Course Description
Building on the foundations from the Methodology Seminar and the Reading Seminar, the general focus of this third seminar will be to aid the student in the art of logical demonstration toward the persuasion of another person or group of people within the class who hold a contrary position. In a variety of ways, students will especially be expected to progressively improve their ability to actively listen to and test each other’s opinions about the texts being analyzed, in order to arrive at some level of intellectual consensus about particular theological assertions. A fundamental aspect of this seminar will be the repeated practice of students presenting a short thesis on a topic that stems directly from the assigned texts at hand. The thesis must be outlined, well-organized in full written form, and presented orally to the class in a way that seeks to persuade those in the class that the stated thesis is either true, or concluded to be most probably and fittingly true.
In particular, this seminar takes up Amos Wilder’s appeal in his 1976 book Theopoesis: “A creative theopoetic is called for to relate our Christian experience to the new sensibility of our time…. When imagination fails, doctrines become ossified, witness and proclamation wooden.” Pope Francis has called for something similar—via pulchritudinis: “Proclaiming Christ means showing that to believe and follow him is not only something right and true, but also something beautiful, capable of filling life with new splendor and profound joy.” The seminar studies works—from ancient to contemporary—that generate the Christian imagination and further via pulchritudinis in preaching.
Bibliography
St. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine;
Humbert of Romans, Treatise on Preaching;
St. Francis de Sales, On Preachers and Preaching;
St. John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University;
Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Homiletic Directory.