Spring 2012/Pasadena
FullerLive!
NT556
Givens
NT556: JESUS, THE CHURCH, AND VIOLENCE. Tommy Givens.
DESCRIPTION: This course will examine violence in the New Testament and
consider how the church is called to engage its presence in, among, and against
us. While the course will touch on the violence of war, it will be concerned to
develop a self-implicating description of violence that is thicker than 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, working from particular New Testament passages. From this drama
and predominant ways it has been read by the modern church in the West, the
course will develop insight into the subtleties of violence that have acquired
names like race, nation, leadership, and freedom. The 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.
SIGNIFICANCE FOR LIFE AND MINISTRY: The peace of oneness in Christ is at the
heart of what it means to be the church of Jesus according to the New
Testament. In a violent world the church is tempted to settle for a peace that
is thinner than that of Christ. Christian ministers must therefore be able to
draw from Scripture a theologically coherent vision of the peace the church is
empowered to embody and proclaim.
LEARNING OUTCOMES: Students who successfully complete this course will have
demonstrated the ability to
- work with the New Testament in a synthetic way that takes seriously the
particularity of its diverse voices while developing a coordinated New
Testament witness on the matters of violence and peace;
- 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);
- develop a theological argument exegetically;
- articulate an imperative of peace that is coherently Christian.
COURSE FORMAT: The course meets weekly for three-hour sessions of lecture and
discussion. It will also involve regular Moodle discussions.
REQUIRED READING: Selected chapters from the following books:
- The Bible in one of the following translations: CEB, NRSV, or
TNIV.
- Hauerwas, Stanley, and Jean Vanier. Living Gently in a Violent World:
The Prophetic Witness of Weakness. InterVarsity Press, 2008. ISBN:
0830834524. $15.00.
- O'Donovan, Oliver. The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the
Roots of Political Theology. Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN:
0521665167. $46.00.
- Yoder, John Howard. The Politics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster. 2d
ed. Eerdmans, 1994. ISBN: 0802807348. $22.00.
- Course Reader (e-reserves), including articles/chapters by (among others)
Wendell Berry, Andrea Bieler, Richard Hays, Martin Luther King Jr., Elsa
Tamez.
- 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," in The Essential Writings of and
Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., ed. James M. Washington (HarperCollins,
1986), 231-44.
- Tamez, "Cultural Violence against Women in Latin America," in Women
Resisting Violence, ed. Mary John Mananzan et al. (Orbis, 1996),
11-19.
RECOMMENDED READING (in addition to volumes excerpted in course reader):
- Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship. Touchstone,
1995. ISBN: 0684815001. $16.00.
- Gorman, Michael. Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification,
and Theosis in Paul's Narrative Soteriology. Eerdmans, 2009. ISBN:
0802862659. $24.00.
ASSIGNMENTS AND ASSESSMENT:
- Online discussion groups (20%)
- Critical book review (10%)
- Exegetical paper wrestling with two New Testament passages in tension
(40%)
- Reflection essay on facing violence in the church according to the New
Testament (30%)
PREREQUISITES: NS500, NS501, or NT500.
RELATIONSHIP TO CURRICULUM: Meets MDiv core requirement in New Testament
Theology (NTT).
FINAL EXAMINATION: No.
This ECD is a reliable guide to the course design but is subject to modification. (January 2012)