FLEXI-MA

This module provides you with an opportunity to reflect on the significance of the Old Testament as Christian Scripture, with attention to key challenges and opportunities that the Old Testament presents for those in Christian ministry and mission. This course will provide opportunities to consider the costly loss of the Old Testament in modern church life. Students will explore the key ethical challenges to recovering the Old Testament in the modern world (gender, violence, ethnocentrism, historicity), and various ways that the Old Testament might be recovered for personal and church enrichment.

In this module students will examine the historical background and theological emphases within the narrative and literary settings of Luke-Acts. Close readings that engage with notable scholarship will utilise selected pericopes to illustrate intersections between history, theology and spirituality in the Lukan corpus. Throughout the study, attention will be given to the spiritual implications of Luke’s theology, and the significance of the Spirit as a subject in Luke-Acts. A critical question underlying this module is: How does Luke-Acts as a historical and literary narrative offer a clear trajectory to Christian theological formation and spiritual development?

In this module students will explore how early Christians understood their place in history and began to tell that story. The story includes a wild plot twist: the persecuted minority becomes the triumphant empire. In this module, students will explore this shift through the work of the early church historian Eusebius of Caesarea who witnessed it firsthand. They will read ancient texts and learn how to navigate the age of Constantine, a period of great political, ecclesiological, and theological change. Students will gain a critical understanding of the historical and theological context of the first five centuries of Christianity and understand the distinctiveness of early Christian historiography over its pagan predecessors and counterparts.

This module explores the development of the doctrine of God from the Patristic Era right through to the current day. Several authors will take centre stage in this enterprise, most notably Augustine of Hippo, Anselm of Canterbury, Richard of St Victor, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, Karl Barth, and Katherine Sonderegger. In light of the theologies of these thinkers, the students will be invited to critically reflect on the motivations that led to these theologies being developed, on the context in which they did, and how those ideas relate to their own conceptions of God. What is the relation between the Creator and His creation? How do we understand the unit of God? How does God’s activity relate to His eternal being? How can we speak helpfully about Him? These are just a few of the questions that will be discussed.

This module provides you with the opportunity to step further in to the life of the Spirit as we explore Paul’s theological vision for the world. To gain a window on his theology, we will focus on Romans and 1 Corinthians to see how he applied his theology to these contexts – addressing things like cultural immersion, ecclesial divisions, sexual ethics, and ministry gifting – so that we can embody that theology in our contemporary contexts. The module will give particular attention to the Spirit’s role in Paul’s theology and how the people of the Spirit live eschatologically. This will all be framed in the context of shaping our lives and contemporary ministries in light of Paul’s enduring theology.

This module explores and critically assesses concepts and issues in Christian ethics with a biblical and theological focus. It introduces the subject of ethics more broadly before examining the particular task of Christian ethics as an academic discipline enabling Christians to live lives worthy of their calling in faithful discipleship and witness as part of Christian mission.

This module will teach you to read both biblical Greek and Hebrew.