Spring 2017/Pasadena
NT556
Givens
NT556: JESUS, THE CHURCH, AND VIOLENCE (4 Units: 160 Hours). Tommy Givens.
DESCRIPTION: This course will examine violence according to the New Testament, particularly in light of violence against oppressed people in the Americas, and consider how the church is called to understand violence in, among, and against us and others. While the course will deal with the violence of war, it will be concerned to develop for students a self-implicating description of violence that is thicker than what conventionally passes as the activity of war or killing. To that end, we will consider the relation between the God of Israel and violence as borne out in the New Testament drama of Jesus and his church and pursue the question of the social position from which violence is described and contemplated. The principal aim of the course’s theological description and contemporary insight is to promote the Christian life as one of peacemaking by the Spirit of Jesus in and through the church.
LEARNING OUTCOMES: Students who successfully complete this course will have demonstrated the ability to (1) work with the New Testament in a theologically sophisticated way that takes seriously the particularity of its diverse voices while conveying a coordinated New Testament witness on the matters of violence and peace; (2) wrestle intelligently with tensions between the Old Testament and the New Testament on the subject of violence (e.g., Israel’s wars of conquest at God’s command and Jesus’ war of conquest as God’s command in the flesh); (3) consider the first-hand witness of systematically oppressed people, particularly black slaves and other people of color in the Americas, so as to express wisely the theological relevance of context to the question of violence; and (4) articulate an imperative of peace that is coherently Christian.
COURSE FORMAT: This class meets twice weekly for two hour sessions for a total of 40 instructional hours in the classroom for lecture and discussion. It will also involve regular Moodle discussions.
REQUIRED READING: 1200 pages required.
Either the CEB, NRSV, or TNIV translation of the New Testament.
Hauerwas, Stanley, and Jean Vanier. Living Gently in a Violent World: The Prophetic Witness of Weakness. InterVarsity Press, 2008. ISBN: 978-0830834525, Pub. Price $17.00 [117 pp.].
Smith, Ted. Weird John Brown: Divine Violence and the Limits of Ethics. Stanford University Press, 2014. ISBN: 978-0804793452, available digitally at no additional cost through Fuller Library. [224 pp.]
Turner, Nat. The Confessions of Nat Turner, the Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Virginia. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library, 1831, 2011. ISBN: 978-0807869468, available digitally at no additional cost through Fuller Library. [35 pp.]
Walker, David. Appeal…to the Coloured Citizens of the World. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library, 1830, 2011. ISBN: 978-0807869482, available digitally at no additional cost through Fuller Library. [79 pp.]
The Will of a People: A Critical Anthology of Great African American Speeches. Edited by Richard W. Leeman and Bernard K. Duffy. Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. ISBN: 978-0809330577, $49.95 [86 pp.]
Yoder, John Howard. The Politics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster. 2nd ed. Eerdmans, 1994. ISBN: 978-0802807342, Pub. Price $24.00 [271 pp.].
Course Reader (eReserves), including articles/chapters by (among others) Wendell Berry, Andrea Bieler, Richard Hays, Martin Luther King Jr., Elsa Tamez. [388 pp.]
E.g., Bieler (and Schottroff), “The Body Politics of Eucharist,” in Bodies, Bread, and Resurrection (Fortress, 2007), 127-56.
Berry, The Hidden Wound, 2d ed. (Counterpoint, 2010), 13-21.
Hays, “Violence in Defense of Justice,” in The Moral Vision of the New Testament (HarperCollins, 1996), 317-46.
King, “A Time to Break Silence,” 1967.
Tamez, “Cultural Violence against Women in Latin America,” in Women Resisting Violence, ed. Mary John Mananzan et al. (Orbis, 1996), 11-19.
ASSIGNMENTS AND ASSESSMENT:
1200 pages of required reading, reported on session-by-session reports (10%). [70 hours].
Session Assignments, responding to study questions on New Testament texts and assigned secondary literature (20%). [This assignment is related to learning outcomes #1, #2, #3, #4] [15 hours].
Two critical book reviews of 1000-1500 words (30%). [This assignment is related to learning outcomes #1, #2, #3, #4] [10 hours].
Exegetical paper of 3000-4000 words wrestling with multiple New Testament passages in tension (40%). [This assignment is related to learning outcomes #1, #2, #3, #4] [25 hours].
PREREQUISITES: BI500 or NE502. NT500, NS500, or NS501.
RELATIONSHIP TO CURRICULUM: Counts as a biblical elective for the 120 MDiv, 80 MAT, and 80 MATM Programs (Fall 2015). Meets MDiv core requirement in New Testament Theology (NTT).
FINAL EXAMINATION: None.