Spring 2014/Pasadena
NT556
Givens
NT556: JESUS, THE CHURCH, AND VIOLENCE (4 Units). 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.
LEARNING OUTCOMES: Students who successfully complete this course will have demonstrated the ability to, (1) 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; (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) develop a theological argument exegetically; and (4) 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:
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 $15.00 [117 pp.].
Leithart, Peter J. Between Babel and Beast: America and Empires in Biblical Perspective. Cascade Books, 2012. ISBN: 978-1608998173, Pub. Price $24.00 [214 pp.].
Yoder, John Howard. The Politics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster. 2nd ed. Eerdmans, 1994. ISBN: 978-0802807342, Pub. Price $22.00 [271 pp.].
Course Reader (eReserves), 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: 978-0684815008, Pub. Price $16.00.
Gorman, Michael. Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology. Eerdmans, 2009. ISBN: 978-0802862655, Pub. Price $24.00.
ASSIGNMENTS AND ASSESSMENT: Please update # of pages assigned for the papers (words or pages)
Online discussion groups (20%).
Critical book review of 1000-1500 words (10%).
Exegetical paper of 3000-4000 words wrestling with two New Testament passages in tension (40%).
Reflection essay of ca. 3000 words 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: None.