I like to think that there will come a point in my life where I will have time to think about something other than teaching, but I think I’m a little way off that yet. I’m just over a third of the way into Semester 1 and already Semester 2 is looming large. I’ll be teaching three courses next semester instead of the two I’m teaching this semester, and if I make it through alive I’ll be in danger of believing in miracles. I’ll probably post about all three courses separately over the course of syllabus design and redesign, but I’ll be teaching Great Christian Thinkers Part 2, the second half of my first year intro course, an Introduction to Political Philosophy, and a module on Marx, Hegel and Dialectical Thinking.
The idea behind Great Christian Thinkers Part 2 is to give students an overview of some major Christian thinkers so they get some familiarity with some of the Big Names of Christian theology, some initial sense of the development of Christian theology over time, as well as a general sense of how some of the core theological concepts we’ve looked at in semester 1 play out in later thinkers. Last time around they did St Paul, Aquinas, Calvin, Schleiermacher and Barth.
This iteration of the course is themed around suffering, and in semester 1 we’ve been working through major Christian doctrines in relation to the idea of suffering as follows:
WEEK 1: What Matters Most
WEEK 2: Augustine, Theology, and the Problem of Suffering
WEEK 3: God, Evil and the Nature of Suffering
WEEK 4: The Fall
WEEK 5: Free to Suffer?
WEEK 6: The Devil
WEEK 7: ENRICHMENT WEEK
WEEK 8: Suffering Desire, Desiring Suffering
WEEK 9: Suffering and the Ethics of Sacrifice
WEEK 10: Political Suffering: A Tale of Two Cities
WEEK 11: Political Suffering: War
WEEK 12: What Matters Most?
This is probably the only module on the course where the students will spend a lot of time with pre-20th century Big Name Theologians so I’m trying to work out which of those thinkers are most important for the students to have some familiarity with. I’m tempted to keep the line-up roughly the same but perhaps swap out Barth and add in Catherine of Siena so we can really spend some time thinking about the crucial shifts that happen in the medieval period. But I’m also not a specialist on any of those thinkers (maybe more so with Aquinas), so would gratefully appreciate any thoughts on the following:
- Which are the most indispensable Big Theological Thinkers, especially pre-20th century?
- What’s some good secondary reading on any of those Big Names that might help me find interesting ways into thinking about them, especially when it comes to the role of suffering in their work? I’d love to use the Aquinas section to think about the crucial role of Christian encounters with Jewish and Muslim thought in forming systematic theology, for example.
An und für sich 
Julian of Norwich could work well because debilitating illness is the whole context in which she frames her revelations (and the revelations speak directly to questions about pain, suffering, mortality etc). Calvin’s stuff on cross-bearing toward the end of Institutes would make a good contrast with Julian: whereas Julian responds to suffering with a cosmic theodicy, Calvin responds with a muscular work ethic – you’re not meant to understand suffering so much as to put it to use. For a different perspective again you could try Barth’s lovely book on Mozart, or his small-print passage on Mozart from CD III. This is about suffering as a normal part of what it means to be a creature (not as a result of the fall or evil or whatever). That could form a good contrast with Augustine, who gives the impression that all suffering (even ordinary created limits – including mortality) is a result of the fall. And for another thematic angle, what about John of the Cross or Teresa of Avila – the spiritual suffering of the soul that comes into contact with divine love?
Seems like you’ve got have some Luther, right? After all, 500 years…
eh, I figure Luther *and* Calvin is probably a bit overkill and as every time I’ve taught Luther my students have hated it I figured I might try Calvin instead for a change
The Reformation is bullshit. I would just skip it entirely.