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TQQ Weekly Plan

TQQ Course outline for 2010-11

Autumn term, 2010

 1.1 Introduction to theology
Vernon White [28 September]

An introduction to the study of theology: What does it mean to study theology together when we all come to it with what may be very varied perspectives? We shall undertake a tour d’horizon of the resources for forming Christian belief, including the contributions of the Bible, Christian tradition and human reason. That means in turn thinking about how we come to make decisions about what is to be believed and what is to be done.

1.2 The God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus
Edward Probert [5 October]

The Christian tradition identifies God not primarily through philosophical definitions – even if it has sometimes been tempted to do so – but through the stories of Israel and of Jesus Christ. The God of the Bible is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: a God who is active in history, chooses a people, enters a covenant with them, and (so they claim) leads and instructs them. The God of the Bible is the God of Jesus of Nazareth. What does it mean to identify God this way?

1.3 The God of Jesus Christ: promise, judgement and hope
Edward Probert [12 October]

The Jesus of the Gospels does not spend his time promoting the calm contemplation of timeless truths: he teaches and works in the light of the coming kingdom of God. What does it mean for Christian theology to do justice to this orientation to the future, and this orientation to God’s promise and the coming judgement? What does this mean for Christian understanding of God and God’s relationship to the world? What does it mean for Christian life to be lived in the hope of God’s future?

1.4 The God of Jesus Christ: the world’s maker
Eric Woods [19 October]

In recent years, talk about ‘creation’ has often simply been an excuse for dry debates about evolution versus creationism. Yet when it is seen against the background of the understanding of God we have been exploring, the idea of creation takes on a much richer and more fruitful meaning. To ask whether one believes in creation then becomes a much more interesting question. What connection to the gospel of Jesus of Nazareth do claims about creation have?

1.5 The God of Jesus Christ: God as Trinity
Edward Probert [26 October]

Christian liturgy, hymns, and prayers are shot through with Trinitarian images and language, yet the doctrine of the Trinity is widely perceived to be an overly complex and abstruse set of ideas meaningful only to an initiated few. Yet these Christian claims about God as Trinity arose as Christians tried to shape their understanding of God around their understanding of the identity and significance of Jesus of Nazareth. Is this way of thinking appropriate, meaningful, and defensible today?

1.6 The God of Jesus Christ: the perfections of God
Eric Woods [2 November]

We often assume that we know roughly what is meant by the word ‘God’, even those who do not believe God exists. Many of us, for instance, assume we know roughly what is meant by God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and eternity. Yet looking at the doctrine of the Trinity has begun to show us that God’s nature might be more unexpected than we have thought. We will continue the exploration, looking at what is meant – in the light of our focus upon Jesus of Nazareth – by such attributes as ‘living’, ‘loving’, ‘holy’, ‘free’, ‘omnipotent’ and ‘omnipresent’.

1.7 The God of Jesus Christ – before and after Easter
David Catchpole [9 November]

We now consider the place of Jesus himself – the historical Jesus, the risen Jesus, the Jesus of early Christian reflection – within Christian theology. How did he convey his sense of God – the creator God, the God of the history of Israel, the God of judgement, promise and hope, and the God who came to be understood in terms of the Trinity? Can the process of reflection about him claim to be rooted in his own self-understanding? How should we build into all our thinking the theological dynamism of the resurrection? In short, how did the gospel of Jesus lead into the gospel about Jesus?

1.8 Providence and prayer
Vernon White [16 November]

Christian theology does not claim that God created the world at some point in the past and then left it alone, perhaps returning to tinker with it from time to time. The God of Jesus Christ is more closely involved than that. What understanding of God’s governance of creation emerges from all that we have said so far? What kind of involvement with the world should we claim for the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus – the God who is the creator and the coming king – and how do those claims relate to Christian practices of intercessory prayer?

1.9 God, work and sex
Eric Woods [23 November]

The biblical story of creation has a lot to say about work and rest, and about the relation between the sexes. What happens to those elements of the story when they are thought through in the light of the kind of doctrine of creation we have been exploring? Is work a curse, or is drudgery divine? Is sex the source of all evil, or intended for pleasure? Where do these aspects of ordinary human life fit into the world God is making?

1.10 Is God green?
Michael DeLashmutt [30 November]

What impact should the Christian understanding of God as creator and provider have upon our understanding of the natural environment? Is Christian theology responsible for encouraging the exploitation of natural resources, or does Christian theology provide resources for resisting the abuse of the environment? How green is the Christian God?

The spring term 2011: ‘Christ and salvation’

2.1 Seeing salvation
John Elliott [11 January]

Many Christians down the centuries have tried to depict in paint what God is thought to have been doing in Jesus Christ. We will look at a selection of such paintings, and ask what questions they raise about the nature of salvation, the nature of Jesus himself, the nature of human being, and the nature of God. These questions will set the agenda for much of the coming term.

2.2 The glory of God in the face of Christ
Eric Woods [18 January]

We saw in the first term that Christian theology has identified God partly by means of the biblical stories about Jesus of Nazareth. We now need to question this practice further. What kind of relationship does it imply between Jesus and the one he called Father? Much ink – and sometimes more than ink – has been spilt in the attempt to develop precise and appropriate ways of understanding Jesus’ person and nature. What sorts of things are being claimed when it is asserted that in Jesus of Nazareth God took on human flesh?

2.3 God on the cross
Eric Woods [25 January]

The question we posed in the last session is at its starkest when we look at the cross. What does it mean that in Christ God trod the way of the cross? How does it square with traditional claims that God does not suffer? What does it do to our understanding of God’s ways with the world? Where is God on the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday? Does a traditional understanding of the incarnation allow us to take the cross seriously? How does this event relate to the horrors of our own time?

2.4 How has Christ helped us?
Michael DeLashmutt [1 February]

Christians have claimed that God was in Christ reconciling the world to God’s self. What is this reconciliation, this salvation? What are we saved for, and what are we saved from? Looking at some familiar hymns, we can see how people have thought about salvation from patristic times to the present. Is salvation primarily individual, or primarily corporate? Is it an event or a process? Is it focused on the past, the present, or the future? Is it entirely God’s work, or do we co-operate?

2.5 Incarnation and salvation in feminist perspective
Judith Rossall [8 February]

Feminist theologians have generated a whole series of insights and questions, many of which touch on the doctrine of the incarnation. On the one hand, there have been insights into what it means to give priority to an embodied saviour, and to a saviour who was the source of a new community. On the other hand there have been questions about what it means to concentrate on a male saviour, and on related male imagery for God. Feminist theologians in the Third World are also asking if feminism in the First World addresses the questions faced by Third World women.

2.6 Sharing God’s life
Michael DeLashmutt [15 February]

One of the ways in which salvation has been understood is as the drawing of creation into the fellowship of God’s tri-une life – not so that human beings become gods, but so that we and all creation share the divine life. What sense can we give to such a picture of salvation? How does it relate to claims about God as Trinity, and claims about the incarnation? What does it have to say about our lives now?

2.7 The coming of the kingdom
Michael DeLashmutt [22 February]
In the final three decades of the twentieth century many theologians preferred to talk about ‘liberation’ rather than salvation. This term emphasises the present, corporate and political aspects of what it is that Christ has done for us, and picks up on Jesus’ own discourse about the kingdom. What are we to make of this, and how does it relate to other understandings of salvation?

2.8 No other name?
Edward Probert [1 March]
The fact that Christians focus on one particular human being when talking about salvation raises an important question: How do claims about the centrality of this one man Jesus of Nazareth relate to the claims of the wide world of diverse religions? Is following Christ simply one more path up the same mountain climbed by all faiths, or are the differences between religions more radical than that picture implies?

2.9 Power and violence
Eric Woods [8 March]
The understanding of salvation which we have been exploring provides us with a powerful tool with which to interrogate our lives and our society. One of the ways in which we can do this is by paying attention to the structures of power and of violence which we find all around us, asking how our recognition of and response to them is affected by the Gospel. What does the Gospel have to say about violence? Should Christians be pacifists? How can Christians occupy positions of power?

2.10 Crime and punishment
Eric Woods [15 March]

What difference does it make to look at crime and punishment in the light of what we have been saying? What impact do different understandings of sin and of salvation have on how we view criminals, their victims, and the appropriate punishment? Does God punish, and if so how do human punishments relate to God’s? What difference does it make that Christians follow a Saviour who underwent capital punishment?

The summer term 2011: ‘Spirit and Church’

3.1 The language of Spirit
Stella Wood & David Catchpole [3 May]

Just as it is not easy to get a grip on the wind, it can be difficult to grasp the Holy Spirit. We have to look for the effects which the Spirit has: the disturbing, empowering, inspiring, enlivening, convicting effects. Where do we find talk of the Spirit in the Bible? In what kind of contexts, and with what kind of effects? Where has talk of God’s spirit been prominent in the history of the church? Do common themes emerge?

Tuesday 10 May: TQQ replaced by Sarum Theological Lecture by Professor Tom Wright, formerly Bishop of Durham (see separate leaflet)

3.2 The messianic community: what is the Church?
Stella Wood & David Catchpole [17 May]

To what extent are the groups which we identify as churches today heirs of the Church of the New Testament – of the disciples gathered, empowered and sent out by Jesus; of the charismatic body of Christ described by Paul; of the close-knit community of love evoked in the Johannine epistles? How did the Church evolve in the patristic age as expectations of an imminent Second Coming dulled and Christianity had to cope with tensions not only with Judaism but also with the Roman Empire? What models of Church evolve as the doctrinal debates regarding Jesus’ divinity and the Trinity split key figures? What does it mean in the 21st century to understand the Church as called and sent by God in Christ, and as empowered by the Spirit?

3.3 The one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church
Stella Wood [24 May]

How did the Church become what we see today? What ecclesiologies were the Reformers working with when Luther and Calvin wrote their momentous theologies? What paradigms were in place at the time of the English Revolution in the 1600s or later at the time of the Oxford movement and Broad Church movement of the 19th century. How have the legacies of these groups become evident in modern understandings of Church, denominations and communions?

3.4 The Church, the Spirit and the Bible
Stella Wood & David Catchpole [31 May]

Since the beginning of the Christian Church, a special place in its life has always been occupied by Scripture – at first the Hebrew Bible and then additionally, as it took shape, the so-called New Testament. A biblical writer declared that ’all scripture is inspired by God’, and for some Christians that is the last word on the subject. On the other hand, Christian history shows that many debates, often heated and frequently divisive, have hinged on how the status of the Bible should be understood, how it should be used, and what ‘authority’ should be assigned to, or recognized in, this collection of very varied books. Those debates have often in modern times been complicated by the effect of critical study of the text, and the growing awareness of the influence of the different cultures which influenced its writers.

In this session we examine how the Canon of the New Testament was formed and how it has shaped key periods of history and the Church today. What can we learn from this history? And we try to determine whether the Church should, under the influence of the Spirit, be coloured, conditioned or controlled by the Bible.

3.5 The worshipping community
Stella Wood & David Catchpole [7 June]

Most theologians (though not all) have defined the church in relation to worship, and to the celebration of the sacraments. The term ‘sacrament’ is much contested, and to some extent divides the churches, but all agree that worship is central to their reality. What do we mean by these activities, and how do they fit into the theological framework we have been exploring?

3.6 The divided community
Stella Wood [14 June]

What does it mean for Christians to be members of particular churches which differ significantly from one another, and from the other manifestations of the church over history? How far can Christians consider themselves as in communion with one another, and with their predecessors? These questions are of immense practical relevance, and have a deep impact on the way we do theology.

3.7 Christ and the state
Eric Woods [21 June]

How should Christians, in the light of all we have been saying, relate to the wider community in which we live? How should Christians relate to politics? Should there be an established church? Should church and state be kept entirely separate? Can Christians be politicians? Should Christians’ role be prophetic? Is there a Christian way to vote? Should Christians be thought of as a pressure group? Is the Christian church a ‘contrast model’ held up to society?

3.8 Christ and art and culture
John Elliott [28 June]

Can only 'Christian' art offer a theological perspective? What can art-work made within the secular world teach us, and how can it deepen our faith if it doesn't speak the same language as art made by Christians? Should we disregard such work as 'heresy' or 'paganism'?

3.9 Christ and morality
Eric Woods [5 July]

How should Christians relate to the rules by which society is arranged? How does the life which Christians are called to live relate to moral effort? A dominant tradition, running through Augustine and Luther, has insisted that moralism (which could be seen as the attempt to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps) is the opposite of Christianity, because Christianity is based on grace: on a free gift which does not depend on our efforts. Yet in practice Christianity has often been very closely related to some form of moralism. Is a Christian ethic without moralism possible or desirable?

3.10 The architecture of religion
John Elliott [12 July]

Why are the churches we are so familiar with organized the way they are? Why are most in the Gothic style and what is the difference between the medieval and Victorian varieties of this style? Why are so many Nonconformist chapels built in a Classical style? Hopefully we will find the answers to these questions in this final session of TQQ.