Spiritual Biographies - Seminars

A few years back in a course called Shapers of the Roman Catholic Tradition, RS 383. The primary text was John R. Tyson's Invitation to Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Anthology. This is a great text as it spans from Ignatius of Antioch (D.117) to many authors still around today including Desmond Mpilo Tuto, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Richard Foster and more. The book has a concise biography of the author then extensive quotations from source material for that author. As such this book is a great introduction to numerous Christian thinkers spanning church history.

This was a very small class 7 or 8 students meeting in the board room. Each week one student had to present and the other students had to be prepared to interact. Each student had to prpepare five lessons to lead. Over the next five days I will post my seminar notes. My Seminars were:

A Holy Family: A Study of Macrina the Younger and her brothers Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa
Julian of Norwich
Ignatius of Layola
Underhill & Bonhoeffer
Ruether & Chung

The way the course worked is the at the readings were assigned for each week and each student signed up for the weeks they would present. We went around the room picking dates and thus topics. The days not selected for student presentations, Dr. Cristina Vanin presented. This was one of the most demanding courses I took and yet also one of the most enjoyable.

(These Seminars were written for RS 383 Shapers of the Roman Catholic Tradition in the winter of 2003.)