Subjects

Modules and Specialisations

MPHT535 AFRICAN SPIRITUALITY

This module aims:

• To familiarise students with the core elements of African spirituality;
• To help them recognise the distinctive contribution of African spirituality in its various historical contexts;
• To help students to see African spirituality in relationship to other world spiritualities;
• To foster an appreciation for the dimensions of African spirituality in the contemporary global context.
   

The content includes:

• Introduction: Setting the scene for African spirituality and its relevance to society;
• The core elements of African spirituality:
• Closeness and transcendence,
• God, ancestors and the unborn, people and land,
• Ubuntu,
  - African spirituality in its historical context:
• Pre-and post-colonial tradition; slavery, colonialism, imperialism and Apartheid,
• Liberation,
• Inculturation,
• African spirituality in relation to other world spiritualities:
• The relationship between primal religions or primal spiritualities,
• Primal spiritualities of Africa, Asia, America, Australia, Europe,
• African spirituality in contemporary context:
• Transcendental methods and transdisciplinarity,
• Appreciation, appropriation and critique,
• Indigenous and mainline spiritualities.

MPHT544 AFRICAN THEOLOGY

African Theology: its origin and its relevance for Christology, ecclesiology and ethics. This module is intended to initiate students into African Theology by giving a short history of its origin. This will enable participants to understand better the problem of an African Christology which is asking and answering the question: “Who do you say I am?” To answer this question, African theologians are using different elements of their traditions (ancestorship, healing, initiation concept, etc). On the other hand, the Christology is necessarily linked to ecclesiology. Since the African Synod of 1994, theologians are developing a genuine African ecclesiology which takes as a starting point the African understanding of family. Both Christology and ecclesiology have unavoidably important consequences for an ethic, which takes into consideration African anthropology.

The content includes:

• The birth of African theology:
  • The consciousness: Negritude movement,
  • The impulse of Placide Tempels,
  • African theologians and the discussion on the specificity of an African theology.
• African Christology:
  • The problem: the question of status,
  • Diversity of Christological titles,
  • Ancestral Christology and its relevance.
  • African ecclesiology:
    • The Church as a family, African model of family, the Church as African and Christian family,
    • Some practical consequences: new model of clergy and lay people, new model of communication in the Church family.
• African concept of ethics:
  • The foundation of African ethics,
  • The norms’ elaboration and articulation,
  • Practical consequences.

MPHT530 BIBLICAL SPIRITUALITY

SECTION A: Old Testament Spirituality

In this section, a brief overview will be given of the very wide area of Old Testament spirituality, and then one or two areas will be focused upon.

The content includes:

• Religions and the Hebrew Bible
  Different religions’ approaches to the Hebrew Bible: Jewish, Muslim, other religious and non-religious approaches.
  • Christian:- Different views, and Problems and possibilities.
    Different religions approached in the Hebrew Bible.
  • Appropriation (for example, in wisdom literature and the Psalms),
  • Accommodation (e.g the Yahwist),
  • Separation (for example, aspects within the Deuteronomistic history),
  • Mission (for example, Jonah).
• Spirituality and the Hebrew Bible.
  • Spirituality in the Hebrew Bible.
  • Different types of spirituality:
    • Historical orientations,
    • Wisdom orientations,
    • Prophetic orientations,
    • Apocalyptic orientations.
  • Different expressions of spirituality. Examples:
    • Living with God (Patriarchs, Ruth, Ecclesiastes),
    • Conflict and God (taking of the land, Job, violent images of God),
    • Laws, living and God (Decalogues, Holiness code, Proverbs),
    • Prayer to God (different examples).
  • Spirituality and the Psalms.
  • Tradition history: Old Testament and New.
  • Spirituality from the (Hebrew) Bible:
    • Nurturing, Self-serving/narcissistic, Critical, Personal and/or socio-political?, Bible scholarship and faith.

SECTION B: New Testament Spirituality

The content includes:

• What is Scripture?
• Scripture in diverse traditions,
• Mediaeval biblical interpretation,
• New Testament and postmodernism,
• Mystical interpretation of New Testament,
• New Testament spirituality.
• Pauline spirituality
  Paul the man; Damascus; Pauline corpus; “In-Christ”; Pauline mysticism;
• Johannine Spirituality:
  Background to John’s gospel; gnosticism; characteristics of Johannine mysticism;
• Use of New Testament in the writing of selected mystics: Meister Eckhart (c1230-c1327); Elizabeth of the Trinity (1880-1906).

MPHT541 CHRISTOLOGY

This module will analyse the problematic of faith and history with reference to the three so-called quests for the historical Jesus. A critical appreciation of Jesus of Nazareth requires an examination of the Christologies of the New Testament, and thereafter the Christological controversies, councils and the creeds of the second to eighth centuries. This biblical and foundational basis will provide the tools for evaluating contemporary trends in Christology such as the consciousness of Christ and African, feminist and liberation Christologies.

The content includes:

• Jesus of History and Christ of Faith: the three quests;
• Resurrection of Jesus / Cosmic Christ;
• Christology of the New Testament;
• Alexandrian and Antiochene Christologies;
• Councils: Nicaea, Ephesus, Chalcedon, Constantinople(s);
• Contemporary Christologies, for example, African, feminist, liberation and spirit;
• Christ and Inter-faith Dialogue;
• Jesus as symbol;
• Method "from above" and "from below" as applicable to current trends in Christology.
• Consciousness of Christ.

MPHT531 CHRISTIAN SPIRITUAL TRADITION

This module will analyse the:

• Influence of Greek philosophy,
• Early Christianity,
• Christian monasticism,
• Urban spiritual movements: mendicancy and scholasticism,
• Urban spirituality: women, mystics, lay piety,
• Renaissance humanism and early reformers,
• Reformation and counter-reformation,
• Modern movements in spirituality: Jansenism, Pietism, Anglicanism,
• Puritans, Quakers, Methodists,
• Pentecostal, Ecumenical Spiritualities, Orthodox.

MPHT542 CHURCH AND SACRAMENTS

This module critically examines the reality and place of church and sacraments in Christian faith life. It uses as starting point the Catholic Church’s self-understanding and her sacramental system from which to question the genesis, fundamental characteristic, and necessity of these two realities in Christian faith life.

The content includes:

• Church:
  • Genesis of the concept of church,
  • Fundamental marks of church: one, holy, catholic, apostolic,
  • Models of church,
  • Church and the churches: Making sense of church in an ecumenical world,
  • Church and ecclesiologies: Pentecostal, Anglican, African, liberation, and feminist ecclesiologies,
  • Constructing an ecclesiology for today’s local church.
• Sacraments:
  • Signs, symbols and sacraments: Consequences of the Incarnation;
  • Baptism and Eucharist from the point of view of different Christian traditions;
  • Christian ministry and the Catholic Sacrament of Orders: a critical examination.

MPHT505 CHURCH HISTORY

Firstly, the module aims to equip the student with skills to engage, interrogate and interpret the history of the Church in sophisticated, critical and objective ways. Learning theories of historiography are a critical stepping stone towards such a venture. Secondly, the student will be required to apply historiographic theory to historical data through the intensive study of historical epochs and themes prescribed for the course. At the end of the module, the student should be able to articulate such issues as the sources upon which the various stories of faith are based, the faith perspectives from which they are told, and the ideological and/or epistemological perspectives from which they are written by historians, purpose and meaning in Church history.The content includes:

Section 1: Historiography and theory of history:

• Sectarian historiography,
• Imperialist Christian historiography,
• Liberal Christian historiography,
• Marxist historiography,
• Colonial historiography,
• Missionary historiography,
• Post-colonial historiography.

Section 2: Historical periods in Church History:

• The cycles approach to Church history,
• Patristic age: The memory of early Christians,
• Late Middle age: The humanists and Church history,
• Modern age: Enlightenment, modernity and Church history.

Section 3: Christian theologians and the crafting of Church history:

• Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History),
• Augustine of Hippo (City of God),
• J Foxe (Book of the Martyrs),
• Adrian Hastings (The Church in Africa 1450-1950).

MPHT532 DYNAMICS OF SPIRITUALITY

The aim of this module is firstly to present an overview of spirituality as a lived experience, with particular reference to Christian spirituality; and secondly, to introduce the academic study of spirituality within a post-modern context.

The content includes:

• Definition of spirituality in general and Christian spirituality in particular,
• Spirituality and post-modernism,
• Spirituality and theology,
• Spirituality and religion,
• Secular spirituality,
• Types of spirituality,
• Spirituality and practice,
• Spirituality and the church,
• Academic methodology in the study of spirituality,
• Cross-cultural study of spirituality.

MPHT540 ECUMENISM AND INTER-FAITH DIALOGUE

1. Ecumenism

The aim of this course is to examine the basis for ecumenism, including the need for a united response to persistent heresies, secularism and the growth in non-Christian religions.

• A brief history of Christian division with a focus on the doctrinal reasons for the various schisms,
• The biblical, theological and liturgical basis of ecumenism, and the implications of ecumenism for theology and doctrine,
• Development, principles and instruments of the ecumenical movement,
• Models of unity: broad church groupings to fight social and racial injustice, for example, in the anti-apartheid struggle; the Church of South India, the United Church of Canada, as well as joint communion between denominations,
• Ecumenism in South Africa.
  • Inter-faith dialogue
  • It is no longer possible for Christianity to assert its claim to be the “true” religion. The modern trend is to engage in dialogue with other faiths on the basis of equals, and to attempt to find common ground.

• An evaluation of the major philosophical and theological issues which inter-faith dialogue raises for Christianity,
• The main contours of the history of Christian relations with Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and African traditional religions,
• The problems and possibilities emerging from inter-faith dialogue.

MPHT538 GENERAL SURVEY OF THEOLOGY

The module aims to provide an overview of Catholic theology, identifying some of the key themes; its methods and sources, and some personalities who have shaped its development. The module has four components:

• Systematic theology:
  • Theology as faith seeking understanding,
  • The distinctiveness of the Catholic world view,
  • Sources and resources for "doing" theology,
  • Revelation,
  • Justification and sanctification,
  • Catholic ecclesiology with special reference to Lumen Gentium,
  • Second Vatican Council.
• Moral theology:
  • The uniqueness of Christian morality based on the fundamental law of love,
  • A short history of moral theology, especially leading up to and after Vatican II,
  • The sources of moral theology: Scripture, faith, reason and magisterium,
  • Objective moral reality and the natural law,
  • Subjective morality: the conscience and its relationship to authority.
• African theology:
  • A short history of African theology,
  • Key themes- Christology, ecclesiology, ethics,
• Church History:
  • A brief survey of the five main periods of church history: early, medieval, reformation, modern and contemporary.

MPHT515 HISTORY, THEOLOGY AND PRINCIPLES OF CANON LAW

This module aims to deal with the necessity of law in the Church, the historical development of canon law, the general norms of the Code in relation to the interpretation and application of the laws of the Church.

The contents include:

• The theology and the history of canon law,
• Methodology,
• General norms: (Book I: cc 1-203),
• Recourse against administrative decrees: (Book VII: cc 1732-1739).