THEO - Theology

This course invites students to understand and use theological language to address challenges to faith offered by the human struggle to answer questions about identity, community, life and death, meaning, and God.  Christian attempts to answer these questions will be explored in comparison to other worldviews.This course fulfills the General Education Catholic and Lasallian Heritage requirement for Theology 10000-level course.

This course invites students to understand and use theological language to examine Christian faith claims about God, Jesus, Church, sacraments and liturgy, sin, and salvation.  The evolution of Christian thought is treated, and special emphasis is placed on issues affecting twenty-first century Christianity. This course fulfills the General Education Catholic and Lasallian Heritage requirement for Theology 10000-level course.

A study of modern Christian understandings of experiences of God in the world and their relation to the Catholic religious tradition, particularly the tradition's call to love. Non-religious experiences of a spiritual dimension to human existence will also be explored. This course fulfills the General Education Catholic and Lasallian Heritage requirement for Theology 20000-level course.

This course is a survey of the history of Christianity, from the time of its founder and its founding through the early period up to the modern era.

The nature and the function of the Roman Catholic Church are discussed, with a consideration of how the Church functions both in itself and in relation to other religious traditions.

A one-credit online tutorial in the genres of writing in the discipline of Theology providing reinforcement of skills pertaining to forms of writing and research appropriate to theological inquiry, including the Turabian/University of Chicago style. Students complete exercises enabling them to build skills toward a fifteen-page research paper in an upper-level, 3-credit Theology course. Topics and methods deployed to assess a given topic will vary from semester to semester and from student to student.

This course seeks to understand the Jewish scriptures and closely related texts in their historical settings as well as in their subsequent role as canonical texts for Judaism. This course fulfills the General Education Catholic and Lasallian Heritage requirement for Theology 20000-level course.

This course seeks to understand the Christian scriptures and closely related texts in their historical settings as well as in their subsequent role as canonical texts for Christianity. This course fulfills the General Education Catholic and Lasallian Heritage requirement for Theology 20000-level course.

This course offers a scriptural, theological, and liturgical study of the nature of sacraments as foundational channels to life in Christ. Attention will be given to the practice of sacraments within the contemporary Church. This course fulfills the General Education Catholic and Lasallian Heritage requirement for Theology 20000-level course.

Students will explore fundamental aspects of the Christian moral theological tradition with regard to marriage, relationships, and sexuality, assessing this tradition on its own merits and in relation to contemporary cultural contexts and questions. This course fulfills the General Education Catholic and Lasallian Heritage requirement for Theology 20000-level course.

This course will focus on the lived religious experience of women in the three major monotheistic religions of the world—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The course perspectives will look at women as subjects and agents, not merely objects, of religious tradition, and explore persistent questions about women’s shaping of, and shaping by, religious traditions. This course fulfills the General Education Catholic and Lasallian Heritage requirement for Theology 20000-level course.

Students study the sociological, cultural and theological history of the Catholic Church in the United States, from colonial to modern times.

This course introduces students to classical and contemporary theories about religion, as well as methods in the interdisciplinary field of religious studies. Students will engage with approaches to the study of religion through comparative, historical, sociological, anthropological, textual, or other disciplinary lenses in order to explore the intersections of religion with varied aspects of culture.

This course provides an overview of peace studies which examines human conflict and its peaceful transformation. Drawing from Catholic social teaching's imperatives, the emphasis will be on acquiring a justpeace lens in order to do social analysis through service learning and civic engagement. This course fulfills the General Education Catholic and Lasallian Heritage requirement for Theology 20000-level course and the General Education requirement for Civic Engagement.

This course provides an introduction to the themes of the Qur'an and the Bible, their roles within Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, their meanings to Muslims, Jews, and Christians, their relationships to each other, and their relevance to American history and American life. In addition to seeking a variety of insights into religion's capacity to give life meaning, students will hone their critical skills of reading, thinking, and formulating arguments. Study and examination take place with an eye toward practical application in both religious and secular environments. This course fulfills the General Education Catholic and Lasallian Heritage requirement for Theology 20000-level course.

This course examines intersections of religion and popular culture, including the lived religious experiences of everyday people, as well as the expression and reception of religious content through the arts and various forms of media. Special attention will be given to the dialogue between Catholicism/Christianity and culture, although course content may explore other religious traditions. This course fulfills the General Education Catholic and Lasallian Heritage requirement for Theology: 20000-level course.

Students will engage religious and theological questions and biblical themes through the examination of selected genre(s) of imaginative fiction, which may include novels, short stories, and works of film and/or television. This course fulfills the General Education Catholic and Lasallian Heritage requirement for Theology 20000-level course.

This course examines the most influential narratives, including Catholic Christian views of God and of human beings, shaping the meaning and experience of our health, our lives, and our deaths. Religious, medical, and other cultural worldviews will be compared and contrasted as offering differing ways of framing and addressing bioethical questions, including but not limited to: Is life the most sacred value? Is there a right to die? How should communities anticipate and care for the needs of the most vulnerable?

This course will explore justice as understood through the lens of Christian social teachings. Engaged with the community through service learning, the course examines social realities and practical responses to address a variety of concerns affecting today’s marginalized and oppressed persons and communities. This course fulfills the General Education Catholic and Lasallian Heritage requirement for Theology 20000-level course and the General Education requirement for Civic Engagement.

This course considers how Christians are called to act in a world challenged by racism, poverty, consumerism and other complex, modern problems. Particular attention is given to the Roman Catholic perspective as expressed in Scripture, Church doctrine and papal teaching. This course fulfills the General Education Catholic and Lasallian Heritage requirement for Theology 20000-level course.

This course explores the ways in which religious faith and belief are expressed through the arts, including the visual and performing arts. The theatres, museums, concert halls and churches of Chicago and elsewhere may be used as resources for the class. This course is offered both as a traditional semester-long course and may also be offered as an accelerated travel course. This course fulfills the General Education Globalization requirement and Catholic and Lasallian Heritage requirement for Theology 20000-level course.

The fundamental goal of this course is to provide students with the resources to evaluate the Christian, particularly roman Catholic, understanding the relationship between modern western science and faith. The focus is on how theological and scientific methods influence the interpretation of selected contemporary scientific issues. This course fulfills the General Education Catholic and Lasallian Heritage requirement for Theology 20000-level course.

This course thinks about origins in both scientific and religious narratives, focusing on (for example) Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Western scientific tradition. By looking at these various narratives together, we will explore the relationships between the categories of science and religion, as well as the cultural and ethical dimensions of origin stories. This course fulfills the General Education Catholic and Lasallian Heritage requirement for Theology 20000-level course.

This course examines varied understandings of Christology in the person and significance of Jesus of Nazareth. Biblical, classical, and modern perspectives are engaged. This course fulfills the General Education Catholic and Lasallian Heritage requirement for Theology 20000-level course.

During the last three centuries, the size, global distribution and ethnic composition of world Christianity have been transformed. Most Christians now reside in the developing world, and the total number of Christians in Africa, Asia and Latin America increases daily while the Christian communities in so-called 'developed' nations are growing smaller. This course will examine the history of missionary efforts during colonization as well as the indigenous movements and Vatican II reforms that reshaped the understanding and practices of mission and inculturation of Christianity around the world. This course fulfills the General Education Catholic and Lasallian Heritage requirement for Theology 20000-level course and the Globalization requirement.

This course explores what it means to be Muslim in America, and how the practices and understandings of Islam have been shaped in American contexts. It examines the varied experiences of the diverse racial, cultural, and ethnic groups that constitute the Muslim community in America in order to think about race and religion in the US. This course fulfills the General Education Catholic and Lasallian Heritage requirement for Theology 20000-level course.

This course provides a basic introduction to Islam, including topics such as: the origins of Islam, the prophecy of Muhammad, the Qur’an, and the five pillars of Islamic belief and practice. The course focuses on Islam as living tradition and will engage with diverse contemporary practices of Muslim communities around the world. This course fulfills the General Education Globalization requirement, and Catholic and Lasallian Heritage requirement for Theology 20000-level course.

This course focuses on theologies generated from Latin American, African-American, feminist and other perspectives, assessing the challenges and changes that marginalized perspectives bring to the traditional understanding of such theological topics as God, creation, human beings, salvation and the Holy Spirit.

This course takes a comparative, interreligious approach to the study of religion. The nature and dimensions of religion will be examined through a study of the beliefs, texts, experiences, or practices of a variety of religious traditions, as well as interreligious interactions among them. This course will place Christianity in conversation with multiple other religious traditions, such as: Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Native American traditions, or others. This course fulfills the General Education Catholic and Lasallian Heritage requirement for Theology 20000-level course and the Globalization requirement.

Participants in this course will strive to actualize Lasallian mission values through conversion that stirs action for the common good. Students will employ compassionate practices, community engagement and academic exploration to grow social justice. Dynamic examples of faith-in-action and peace-building will prompt students to discover their own voices and vocations through which they may live out Lasallian association.

This course consists of three components: investigation of the Church liturgical year as a basis for communal prayer, the study of principles for communal prayer and prayer leadership, and practical experiences in which students will develop and lead prayer. Students will explore prayer forms and prayer styles in a variety of settings needed for effective pastoral leadership. In addition, students will study and create scriptural reflections which offer spiritual applications appropriate for communal prayer.

This course is foundational for students seeking to minister within the church, in education, and related social or non-profit agencies. The biblical, theological, historical, and spiritual foundations for ministry will be explored in order to root pastoral care within the contemporary world. Students will have the opportunity to apply knowledge and skills through practical activities.

This course is an introduction to the study of fundamental moral theology. Emphasizing Catholic tradition in dialogue with other sources of wisdom, the course reflects on values and methods by which humans develop as moral persons. This course fulfills the General Education Catholic and Lasallian Heritage requirement for Christian Ethics and is a Mission-related course.

Students consider the intellectual history of Christian theology, examining people and their ideas, from the birth of Jesus to the modern era.

A study of research methods and resources, this course teaches students the art of rhetoric as it pertains to research in the discipline of Theology. The topic of the course varies from year to year, focusing on a significant practice or idea, important figure, or significant movement or school of thought in the history of Christian Theology. This class is a prerequisite for the required upper-division course with a research paper component and may be taken prior to or simultaneously with such a course.

This course allows students to focus on particular dimensions of theological study. Some workshops are devoted solely to service-learning. Topics will vary.

These courses are designed through the collaboration of a student and the Theology Department to address the needs of the student in his or her plan of study within the discipline.

This capstone course will offer pastoral ministry students an opportunity to gain experience in a ministerial setting while being supervised onsite and mentored by a faculty member.  Through experience, additional reading, synthesis of prior theological study, and structured reflection, course participants prepare for employment as ministerial professionals. Should be taken in the final year of theological study.

This course provides a capstone seminar experience for students in the Theology and the Religious Studies concentrations to integrate what they have learned in their major studies as well as their general education coursework. Students will consider how their academic training in the study of religion has shaped their development as critical and creative thinkers. They will engage questions that integrate the depth and breadth of their educational experiences in order to articulate a personal and professional trajectory.

This series of courses provides the opportunity for students to explore various topics and subfields of theology and religious studies. Each course fulfills upper-level major and minor distribution requirements in one or more of the following areas--History, Ecclesiology, Christology, Spirituality, Religion and Culture, Scripture, Social Justice, and/or Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue--as designated by the specific course description.

This course provides a framework for responding to the needs of the disadvantaged members of society, especially the elderly, the hungry, the homeless and the institutionalized. Students provide practical action plans of service learning based on Scripture, existing or possible social or ministerial services, and the support of others similarly interested. The course includes a required service learning component.

This capstone provides an integrative experience for the Peace Studies Minor offering students an opportunity to synthesize what they have learned in both course and field work. Students review and evaluate theory, models of practice, research, and experience to develop their understanding of the ways peacebuilding and conflict-transformation are engaged personally, spiritually, locally, regionally, and globally. The course requires a project (e.g., the completion of an e-portfolio, major paper, and/or public presentation) integrating peace and justice theory and praxis with a student’s academic major and future career aspirations. THEO 45000 should be taken in the final semester of the minor.

This course is designed to meet the needs of Theology majors wishing to study an advanced topic not found in the curriculum.