Christianities inAntiquity(to600CE)

Instructor: Eric C. Smith, PhD

Christianities in Antiquity

This is a course about the first 600 years of the tradition that has come to be known as “Christianity.” As such, we will move through time, from the first century establishment of Christian communities across the Mediterranean basin to the triumph of the imperial church of late antiquity. This course will consider how Christianity arose from an obscure corner of the Roman Empire to become its dominant religious force, and how a movement started by a peasant executed by that Empire came to be the default operating system of Roman political power.

This is also, though, a course about “Christianities,” which signifies something very different than “Christianity.” Christianities points to the fact that there was never a single Church, and that Christianity was always expressed in a multiplicity of ways across time and space. Christianities is a way of saying that diversity was not a fall or a devolution of the church; diversity was always the condition of Christianity, and from the beginning a variety of ways of being Christian held sway. The 2^nd and 3^rd century Christian thinker and writer Tertullian characterized heresy as a falling-away from an original ideal, but this is an argument for what should have been rather than a recounting of history. The religion founded on the life and teachings of Jesus was always and everywhere contested, with no single interpretation ever holding sway over everything. The climax of this course is with the great church councils of the 4th century and the orthodox faith articulated at the Council of Nicaea under the watchful eye of the emperor Constantine. But Nicaea was an attempt to instill order and unity, not to recognize order and unity where it already existed. 

Christianities in Antiquity, then, is a story of multiplicity, of the struggle of isolated groups of Jesus-followers, of the rise of an imperial ideology, of attempts at unity, of the workings of power and piety, and ultimately of the creation of one of the most potent cultural forces the world has known. 

Course Goals

1) To gain knowledge of the cultural, religious, and political history of the Hellenistic-Roman and Jewish worlds out of which the Christian movement emerged during the first century CE;

2) To develop basic theological fluency with early Christian concepts of ecclesiology and the rise of the monarchical episcopacy, Christology, revelation, pedagogy, and philosophy;

3) To appreciate the unity and diversity within early Christianities, both "orthodox" and heterodox;

4) To understand the role of gender and sexuality in the context of the early Christian movement;

5) To recognize the impact of Constantine the Great, the Council of Nicaea and the Christological controversies on the subsequent development of Christian thought;

6) To engage in the thought of St. Augustine and understand the place he holds theologically, philosophically, and pedagogically in the history of Christian thought. 

Guiding Values

My primary values in this course are:

• To bring students into encounter with ancient Christian ideas, texts, objects, artifacts, and spaces

• To provide contexts for those encounters, and for understanding ancient Christianities

• To foster and provoke conversation about ancient Christianities

Explicitly not a part of my primary values are things like knowing dates and names, memorizing the contents of councils, and enforcing a view of Christianity from the perspective of orthodoxy (the victors). These things can be important, particularly depending on students' faith tradition(s) (if any), but my primary values in this course are around encounter with the ancient world and conversation about that encounter. 

How the Course Will Work

In an effort to provide venues for encounters with the ancient and to regularly provoke conversation about them, the course is structured with a regular weekly rhythm. This rhythm holds sway for most weeks, with the exception of weeks 5 and 6 (Gathering Days). It looks like this:

Monday: By Monday of each week, I will post a video outlining the week's work. Called "notes for reading," these are not lectures, but rather a guide for the theme of the week and the material we will be encountering. 

Tuesday: By midnight (mountain time), read the primary text(s) and make at least two annotations using hypothes.is. Your annotations can either be original, or they can be responses to someone else's. These can be a sentence or two long, and they don't need to be blindingly brilliant--just observations or questions about the primary source. They can, of course, be blindingly brilliant if you prefer them to be. 

Wednesday: By midnight (mountain time), read the secondary text(s) and comment in the discussion forum for that day. You can make an original post or join the conversation in someone else's post. These should be between a few sentences and a paragraph or so--just enough to convey an observation or question, and enough to signal to your classmates what was important to you about the text(s). 

Thursday: By midnight (mountain time), look at the image in the discussion forum for that day. Make a comment (original or reply) in the same manner as you did on the Wednesday post. 

Friday: By midnight (mountain time), look at the artifact or place in the discussion forum for that day. Make a comment (original or reply) in the same manner as you did on the Wednesday and Thursday posts. 

This looks like a lot of posting and work, and it is. But it is meant to be iterative, revisiting the same material multiple times in different forms, and building a conversation from the beginning of the week until the end. You can choose to do all the posts at the beginning of the week if you like, or you can do them as they come up. The latter is preferred, as it allows you to respond to others and hear them respond to you, but if your life is structured so that doing all the posts at the beginning of the week works best, that option is open to you. 

These assignments are all low-stakes, in the parlance of pedagogy. That means that they do not carry very much weight on their own. Each of them is worth one point and is worth 1% of your final grade, and you get full credit for doing the assignment. The points add up to 36, or a little over one third of your grade. The grading is binary: do it and get a point, or don't, and don't get a point. If your post is too thin and I'd like for you to say more next time, I will tell you so, but you will still get full credit for doing the assignment. Likewise, if you write a dissertation for a post, I will ask you to write less next time. But you won't get extra credit for all your writing. My value here is around a single solid observation, or maybe two, to add to the conversation the class is having. 

Evaluation

I consider evaluation a necessary evil. I do not like to do it; it feels (to me) like a rupture in my relationship with you as a student, and a violation of the way we have been traveling together through the course. I am, however, required to submit grades at the end of the quarter, and these grades can be important for a number of reasons (as a record of your performance when applying for further study, to be considered by various ordaining bodies, etc.). In attempt to balance these competing realities, evaluation will take place in the following two ways:

1) The weekly posts, worth 1 point each, as outlined above

2) Two synthesizing projects, one at the midterm and one at the end of the quarter, worth 32% of your grade each

These synthesizing projects are something between essays and exams. They will cover the themes we've encountered in class, but using material we haven't encountered yet, to see how well you've learned to interpret history and make sense of encounters with the past. As part of these assignments, you'll be asked to assess yourself, based on your understanding of the work you've done and the success with which you've engaged the assignment. My evaluation, then, will be to see whether your own assessment is a fair one, and whether your understanding of your work matches mine. If you think you did C work, but I think you did B work, that is important information for us to consider as we move forward. 

Final grades for these synthesizing projects are assigned by me, using your self-assessment as a starting point. 

Plagiarism (defined as passing off someone else's work as your own without proper attribution) will automatically result in failure of the assignment (0 out of 32 points) and reporting to the Dean's Office. Please refer to the Masters Student Handbook for more information on plagiarism, or see this video prepared by Dr. Elizabeth Coody of the Iliff Writing Lab. 

Policies and Services

Degree Learning Goals: Please take some time to look over the Professional Degree Learning Goals (MDiv, MASJE, MAPSC) and the Academic Degree Learning Goals (MTS, MA).

Incompletes:  Incompletes are allowed under rare circumstances and in consultation with the Dean. See the Master's Student Handbook for Policies and Procedures.

Pass/Fail:  Students wishing to take the class pass/fail should declare so by the end of the first week of class.

Accommodations:  Iliff engages in a collaborative effort with students with disabilities to reasonably accommodate student needs. Students are encouraged to contact their assigned advisor to initiate the process of requesting accommodations.  The advising center can be contacted at advising@iliff.edu or by phone at 303-765-1146. 

Inclusive Language:  It is expected that all course participants will use inclusive language in speaking and writing, and will use terms that do not create barriers to classroom community. 

The required texts for this class are:

St. Augustine. City of God . London: Penguin Books, 2003. (older editions are acceptable, and are usually available very inexpensively)

Lynch, Joseph H. Early Christianity: A Brief History . New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Pohlsander, Hans A. The Emperor Constantine . Second Edition. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Tabbernee, William, ed. Early Christianity in Contexts: An Exploration across Culture and Continents . Grand Rapids: Baker, 2014.

Course Overview

Course Objectives

Degree Learning Goals: Please take some time to look over the Professional Degree Learning Goals (MDiv, MASC, MAPSC) and the Academic Degree Learning Goals (MTS, MA).

Incompletes:  If incompletes are allowed in this course, see the Master's Student Handbook for Policies and Procedures.

Pass/Fail:  Masters students wishing to take the class pass/fail should discuss this with the instructor by the second class session.

Academic Integrity and Community Covenant:  All students are expected to abide by Iliff’s statement on Academic Integrity, as published in the Masters Student Handbook, or the Joint PhD Statement on Academic Honesty, as published in the Joint PhD Student Handbook, as appropriate.  All participants in this class are expected to be familiar with Iliff’s Community Covenant.

Accommodations:  Iliff engages in a collaborative effort with students with disabilities to reasonably accommodate student needs.   Students are encouraged to contact their assigned advisor to initiate the process of requesting accommodations.  The advising center can be contacted at advising@iliff.edu or by phone at 303-765-1146. 

Writing Lab:  Grammar and organization are important for all written assignments.  Additional help is available from the Iliff Writing Lab, which is available for students of any level who need help beginning an assignment, organizing thoughts, or reviewing a final draft. 

Inclusive Language:  It is expected that all course participants will use inclusive language in speaking and writing, and will use terms that do not create barriers to classroom community.