Professor Keith Egan
Saint Mary's
College
Religious Studies 445
"Historical Theology"
This course is an introduction to the study of Historical Theology.
During this course there will be an exploration of the evolution of
Christian Theology from the time of the writers of the Christian
Scriptures until the Reformation of the sixteenth century. There will be
an identification of key theologians and the classical texts which they
produced. Every effort will be made to study these authors and their
texts in contexts
that aid the study of the texts. Special attention will be paid to major
figures like Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Peter Abelard and
Heloise, Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, figures in
Late Medieval Theology and finally figures like Martin Luther and John
Calvin. Part of the enterprise in this course will be the mastery of as
much knowledge about the history of writers like these and their texts,
in other words, the gaining of an appropriate and solid literacy in the
history of Christian Theology. In addition, the course will seek to
master the skill of doing Historical Theology, that is, a doing of
theology through its historical texts and movements. Besides theological
texts, the course will attend to the theology revealed in liturgical
texts and various cultural movements. A major goal of this course is the
equipping of each member of the coruse to become adequately and
appropriately exposed to the history of Christian Theology and to the
various processes involved in the doing of Historical Theology. One
should leave this course feeling good about one's grasp of the role of
history in one's formation as an adult Christian equipped to do theology.