Winter Courses

ICS courses continue to be available online this term. Unless otherwise noted, the listed courses will be delivered synchronously (meeting at designated times over Zoom video conferencing), following an in-depth once-weekly seminar format. 

Please note that classes start the week of January 8 and that the latest possible date by which to register for W24 classes is January 12. The exceptions are How to Finance a Vision, and Transformative Teaching, which have a registration deadline of January 5.

Below, you will find an alphabetical list of all the courses on offer remotely this winter and links to full course descriptions and syllabi (as they become available throughout the coming months). If you are interested in taking an ICS course for credit and applying it to a program at another institution, you may contact our Registrar with questions on how best to do so.

Attention TST students: you must contact the ICS Registrar to complete your registration.

AUDITING DISCOUNTS

MA-EL Course Fee Reduction: Two or more educators from the same school who register for the same course (for credit) at the same time would each receive a $100 rebate from their course tuition. We believe that when teachers from the same school take a course together, they become stronger conversation partners and can better support each other in the implementation of their project. 

First-Time & Alum Discount: If you are a continuing learner or want to get a taste for what ICS courses are like, first-time ICS auditors and ICS alums can take these courses for only $425 (registration included). You can find more information on this and all other fee options on our fees page.

A Team Audit option is available for school board members and executive leadership teams who wish to take the course How to Finance a Vision together. Please email our Registrar directly at academic-registrar@icscanada.edu for more details.

Course List

Aristotle, Aquinas, and the Scholatic Approach to the History of Philosophy course catalogue page

Aristotle, Aquinas, and the Scholastic Approach to the History of Philosophy

(ICS 120401 / 220401 W24
ICH3313H / ICH6313H L6201)

Wednesdays, 10:00am - 1:00pm ET
with Bob Sweetman

This seminar examines the scholastic approach to the history of philosophy exemplified by Etienne Gilson against the background of its foundation in the thought of Aristotle as it was appropriated by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century. It examines the role that philosophy or theology's history plays in the conceptual constructions of scholastic thinkers, and what they think is truly first and deepest in the history they so study....  [more info here]

God in Flesh and Blood course description page

God in Flesh and Blood: Revolutions in Christology*

(ICS 240811 W24
ICT3201H / ICT6201 L6201)

Tuesdays, 10:00am - 1:00pm ET
with Nik Ansell

Although theologians often approach “Christology” by asking how Jesus of Nazareth might be best understood in terms of certain systematic concerns or doctrinal positions—a perspective that gives rise to questions such as: How are the divine and human natures of Christ related?, What are the merits of, or alternatives to, substitutionary atonement?, and How might a virginal conception thwart the transmission of original sin?—those who are more oriented to the discipline of “biblical theology” are more likely to prioritize how the New Testament portrayal of Jesus is related to the narrative movement—or movements—of the Hebrew Bible. This leads either to a different set of questions or (just as importantly) to a different angle on the kinds of questions asked above. This course, on potential revolutions in Christological thinking, will draw on contemporary NT scholarship in order to explore this latter approach.

To what extent do the OT themes of exile and return, old age and new age, help deepen our understanding of the birth and crucifixion of the Messiah? If the NT portrays the first followers of Jesus as worshipping him (and as doing so before and not just after the Resurrection), is it implicitly or explicitly calling us to worship Jesus’s humanity as well as his divinity? Does Mary’s encounter with Gabriel, who is a named presence in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament only in the Book of Daniel, indicate that her conception of Jesus is to be read apocalyptically? Is it significant that Elizabeth initially greets Mary with words otherwise associated with Jael and Judith? These are some of the exegetical and theological questions we will consider in this engagement with issues at the edge, and at the heart, of contemporary Christology. Conversation partners will include: James Dunn (Did the First Christians Worship Jesus?), Jane Schaberg (The Illegitimacy of Jesus), and N.T. Wright (The Day the Revolution Began)... [more info here]

*NOTE: This course is only available to ICS Junior Members and to students who have previously taken the course "Biblical Foundations: Narrative, Wisdom, and the Art of Interpretation" (ICS 1108AC / 2108AC ).

How to finance a vision course description

How to Finance a Vision: Setting Direction and Managing Change within Financial Limitations

(ICSD 260007 W24)
Blended Online Synchronous / Asynchronous Format
with Gideon Strauss

This is a course for new and aspiring principals and leadership teams. The course provides frameworks and tools for leadership in making the connections between the vision of a school, the budgeting process, and fundraising.

The course starts with an introduction to Henri Nouwen’s spirituality of fundraising. It continues with an introduction to the basic financial documents that a principal should be able to read. It explores the art of communicating the story told by school budgets as a necessary element of fundraising. It concludes with the processes necessary to gain competency in working with both school boards and staffs (with an emphasis on financial and advancement staff) on the financial aspects of school management.

This is a remote learning course consisting of three synchronous discussions and three virtual school visits using online video and thirteen weeks of asynchronous online interaction.... [more info here]

NOTE: A Team Audit option is available for school board members and executive leadership teams who wish to take this course together. Please email our Registrar directly at academic-registrar@icscanada.edu for more details.

Issues in phenomenology: spirituality course catalogue page

Issues in Phenomenology: Spirituality

(ICS 223001 W24)

Thursdays, 2:00 - 5:00pm ET
with Neal DeRoo

This version of the “Issues in Phenomenology” course will centre on the issue of spirituality. Drawing on its German roots in Hegel and Husserl, the phenomenological notion of spirituality [geistigkeit] is understood to be a (perhaps THE) constitutive factor in all human social activity. The course will look at the introduction of this notion of spirituality in Hegel and its crucial re-development in Husserlian phenomenology. It will then trace the development of that term through Derrida’s reading of Heidegger in Of Spirit and into Michel Henry’s use of spirit in his notion of a “barbaristic” culture that he finds to be currently dominant in Western culture. We will end by examining the implications of this account of spirituality for our understanding of religion and of oppression (especially sexism and racism)....  [more info here]

meaning/being/knowing course catalogue page

Meaning/Being/Knowing: The Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Implications of a Christian Ontology*

(ICS 2105AC W24)

Thursdays, 6:00 - 9:00pm ET
with Nik Ansell

*NOTE: This course is only available to ICS Junior Members and to students who have previously taken the course "Religion, Life, and Society: Reformational Philosophy" (ICS 1107AC / 2107AC ).

Philosophical Inquiry and the Practices of Everyday Life course catalogue page

Philosophical Inquiry and the Practices of Everyday Life: An Interdisciplinary Seminar on Philosophizing in a Time of Crisis

(ICS 2400AC W24)
Tuesdays, 2:00 - 5:00pm ET
with Neal DeRoo & Gideon Strauss

In the first chapter of his little book Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue 1913-1922 (2006), Alasdair MacIntyre asks, “What would it have been in that period of German history in which Heidegger grew up, served his philosophical apprenticeship, and became the most influential of twentieth century German philosophers to have lived quite otherwise as a philosopher, to have consistently taken seriously both the implications for one’s life outside philosophy of one’s philosophical enquiries and the implications for one’s philosophy of one’s other activities?”

In this seminar we will explore the implications of philosophical inquiry for the everyday practices of philosophers as well as the implications of our everyday concerns for our philosophical practices, with particular attention to the relevance of our political circumstances for this exploration. We will do so with particular attention to the diverse examples offered by the early careers of three philosophers living through what Husserl called the ‘crisis’ of European thought and culture in the 1920s and 30s: Edith Stein, Martin Heidegger, and Herman Dooyeweerd. Both in our seminar conversations and in our written papers for this seminar we will consider what we may learn for our own practices from comparing these examples.... [more info here]

transformative teaching course catalogue page

Transformative Teaching: The Role of a Christian Educator*

(ICSD 260006 W24)
Blended Online Synchronous / Asynchronous Format
with Edith van der Boom

This is a course for instructional leaders as they consider their roles as Christian educators called to be transformers of society and culture by seeking justice for those who are marginalized and disenfranchised. In this course we will consider constructivism (a dominant educational theory in the twenty-first century that informs student-centred pedagogies such as Project Based Learning) through the lens of Scripture and investigate the assumptions that it makes. We will explore our calling as Christian educators to transform culture in our schools, local community, and the world.

This course seeks to help Christian educators find clarity in answers to the following questions:

* Approved for Area 2 of the CSTC.

what were the women up to course catalogue page

What Were the Women Up To? Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch

(ICS 253401 W24)

Thursdays, 10:00am - 1:00pm ET
with Michael Buttrey

In the middle of the 20th century, four women at the University of Oxford began careers that would revolutionize the fields of ethics and analytic philosophy. Elizabeth Anscombe, Wittgenstein’s student and translator, integrated ordinary language philosophy with Aristotelian practical reasoning. Philippa Foot defended the objectivity of morality, invented the Trolley problem, and articulated a modern account of ethical naturalism. Mary Midgley challenged reductionism and sociobiology while developing a fulsome account of our relationship to non-human animals. Iris Murdoch, through story as much as treatise, brought analytic philosophy into conversation with Continental philosophy, Eastern philosophy, and Platonic moral realism. This seminar examines the philosophy and legacy of these four women, friends, pioneers, and philosophers.... [more info here]

Want to join a course?

Please email our Academic Registrar at academic-registrar@icscanada.edu with your questions or to register today!