| Fall 2007 (September—December) |
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Biblical Foundations
ICS 1215/2215 F07
Dr. Nik Ansell | This course will explore the Bible as the ongoing story of and for God and creation, paying special attention to the way in which God's story is intertwined with that of humanity and the world. In asking whether and in what way the Bible is also our story, we will attempt to identify which hermeneutical methods might help us discern its significance for present day life, including the academic enterprise. |
Religion, Life & Society: Reformational Philosophy
ICS 1715/2715 F07
Dr. Lambert Zuidervaart | An exploration of central issues in philosophy, as addressed by Herman Dooyeweerd, Dirk Vollenhoven, and the “Amsterdam School” of neoCalvinian thought. The course tests the relevance of this tradition for recent developments in Western philosophy. Special attention is given to critiques of foundationalism, metaphysics, and modernity within reformational philosophy and in other schools of thought. |
Social Structures and Normative Critique: Hegel and Marx
ICS 1721/2721 F07
Dr. Lambert Zuidervaart | This seminar aims to develop a critical social theory. It pursues questions about deep structures of contemporary society and normative principles for human life. It examines two nineteenth-century diagnoses that remain relevant for many social movements and academic disciplines: Hegel’s philosophy of law and morality, and Karl Marx’s critique of capitalism.
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Nietzsche, Foucault and the Genealogical Approach to the History of Philosophy
ICS 1422/2422 F07
Dr. Robert Sweetman | This seminar examines that philosophical approach to the history of philosophy that travels under the name of “genealogy”. It does so in terms of selected texts of two of the tradition’s major figures: Friederich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault. It places genealogy as they practice it within the ancient ‘therapeutic’ tradition of protreptic rhetoric and philosophical ‘conversion’ as articulated in Plato’s Theaetetus, Aristotle’s Protrepticus, in Epicurus’ surviving works but also among early Christian texts of Justin Martyr, Tertullian and Augustine. |
Charles Taylor and the Religious Imaginary
ICS 2523 F07
Dr. Ronald A. Kuipers | An exploration of Taylor’s philosophy of language, including: his conviction that human reality is structured and constituted by ‘layers of meaning’; his understanding of humans as ‘self-interpreting animals’; and his notion of a ‘social imaginary.’ The seminar will also include an investigation of the role that a religious imaginary might play in a plural and postsecular global society. |
Systematic Theology: Past, present and future
ICS 2723 F07
Dr. Nik Ansell | Systematic theology has often been an attempt to develop a theology for all times and all places. But systematic thinking can also be consciously situated in history. In time, our web of beliefs may become reconfigured and re-centred. This course will read selections of Calvin’s Institutes alongside a contemporary text in systematic theology (focussing on areas such as Divine sovereignty, election, grace and self-knowledge) in order to stimulate our own reflections on the best way to develop a theology in and for today. |
Worldview Foundations
ICSD 1915 F07
CSTC 1020
Area IV
Dr. Kenn Hermann | This course is only available through distance learning.
In this course we will begin to locate the reformational tradition as part of the larger reformed tradition, in its continuities and distinctiveness. We will also examine some characteristic features of this tradition, particularly those that inform our view of God’s world and our attempts to live out all aspects of our calling in all aspects of God’s world. We will examine the role of philosophy within a reformational worldview and also look at some of its larger contours in a variety of Christian organizations. |
Liberalism and its Critics: Current Debates in Political Philosophy
ICS 2621 F07
Dr. Shannon Hoff | Much of the work in contemporary political philosophy concerns the debate between liberals and communitarians, who are divided on the issue of the priority of the right vs. the good. We will read various authors considered central to this debate but will also attempt to expand it, working through important contributions from the philosophy of religion, critical theory, feminist philosophy, and post-structuralism. |
| Winter 2008 (January - April) |
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Paradoxes of Progress: Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action
ICS 1731/2731 S08
Dr. Lambert Zuidervaart | Contemporary struggles over globalization echo debates about modernization in the previous two centuries. How should we understand philosophical theories of progress and the sociocultural changes these theories address? By what criteria should supposed improvements in society be judged? The seminar pursues these questions through a study of Jürgen Habermas's The Theory of Communicative Action. |
Thinking the World of God: Religious Language Beyond Onto/Theology
ICS 1831/2831 S08
Dr. Nik Ansell | (How) Can the language of creation adequately reveal God if the God of Creation transcends creation? This perennial question has most often been approached within an analogical view
of language which presupposes an onto/theological view of the God/world relationship. Attentive to the influence of the Great Chain of Being, we shall also examine whether there has ever been a visible alternative. Is it possible to see transcendence and immanence not as attributes of God and creation, respectively, but as facets of creation and thus creational revelation? |
Faithful Thinking as ‘World’ Orientation: Augustine, Aquinas, Dooyeweerd, Olthuis
ICS 1441/2441 S08
Dr. Robert Sweetman | This seminar is designed to examine four crystallizations of Christian thinking about and orientation to the world. The point of such examination is to evaluate whether the history of Christian thought might profitably be viewed as an ongoing and culturally embedded struggle with a limited number of perennial problematics. In order to be able to make the required evaluation, attention focuses upon four emblematic thinkers. The one is ancient, Augustine of Hippo, who struggles to think faithfully about and in a generically Platonizing ethos. The second is medieval, Thomas Aquinas, who struggles to think faithfully about and in an Aristotelian ethos. The third is modern, Herman Dooyeweerd, who struggles to think faithfully about and in a Kantian and post-Kantian ethos. The fourth is post-modern, James Olthuis, who struggles to think faithfully about and in a post-structuralist ethos. Attention focuses upon three recurrent problematics: a. knowledge and religion, b. self and religion, and c. social world and religion. |
Philosophy at the Limit: Richard Kearney on Language and Religion
ICS 1531/2531 S08
Dr. Ronald A. Kuipers | A study of Kearney’s trilogy Philosophy at the Limit, focusing on his exploration of that “frontier zone where narratives flourish and abound.” Participants will examine Kearney’s attempt to sketch a narrative eschatology that draws on the work of Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida, and Ricoeur. |
Leadership: Vision & Mission
ICSD 1324/2324 S08
CSTC, Area II & IV
Dr. Lee Hollaar | This course is only available through distance learning.
This course is designed to enable students to understand and develop faithful leadership in the school setting. It requires critical reflection on educational and leadership values, in the light of the central educational focus of the school and the need to nurture Christian community while sustaining a dynamic vision for Christian schooling. |
Christianity & Ecological Crises
ICSD 1545/2545 S08
CSTC Area IV
Dr. Ronald A. Kuipers | This course is only available through distance learning.
Christian culture is often criticized for its perceived silence concerning (and even its contribution to) the global ecological crisis. Examining the work of several Christian thinkers who have sought to address this perceived gap in Christian practice and reflection, seminar participants will be asked to consider what role a strong environmental ethic should play in Christian faith. |
Rhetoric as Philosophy from Isocrates to the Age of Abelard and Heloise
ICS 2432 S08
Dr. Robert Sweetman | This seminar examines the ancient and medieval discipline of rhetoric and its practitioners’ claim that it represented a properly philosophical discourse. It does so in terms of a selection of texts drawn from the works of Isocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, Abelard and Heloise. In the process, it explores the strengths and limitations of a philosophy conformed to the assumptions and patterns of the discipline of rhetoric and of a reading of philosophical texts as rhetorical performances. |
The Politics of Forgiveness
ICS 2631 S08
Dr. Shannon Hoff | The concept of forgiveness is currently garnering much attention in the areas of ethics and social-political philosophy. It is both advocated and challenged as an alternative to justice and the law, or to typical forms of legal justice and punishment. This course, while addressing very practical discussions of the place of forgiveness in politics, will also try to dig more deeply into what could perhaps be called the “social-ontological” meaning of forgiveness, one that Hegel develops, for instance, to explain the relationship between individuals and the social body.
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| Summer 2008 |
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Ethics After Auschwitz: Adorno and Levinas ICS 1951/2951 S08
Dr. Lambert Zuidervaart, Dr. Ronald A. Kuipers, Dr. Jeff Dudiak, and Dr. Shannon Hoff
May 5 - May 16 | Contemporary philosophy aims to be "postmetaphysical." This raises questions about an appropriate basis for reflections about personal ethics and public morality. Genocide, terrorism, and state-sponsored violence add urgency to such questions. Theodor W. Adorno and Emmanuel Levinas have posed these issues in unsurpassed ways. This seminar studies their writings on ethics "after Auschwitz." |
Romans: God, Israel and Empire
CSTC I and IV; ICS1233/2233SM08
Dr. Sylvia Keesmaat
Dates: May 5 - 16
Location: ICS campus | Beginning with recent studies on the nature of the Roman empire in the first century, we will set the context for a reading of Romans which engages both its imperial setting and the story of Israel appealed to by Paul throughout the letter. How was this community to relate to the story of the Jews? was this community to relate to the story of Rome? How do of these stories relate to the story of Jesus? And what sort of community were the followers of Jesus in Rome called to be? |
Feminism, Faith and Rhetoric
CSTC IV; ICS1960/2960SM08
Dr. Helen Sterk
Dates: June 2 - 13
Location: ICS campus | Through the lens of rhetorical theory, this course will explore issues in faith and feminism. The focus will be on how the rhetoric of religious discourses and traditions have constructed “woman” and “man”, and what difference those constructs make in human relationships and theological understandings of God and humans. |
Art, Beauty and God: Recurrent Themes in Theological Aesthetics
ICS 2160 SM08
Dr. Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin and Dr. Wessel Stoker
Dates: June 30 - July 11 Location: ICS campus | Since the early church Christian thinkers have been ambivalent about art and beauty. Some reviled art and beauty for their supposed seductive or idolatrous nature. Others revered them for their apparent capacity to serve as steppingstones to a higher spiritual reality. Since modern times art, beauty and religion have made dramatic comebacks in philosophical and theological debates. Co-taught by a theologian and a philosopher, the course will explore the relationships between:art and beauty; icons and idols; art, religion and worldview; theological and philosophical aesthetics. The course will examine recent developments in theological aesthetics with a view to identifying which theories hold most promise for a holistic contemporary Christian aesthetics. |
The Weakness of God: John D. Caputo
ICS 2560 SM 08
Dr. James Olthuis
and Dr. J.D. Caputo
Dates: July 7 - 18
Location: ICS campus | This seminar will examine the emerging deconstructive theologizing of John D. Caputo, a leading American Catholic postmodern philosopher. Beginning with his effort to construct a radical hermeneutics, moving through his treatment of the prayers and tears of Jacques Derrida, the seminar will conclude by focusing on Caputo's radical theology of the weakness of God, forgiveness and faith. |
Advanced Educational Psychology
CSTC III; ICS1360/2360SM08
Dr. Gloria Goris Stronks
Dates: July 21 - 25
Location: Redeemer University
College, Ancaster, ON | This course presents a biblical model of the learner. It includes an examination of psycho-educational theories of development from the perspective of selected theorists. Consideration is given to the application of these theories to the educational environment and the implications of these theories with regard to intellectual development. Aspects of faith and moral development will also be considered. |
