Students major or minor in theology for various reasons. Some aim to study the past origins and present day uses of Jewish and Christian Scriptures. Some become interested in the history of Christianity — Eastern and Western, Catholic and Protestant. Other students become interested in the way diverse contemporary theologies address issues of God and Jesus Christ, evil and suffering, the Church and the modern world, belief, and unbelief. Still others aim to pursue issues in ethics: Christian ethics, medical ethics, contemporary moral issues, war, and peace. Some students become interested in the diverse relationships between theology and some other area: philosophy, world religions or the sciences. Still others find themselves attracted to a God of love who calls them to think, speak, read, and write about God’s relation to a world of many joys and griefs.
The study of theology embraces all these interests, and our theology courses are addressed to these diverse students (Jew and Christian, Catholic and Protestant, believer and unbeliever).
All students take an introductory course aimed at learning to interpret the Bible, understand the history of Christianity and become people who can respond intelligently, in thought and life, to the way these texts and traditions challenge our contemporary cultures. A second theology course focuses these aims on one of four general areas: Jewish and Christian Scriptures, the History of Christianity, Christian Theology and Theology and Culture. Our core ethics courses are either case-oriented or theme-oriented explorations of the crucial struggle of our time: the struggle for faith and that struggle for justice which it includes.
The theology department’s electives aim to introduce students to the way scholarly research is conducted in the various divisions of theology. These courses cover topics such as Hebrew prophets, Jesus in the Gospels, reading the Bible in the modern world, the theology of St. Augustine, American Catholic intellectual life, religion in children’s literature, divine power and human freedom, issues in medical ethics and theology and the sciences.