DESCRIPTION:

Everyone has a basic outlook, or perspective on the world, more or less self-conscious, comprehensive and coherent. One's "worldview" has a major impact on specific beliefs, values and actions. Our global culture is bringing many worldviews into contact, conflict and competition. Competing worldviews meet within as well as around the church. Many of these worldviews present severe challenges to Christian faith. In this course we address questions such as: What constitutes a world view? How are world views formed, nurtured and promoted? What is the relationship between worldviews and specific beliefs and values? In particular, how do various worldviews interface with the claims of the Christian Gospel --growing from that Gospel, promoting it, resisting it, deflecting it, supplanting it? We will explore faithful responses to proponents of worldviews incompatible with the Gospel, and see our own faith in a new light as we do so.

This course will aid the pastor, the evangelist, the teacher, the counselor to be sensitive to basic assumptions--conscious and unconscious--that form people's values and affect their responses to faith.

The course will meet weekly for three-hour sessions consisting of lectures and discussion both as a class and in small groups.

Escobar, Samuel. Postmodernidad y la iglesia. IINDEF, 2000.

Fowler, James W. Stages of Faith. HarperSanFrancisco, 1981.

Hong, In Sik. ¿Una iglesia postmoderna? Kairos, 2001.

Kuhn, Thomas S. Estructura de las revoluciones científicas. Fondo de Cultura Económica, U.S.A., 1995.

Ropero, Alfonso. Filosofía y cristianismo. CLIE, 1997.

1. Take-home midterm.

2. Topical research project (12-15 pages) chosen in consultation with professor.

3. In-class final.

Spanish.

Meets M.Div. core requirement in Philosophical Theology (PHIL).

Yes.