This course introduces students to the study of religion and theological inquiry. Through a variety of sources it explores the meaning of religion in personal and cultural life.

An introduction to several religious traditions practiced in the South Bend area and the skills needed to reflect on how our own beliefs and expectations shape our understanding of others.

What is a good life? How can we live it in the present and discern how to live it in the future? This course will explore those questions through the theological concept of vocation—the idea of a holistic, evolving calling in life that connects us to the world beyond ourselves. We’ll learn from readings and speakers from different perspectives, group discussion, spiritual practices, and tools from career counseling as we explore how to build lives of meaning and purpose. The course will draw on insights from religious traditions, especially Christian theology, but warmly welcomes members of all worldviews.

This course functions together with a study program in Greece. Students will also meet for nine hours of classroom instruction and orientation before departure to Greece. The remainder of the course will occur while traveling to and within Greece. Students will study the origins of early Christianity in Greece during the first century C.E. in light of Greco-Roman culture and history. Students will examine ways in which ancient cultural patterns, symbols, values, and embodied artifacts of the Greco-Roman world shaped early Christianity in Greece and that movement’s unique Christian assemblies by investigating Greco-Roman religions, politics, gender issues, social status, daily life, city planning, architecture, art, economy, and ancient travel. The course is organized around daily excursions to various archaeological sites in Greece that will allow students to probe the cultural and historical realities of Greco-Roman antiquity and their influence on early Christianity.

An exploration of the ways people come to know the divine through their own experience. This course will focus on works in which people reflect on their experience of the divine, and it will also consider works in which scholars seek to understand religious experience from different perspectives. Prerequisite: Completion of Sophia Religious Traditions I requirement.

Christianity has often been resistant to areas of life that are associated with comedy, such as laughter, play, and joy. Theologian Hugo Rahner summarizes the traditional objections: “May a Christian laugh, when he has heard our Lord’s warning, ‘Woe upon you who laugh now; you shall mourn and weep’ (Luke 6.25)? May a Christian go on merrily playing when a stern and strict choice has to be made for eternity?” This course will investigate the relationship between comic dimensions of human life and Christian spirituality, in particular by asking how attending to comedy might contribute to the study of spirituality. Since spirituality requires self-reflection, a significant part of the class will involve participating in spiritual practices, as well as two experiential events outside of class. The course will also explore how contemporary Christian spirituality is shaped by engagement with other religious traditions. Prerequisite: Completion of Sophia Religious Traditions I requirement.

This course is a study of the Bible as a foundation for Jewish and Christian theology and the relationship between the two faith traditions. It will focus on the Hebrew Bible and how some of its texts and themes are utilized and reinterpreted in the New Testament. Prerequisite: Completion of Sophia Religious Traditions I requirement.

This course examines a broad array of Christian practices, techniques and ideas about holiness. Prerequisite: Completion of Sophia Religious Traditions I requirement.

This course examines the Christian biblical writings giving attention to their social-historical, literary, and theological characteristics. The New Testament texts are situated within the respective Jewish Palestinian and Greco-Roman contexts of Jesus and his early followers. Attention is given to compositional issues and to the subsequent transmission of these writings. Prerequisite: Completion of Sophia Religious Traditions I requirement.

This course examines the faith, practices, and theories of influential American Christian activists who exemplify a variety of approaches to the Christian quest for justice. It seeks to understand how a commitment to justice can grow out of Christian faith. Prerequisite: Completion of Sophia Religious Traditions I requirement.

What is the Church’s proper role in social and political life? What insight does the Roman Catholic tradition offer in the face of ever more difficult moral quandaries? This course examines the foundational elements of the Church’s social tradition and their application to contemporary issues such as poverty and homelessness, health care, the environment, capital punishment, war, and the beginning and end of life, and may focus on the impact of such issues on women inside and outside the Church, as well as on the relationship between one’s role as believer and one’s role as citizen. Prerequisite: Completion of Sophia Religious Traditions I requirement.

An examination of the sources and development of Christianity's central teachings. Consideration of the history and contemporary understandings of those aspects of the faith of prime importance: God, Christ, the Church, the Christian life. What does it mean to be part of the Christian tradition? How can we understand its richness and diversity? Prerequisite: Completion of Sophia Religious Traditions I requirement.

This course will introduce students to Catholic theology, an academic field that engages the texts, beliefs, practices, and histories of the Catholic faith as authoritative sources for understanding God and God’s will for humankind. Our focus will be four perennial questions of Catholic theology: What is theology? Who is God? Who is Jesus Christ? And, what is the church? We will study the development and diversity of perspectives on these questions at key moments in Catholic theological history. We will explore some important perspectives on these questions in contemporary U.S. Catholic theology as well. In addition to learning about and analyzing the contributions of Catholic theologians across time and place, we will also hone our abilities to draw on the sources of Catholic theology to generate and debate our own original theological arguments. That is, we will study the work of Catholic theologians and practice thinking and communicating as theologians.

RLST 264 will introduce students to the field of queer theology. After familiarizing students with academic approaches to Christian theology and the history and central ideas of queer theory, we will undertake an in-depth study of queer theological approaches to (1) Scripture, (2) theological anthropology, (3) Christology, (4) Mariology, and (5) spirituality. In addition to learning about and analyzing queer theological texts, we will also hone our abilities to generate and debate our own original theological arguments. Though this is a course in Christian theology, students need not belong to the Christian faith, nor any faith tradition at all, to participate. Likewise, students need not have any familiarity with queer studies. Students from the tri-campus community of all gender and sexual identities are welcome.

Saint Mary of Nazareth, the patroness of our college, is arguably the most important and well-known woman in Christian history. While her significance for the Christian tradition and for members of the Saint Mary’s community may seem obvious, who Mary is and why she matters has been a persistent topic of Christian theological debate. Through engagement with biblical, historical, and contemporary theological scholarship, this course will initiate students into the subfield of Mariology, or the study of Mary, and will equip them to add their insights to this ongoing theological discussion.

The presentation of selected general education topics not covered in regular departmental 200 level courses. May be repeated for credit with a different topic. Prerequisite: completed Religious Traditions I Sophia requirement.

This course will examine the life, message, and mission of the historical Jesus of Nazareth. Students will study the historical context in which Jesus lived, investigate the ancient sources which provide the data for reconstructing the life of the historical Jesus, and make use of historical-critical scholarly methods. Prerequisite: must have already satisfied their Religious Traditions I and II Sophia requirements.

This course is a study of the third and fourth books in the Torah or Pentateuch. These biblical books will be read in conversation with bibilical criticism and cultural anthropology. Prerequisite: must have already satisfied their Religious Traditions I and II Sophia requirements.

This course introduces students to the life, letters, and beliefs of Paul's own writings within their social-historical contexts. Students also become familiar with diverse positions in Pauline studies by reading contemporary scholarship. Prerequisite: must have already satisfied their Religious Traditions I and II Sophia requirements.

A study of various theological approaches to the concept and lived reality of love and loving--God, human persons, and the world of nature and culture. Different sorts of human love are explored: the love of friendship, married love, parental and filial love, love of one's work, etc. Excerpts are read from classical and contemporary theologians, a few mystics, and some current social activists. Prerequisite: must have already satisfied their Religious Traditions I and II Sophia requirements.

This course is a study of the fifteen prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible, written from the 8th century BCE to approximately the 4th century BCE. The books will be read in conversation with contemporary work on methods of biblical interpretation, particularly feminist criticism. Prerequisite: must have already satisfied their Religious Traditions I and II Sophia requirements.

This course explores the God-human relationship which the Christian tradition describes as grace. It studies contemporary expressions of God's action, human freedom, and responsibility. It also explores classical texts and Church teaching on the relationship of grace to sin, salvation, and the meaning of history. Prerequisite: must have already satisfied their Religious Traditions I and II Sophia requirements.

This course offers an interdisciplinary introduction to eschatology, the branch of Christian theology that deals with what are traditionally known as the last things--death, judgement, heaven, and hell. The class will focus on the ways theologians and artists have wrestled with understanding and depicting the afterlife. Prerequisite: must have already satisfied their Religious Traditions I and II Sophia requirements.

This course explores the wisdom of the Christian mystics and the significance of this wisdom for theology and religious studies. Different thems occur in various semesters, e.g., women mystics, medieval mystics, Spanish mystics, etc. Prerequisite: must have already satisfied their Religious Traditions I and II Sophia requirements.

In a given semester, the work of a few Christian theologians is studied according to selected themes in their writings. Choice of the specific theologians is determined according to the expertise of available faculty and expressed interest of majors. Seminar format. Prerequisite: must have already satisfied their Religious Traditions I and II Sophia requirements.

This course focuses on selected theological themes in films. Students learn to think critically, discover and discuss theological themes in a variety of cinematic presentations. May be repeated for credit with a different theme. Graded: S/U. This course does not count toward the major or minor. Prerequisite: must have already satisfied their Religious Traditions I and II Sophia requirements.

This interdisciplinary seminar examines how literature can address religion's questions--and how it can't. Participants will use the lens of literary studies to probe religious texts and will consider how imaginative literature--sacred and secular, Christian and non-Christian--can shed light on theological issues. Prerequisite: must have already satisfied their Religious Traditions I and II Sophia requirements.

Who is a saint? What theological, political, and social factors determine who is recognized as a saint in the Catholic tradition? What social and moral imperatives do the saints model for Catholics and other Christians? This class will usher students into historical and theological debates about these questions. After an introduction to Catholic theological perspectives on holiness and sainthood, students will engage the work of contemporary Catholic theologians to explore the relationship of sainthood to sexism, heteronormativity, racism, and mental health stigma in the Catholic Church. Prerequisites Religious Traditions 1 & 2.

Attentive to the disproportionate suffering that women endure in a patriarchal world, feminist theologians have queried how God responds to unjust suffering: Does God care when women suffer? If so, what is the nature of God’s concern for and response to this suffering? How theologians answer these questions has ethical implications for those who uphold God as the model for humanity’s own right relationship to suffering. Through engagements with contemporary feminist, womanist, Latina feminist, and ecofeminist theologians from the Christian tradition, students will examine and debate who God is, how God relates to suffering, and how God calls humankind to respond to the struggles of our world.

Mental health struggles—in our own lives or the lives of those around us—frequently engender difficult questions: What is happening? Why is this happening? And what should we do when faced with these struggles? Sufferers and those who accompany them sometimes turn to faith communities for answers, and though some find solace in the theological and practical responses they receive, many are left searching. This course will initiate students into the academic Christian theological discussions that have arisen in response to these questions. Prerequisites: Completion of Religious Traditions I and II

This course explores the relationship between religion and science, and addresses questions raised by the religion/science debate and seeks ways to relate better the wisdom gained by science and religion. Prerequisite: must have already satisfied their Religious Traditions I and II Sophia requirements.

This course examines ethical issues at the intersection of religion and politics. It explores topics such as the function and limits of secular authority for religious communities, the possible imperative for religious claims to enter the public sphere, and how various competing religious claims may be adjudicated effectively. Prerequisite: Junior/Senior standing or permission of instructor. Prerequisite: must have already satisfied their Religious Traditions I and II Sophia requirements.

This course will be an engagement with various forms of African-American theologies. Our focus will be on ways in which African-Americans have conceived of the three persons of the Christian Trinity, both constructively and critically. We will also consider ways in which social, historical, cultural, and political contexts relate to developing theologies. Prerequisite: must have already satisfied their Religious Traditions I and II Sophia requirements.

This course examines Christian theological positions about women and sexuality as these positions have functioned in history and have affected Church teaching on the role of women in society. It uses interdisciplinary, interfaith discussions to highlight the importance of constructive theological reflection on contemporary issues facing women. Prerequisite: must have already satisfied their Religious Traditions I and II Sophia requirements.

This course, based in the writings of Saint Tomas Aquinas, pursues the mysteries of faith with the fascination of reason. Topics to be addressed include the existence and attributes of God, God's relationship to the world's evil, and the delicate balance between faith and reason. Prerequisite: must have already satisfied their Religious Traditions I and II Sophia requirements.

What do non-Christian religions say about ultimate reality and the meaning of life? How should Christians regard the beliefs and practices of non-Christians? A survey of selected non-Christian theologies and Christian responses. Prerequisite: must have already satisfied their Religious Traditions I and II Sophia requirements.

This course will be an engagement with Islam. We will examine Muslim beliefs and practices, as well as ways that Islam impacts current events. We will explore the roots of the Muslim tradition, different ways of being Muslim, the status of women in Islam, and the relationship between violence and Islam, among other topics. We will also consider ways in which the social, historical, cultural, and political contexts relate to Islam. Prerequisite: must have already satisfied their Religious Traditions I and II Sophia requirements.

The presentation of selected subjects of special relevance not included in regular department offerings. May be repeated with different topic. Prerequisite: must have already satisfied their Religious Traditions I and II Sophia requirements.

Reflection on the methods and standards used by Christian thinkers to develop appropriate and credible theologies when faced with the most pressing issues in contemporary Christian life. Prerequisite: must have already satisfied their Religious Traditions I and II Sophia requirements.

This course is an exercise in Historical Theology that identifies classical theologians and classical texts from the Christian tradition--especially from the early Church, the Middle Ages, and the Reformation. This course explores selected classical texts, in context, as a way of understanding the evolution of Christian doctrine and as a way of informing the work of theology. Prerequisite: must have already satisfied their Religious Traditions I and II Sophia requirements.

A study of systematics, correlating major theological themes, and doctrinal issues such as Christology, ecclesiology, sin and grace, sacraments. Prerequisite: must have already satisfied their Religious Traditions I and II Sophia requirements.

A study of basic issues for Christian ethical reflection, such as the status of norms, the meaning of natural law, doctrine of person and human action, and the nature of moral argument. Prerequisite: must have already satisfied their Religious Traditions I and II Sophia requirements.

A study of issues, foundations, and theologies which shape contemporary catechetical ministries. Special attention to the psychology of religious learning and to themes in biblical, moral, and doctrinal theology which characterize contemporary Catholic thinking. Prerequisite: must have already satisfied their Religious Traditions I and II Sophia requirements.

Supervised ministry or teaching of religion in a local parish or school is the basis for a weekly reflection seminar and for readings. This practicum does not count as one of the two required electives for the RLST major or minor. Prerequisite: RLST 476 and must have already satisfied their Religious Traditions I and II Sophia requirements.

May be repeated.

Internship opportunities. May be repeated.