Winter 2006/Pasadena
PH504
Wheeler

PH504: COSMOVISIÓN CRISTIANA Y RETOS CONTEMPORÁNEOS
(Christian Worldview and Contemporary Challenges). David L. Wheeler.


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:

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.

ASSIGNMENTS:

PREREQUISITES: Spanish.

RELATIONSHIP TO CURRICULUM: Meets MDiv core requirement in Philosophical Theology (PHIL).

FINAL EXAMINATION: Yes.