Anglican tradition of 1 the English Reformation aims for a middle way between Reformed theology and Catholicism. Part III begins by tracing the course of Protestant theology through the modern period. Modernity means a gradual secularization of Western Christendom, as can be seen in the theology of Baptists and Quakers, both of which offer an alternative to state churches and advocate religious liberty for all. True religion comes to be seen increasingly as a private inner experience rather than outward conformity to an institutional church, as can be seen in the Puritan emphasis on conversion, which leads to the Pietist emphasis on true Christianity as well as to the tradition of revivalism that is so strong in America, including the Methodist emphasis on holiness and its offshoot, Pentecostalism. On the other hand, the increasing secularization of modern culture and especially of historical scholarship on the Bible poses new problems for Christian theology, to which deism, liberal theology, neo- Orthodoxy, evangelicalism, and Fundamentalism are responses. The course concludes by treating the history of Roman Catholic theology in modernity, beginning with the doctrine of grace formulated by the 16th- century Council of Trent in response to Protestant challenges, proceeding to the high point of mystical and devotional theology in early modern Spain and France, and concluding with the (cid:191) rst and second Vatican councils, the doctrine of papal infallibility, and questions about how the church’s teaching may legitimately change. A (cid:191) nal lecture examines the ecumenical theology that opens up after Vatican II, drawing Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants into ongoing conversation about the boundaries of the tradition of Christian theology and its center in Jesus Christ. 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