Eschatology is defined as the study of the last things. Traditionally, these “last things” have been defined as death, judgement, heaven, and hell; in truth, though, they include all that we imagine the “end” of our life and of history to be. In the Christian church, our eschatological expectation is our blessed hope: the resurrection …
View course details “Not Yet in the Now: Waiting for the Apocalypse”
The Renovaré Institute for Christian Spiritual Formation is a two-year online and in-person school designed to plunge you into that life. Over the course of two years, students are guided in daily online studies, practice a variety of spiritual disciplines, develop a spiritual community with a small group of co-learners, and experience four week-long learning …
View course details “Renovaré Institutes”
In this course we’ll explore the church fathers’ understanding of the Trinity and how and why they thought this model of God represented the biblical teaching of God faithfully and beautifully. Students will learn to read the Bible through patristic eyes and discern with the church fathers the problems presented by the relational complexity in …
View course details “The Trinity and the Church Fathers”
Learn to see the Gospels and Acts in a new light. Engage with the full narrative scope of these books from beginning to end, exploring the ways in which the biblical authors told the stories of Jesus and the early church. Discover their narrative contours through an examination of literary elements such as plotting, characterization, …
View course details “A Narrative Approach to the Gospels and Acts”
No portion of Scripture has been more thoroughly studied, preached upon, or written about than the Sermon on the Mount. This famous and influential passage from the Gospel of Matthew has a bearing on many fundamental questions of Christian life: What is the nature of God’s kingdom? What does godliness look like? What ethical considerations …
View course details “The Sermon on the Mount”
Our malnourished capacity for empathy flows out of an equally malnourished imagination. To truly love and welcome others, we need to strengthen our imagination, learning to see our neighbours as God sees them. To do this, we need stories–stories that illuminate and convict, take us beyond ourselves, and enable us to see the beauty and …
View course details “The Arts, Empathy, and Spiritual Formation”
Immerse yourself in two classics of the Christian imagination: Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1678). Written just over a decade apart, these texts have profoundly shaped the modern literary and theological imagination–especially our concepts of God, Satan, sin, the fall, human nature, and paradise. Join us as we explore the artistry and …
View course details “The Puritan Literary Imagination”
Explore tools for building a theological framework for one of the most rapidly developing ethical challenges of our day: data collection and surveillance. Smartphones are everywhere, a valuable tool with thousands of uses in everyday life. But smartphones, along with many other daily-use devices, also perform regular surveillance. What happens to the data they handle? …
View course details “Smartphones, Surveillance, and Human Flourishing”
Marketplace theology is good for the soul, the body, and the workplace. But what is it? Join us as we build on the Puritan William Perkins’s definition of theology–the science of living blessedly forever–to explore a Christian vision of marketplace theology: working blessedly forever. Reflect scripturally and theologically on practical questions: Why work–remunerated or not? …
View course details “Working Blessedly: The Shape of Marketplace Theology”
Explore the historical development of Chinese Christian thought in mainland China and its growth in Asia and beyond. Examine existential debates about whether it is possible to be both Christian and Chinese, and explore theological queries related to distinctive understandings of Christ, the church, and the church’s mission in the world. Finally, consider how a …
View course details “Chinese Christian Thought”
