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 worldview? How are worldviews
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.
COURSE OBJECTIVES/LEARNING OUTCOMES: There will be four learning outcomes
pursued in this course. First, the student will learn to see Christian Faith as
a psychological phenomenon which develops in a social and historical context,
AS WELL AS a supernatural gift of God's grace. Second, the student will explore
the concept of "worldview" (cosmovisión), with attention to the
particular elements of worldviews, and how they form, undergo alteration and
disappear. Third, the student will examine the situation of Christian faith in
classic worldviews, past and present, and explore how faith and worldview
interact. Finally, the student will identify the peculiar challenges to
Christian faith in the global emergence of "postmodern" culture and will
explore apologetic responses to postmodernism.
RELEVANCE FOR MINISTRY: 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.
COURSE FORMAT: The course will meet weekly for three-hour sessions consisting
of lectures and discussion both as a class and in small groups.
REQUIRED READING: