| Tutor |
Chris Westrate |
| Target Students |
high schoolers |
| Instruction Time |
two 90-minute tutorials per week |
| Recommended Companion Tutorials |
Latin I or II |
Church History is an overview course which covers about five hundred years of the Church’s history per academic quarter. 2000 years of history necessitates a very general look at the various personalities and movements which were influential in the Church’s development. Special stress will therefore be placed on defining figures and significant trends. Some of these are well known (e.g.: Augustine of Hippo, The Council of Chalcedon [which articulated the theology of the two natures of Christ], and Martin Luther). Some will be brand new for students (e.g.: Origen and Cyril of Alexandria, Studite monasticism, and Anselm of Canterbury). The tutor will seek to explore a broad view vision of the development of Christian doctrine, worship, church structure, and the manifold divisions within Christendom, while seeking to highlight the unity of the Christian vision which is manifested in diversity through time and space.
The course will be a Tuesday/Thursday offering, meeting both days for an hour and half. The reading load will draw predominantly on primary sources (in English translations) and will amount to about half the reading load for one of my English classes. The writing load will be significantly less than in English classes, probably a number of one page responses and a few significant short essays. As an elective, we want this course to be more approachable while at the same time highly informative. Though an elective, this class certainly constitutes a year of high school level history and will bring in the general movement of European history as a backdrop.
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