Syllabus
* RET7031: The First Thousand Years of Global Christianity: History and Thought | Summer Semester, 2021
Viacheslav V. Lytvynenko (aka "Slavik") vyacheslav.lytvynenko@gmail.com
Credit Hours: 2
This course follows a weekly schedule that runs for 15 weeks from February 15 through May 30, 2021, with the Easter break from March 29 to April 11. Due to COVID-19, we will meet online, and you are asked to use the following link to connect via Zoom:
Meeting ID: 962 1220 4381
* Course Information
* Course Description
Initially, this course was going to be a general survey of the Christian Church from its founding at Pentecost to the Christianization of the Slavs in the ninth and tenth centuries. In the present form, it will also include several lectures on Medieval Christianity in the West leading to the Reformation.
* Course Learning Objectives
This course is designed to give students a working knowledge of the major themes, issues, and personalities of Church history during the first thousand years, to help students appreciate and make use of the rich resources of the early Church, and to enhance their understanding of the background to the second millennium. I intend that upon completing this course, you will: 1. Critically compare the various Christian traditions to each other and to your own tradition in light of their respective historical developments. 2. Describe key indicators of a historian’s perspective and assess the role that perspective plays in the retelling and interpretation of historical events. 3. Accurately identify key moments, people and places in the history of God's church around the world during the first millennium of the Church and apply these things to contemporary issues of faith. 4. Describe important stages in the development of Christian doctrine, differentiate between helpful and problematic developments and explain the importance of historical doctrinal formulation in helping us understand the Bible's core teachings. 5. Summarize the strengths and weaknesses of the early Church and evaluate the impact of those strengths/weaknesses on the following centuries, and perhaps on your own tradition.
* Weekly Lessons
Over 15 weeks, we will cover the following topics:
* Introduction to Church History o Lesson 1: The Significance of One's Perspective on Christian History (Week 1)
* The Church in the Pagan World o Lesson 2: Church History and World History (Week 2) o Lesson 3: Orthodoxy and Heresy, part 1 (Week 3) o Lesson 4: Early Church Worship and Practice (Week 4)
* The Christian Kingdoms before the Rise of Islam o Lesson 5: The Rise of the Christian Kingdoms (Week 5) o Lesson 6: Orthodoxy and Heresy, part 2 (Week 6) o Lesson 7: The Transformation of the Latin Church (Week 7)
* Islam and the Fracturing of Christianity o Lesson 8: Islam's Impact on the Church (Week 8) o Lesson 9: Orthodoxy and Heresy, part 3 (Week 9) o Lesson 10: Isolation and Rivalry (Week 10) o Lesson 11: Conversion of the Slavs: Moravia, Bulgaria, and Old Rus (Week 11)
* The Church in Medieval Europe o Lesson 12: High Medieval Christianity (Week 12) o Lesson 13: Medieval Doctrinal Developments (Week 13) o Lesson 14: Toward the Reformation (Week 14)
* Final Reflections o Lesson 15: Church History and You
* Required Reading:
During this class, students will be required to read one textbook in its entirety and submit a statement of how much reading they have completed:
Wilken, Robert L. The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity. New Haven, Ct.: Yale University Press, 2012. The book is scanned and available for private reading through Moodle.
* Required Assignment:
In the first part of this course, you must choose a non-Western ancient Christian tradition (Chalcedonian Eastern Orthodox, Oriental [non-Chalcedonian] Orthodox, or Church of the East) and begin learning about that tradition. This will involve some research in addition to the textbooks for the course. By the end of the course, you must write an 8-10 page-paper on that tradition, dealing with the following questions:
What are the historical and geographical origins of this tradition? When and how did Christianity come to this region?
What are the historical reasons for this tradition’s separation from the main body of Christendom?
What are the major theological differences between this tradition and the main body of Christendom?
How has this tradition fared in light of the changing political and religious realities of the region where it is found?
Are there lessons we can learn from this tradition?
This assignment should be 1.5 spaced and printed in Times New Roman 12 point type. Any citations should preferably follow a specific writing style (e.g. Chicago manual, Turabian manual, etc.).
* The paper must be submitted to your professor’s email in either MS-Word or PDF format.Grading
Your assignments are categorized and weighted for grading as follows
Course Assignment % of grade
Reading 10%
Class attendance 30%
Non-Western Tradition Paper 60%
Annotation
Lecture on philosophy (first and second block): The aim of the course is to extend students' knowledge of philosophy by examining a particular theme, school, or philosopher, taking into account the broader systematic and historical context. Evaluation: colloquium.