Divinity and Religious Studies

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr Martin Mills

Pre-requisites

Admission to a level 5 programme

Co-requisites

None

Notes

Overview

Introduction to key fieldwork methods and basic research design: participant observation, interview skills, fieldnotes and basic research design.

Structure

One meeting per week (2 hours).

Assessment

Coursework 100% (course workbook and in-course exercises).

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr Martin Mills.

Pre-requisites

Available to level 5 students only

Co-requisites

None

Notes

Overview

An introduction to advanced level theory on the anthropology and sociology of religion.

Structure

To be announced.

Assessment

Assessment will be by 100% coursework

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr Thomas Bokedal

Pre-requisites

2 years Greek (normally).

Co-requisites

none

Notes

Overview

This course gives an overview of attempts, from the nineteenth century to the present, to synthesize the theology of the New Testament. Theologians such as Wrede, Schlatter and Bultmann will be investigated, in addition to issues such as the canon and theological consistency of the New Testament.

Structure

2 hrs per week

Assessment

Exam 40% and continuous assessment 60%

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Prof. Joachim Schaper.

Pre-requisites

2 years Greek, 1 year Hebrew

Notes

Overview

This course addresses the modes of scriptural interpretation deployed by NT authors in their use of the texts as witness to Christ. The course will also offer some comparative examples of how Jewish authors contemporaneous with the NT also interpreted Scripture.

Structure

2 hrs per week

Assessment

Exam 40% Continuous assessment course work 60%

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr Donald Wood

Pre-requisites

None

Co-requisites

None

Notes

Overview

This course examines historically, from the Patristic period to the present, the ways in which the Bible has been employed in theological discourse.

Structure

2 hrs per week

Assessment

Exam 40% ; Course work 60%

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr Francesca Aran Murphy

Pre-requisites

None

Co-requisites

None

Notes

Overview

This course considers Catholic social and political thought in relation to the history of the Church in the modern world. We begin with the French revolution, and Catholic reactions to it. We consider the 19th Century Church's hostility to social modernism. We look at the debates occasioned by papal power and the Italian risorgiomento. We discuss the attitude to church and state, and to 'liberty and liberalism' in the 19th century papal encyclicals such as Mirari Vos, Rerum Novarum, Immortale Dei and Libertas. We consider war-time Thomist defences of democracy and liberalism, such as those of Jacques Maratain and Yves Simon. We discuss the involvement of Catholics in religious and racial anti-Semitism, and debate Catholic responsibility for the holocaust. We study the social and political documents of the second Vatican Council (1962-1965). We look at socialist and conservative 'liberation theology', comparing Gutierrez and Michael Novak.

Structure

Assessment

One essay - 40%
One exam - 60%

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr Francesca Aran Murphy

Pre-requisites

None

Co-requisites

None

Notes

Overview

The aim of the course is to provide an overview of Catholic theological, philosophical and cultural thought in the era between Vatican I and Vatican II. The four main threads of the course are 'Faith and Reason', 'The Nature of the Church', 'Aesthetics', and 'Christian Humanism.' The course considers the flowering of lay Thomism under the influence of Aeterni Patris. We will study the idea of the Church in Vatican I, Hans Urs von Balthasar and in the ecumenical theology of Yves Congar. We consider the 'Catholic Imagination' in such writers as Chesterton, Maritain and Flannery O'Connor. The course concludes by considering the interaction of faith and reason in the Christocentric anthropology of Henri de Lubac and John Paul II.

Structure

Assessment

One Essay - 40%
One Exam - 60%

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

TBC

Pre-requisites

None

Co-requisites

None

Notes

Overview

This course examines both the diversity of Catholic theology and practice and the attempts to introduce a measure of centralisation and uniformity to Catholicism between the mid-15th and late 17th Centuries. Seminar topics will be taken from among the following:
*Late Medieval renewal movements
*Biblical humanism and Catholic evangelicalism
*Parish life and its renewal
*Catholic apologetic in the Reformation period
*Parish life and its renewal
*Catholic education
The religious orders and their renewal
*Inquisition and discipline
*The Council of Trent
*Developments in post-Tridentine theology
*Catholicism in post-Reformation Scotland
*Developments in post-Tridentine art, music and spirituality

Structure

Assessment

One Seminar Presentation: 20%
One Book Review: 30%
One Essay: 50%

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

TBC

Pre-requisites

Two years biblical Greek

Co-requisites

None

Notes

Overview

The course is designed to be flexible, and will be tailored to the needs and linguistic abilities of individual students. The course will be divided into three parts which reflect the three main course aims, and texts will be selected accordingly. A typical programme might include the following material:
(1) Genesis 1-3 LXX; Text, Interpretation and Influence;
(2) Matthew 1-2 and 5, with special reference to Use of the Old Testament;
(3) Select 'Titles' for Jesus from John's Gospel (Chs 1, 4, 6, 11, 20), in their Jewish and Early Christian Context.
In studying such material, the main emphasis will be on the development of analytical skills, and not just on the acquisition of further knowledge.

Structure

One two hour seminar per week.

Assessment

100% Continuous Assessment, based on a piece of written work for each of the three main parts of the course.

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr Brian Brock

Pre-requisites

Only available to Postgraduate students level 5

Co-requisites

None

Notes

Overview

This course in Christian ethics presents a survey of Christian ethical thinking through engagement with the biblical book of Genesis and the Christian tradition of its interpretation. These will include the ethics of marriage and procreation, parenthood, disability, politics, government and political violence, the environment, and non-human life.

Structure

1 two hour session per week

Assessment

1 two hour written examination (60%); continuous assessment: 1 class presentation and 1 x 5,000 word essay (40%)

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr Chrisopher Brittain

Pre-requisites

Only available to students in Year 5 programme

Co-requisites

None

Notes

Overview

The course will comprise four sections:
Old Testament
New Testament
Practical Theology
Christian Ethics

Each of these disciplines/sections will offer a vital and unique perspective on the Bible in ministry. Taken together they present a full, multidisciplinary approach which should be both interesting and educationally vital.

Structure

1 2hr seminar per week

Assessment

1 x 2hr examination and 40% continuous assessment (oral presentation [10%] and 1 3,000 word essay [30%])

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Prof John Swinton

Pre-requisites

Available to level 5 students in appropriate degree programmes

Co-requisites

none

Notes

Overview

This course offers vital practical theological insights and perspectives on the practice of pastoral care and counselling. The course provides skills for practising and thinking critically and theologically about pastoral care. Issues explored include: the theology and spirituality of care and counselling, forgiveness and lament as modes of pastoral care, disability, caring for families, communities and marginalised people. The course is suitable as an introduction to advanced studies in pastoral care and as a rigorous foundation for further research.

Structure

1 2hr seminar per week

Assessment

The course will be assessed by a 2hr examination and 40% continuing assessment.

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer

Pre-requisites

None

Co-requisites

None

Notes

Overview

The class hours comprise a variety of integrated learning activities and exercises including grammar practice, reading comprehension, vocabulary building, productive writing, translation and listening comprehension.

Structure

2 one hour classes per week (times to be arranged)

Assessment

Examination (50%) and continuous assessment (50%). The continuous assessment includes homework assignment (10%), class participation (10%), quizzes (20%) and an oral presentation (10%)

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

TBC

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 5

Co-requisites

None

Notes

Overview

This course examines the radical changes, as well as the continuities in Scottish religious life and thought between c1450 and the revolutions of the 17th century. Students will be introduced to a range of primary sources relating to the following topics: Scottish religious life and thought on the eve of the Reformation, Christian Humanism in Scotland, martyrdom and the privy kirks, poetry and drama in the service of reform, Catholic reformers and controversialists, the Reformed confessions of faith, fasting and communion seasons, discipline and repentance, recusancy and exile, Episcopacy and Presbyterianism, theologies of resistance and obedience, the National Covenant and the Covenanting revolution, the 'Sectaries' (e.g. Society of Friends).

Structure

One two-hour seminar per week

Assessment

Continuous assessment 100%: one essay/project (60%), a literature review (20%) and a seminar preesentation (20%)

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Prof. John Webster

Pre-requisites

N/A

Co-requisites

None

Notes

Overview

Key topics in systematic theology, including: the methods, norms and sources of Christian doctrine; the doctrine of the Trinity; creation, nature, history and providence; the human creature; covenant and election; sin; the person and work of Christ; the Christian life; eschatology.

Structure

One two hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1 three hour written examination (50%) and one 5,000 word paper (50%).

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr Ehrenschwendtner

Pre-requisites

Abailable to level 5 students

Co-requisites

None

Notes

Overview

‘St Francis called himself and his followers Friars Minor. It was a new name, to signify, he once said, a company of people differing in humility and in poverty from all who had gone before, and content to possess Christ alone.’
(Rosalind B Brooke, The Coming of the Friars, 1975, p. 2)

The aim of the course is to equip students with a thorough understanding of the nature of the Franciscan movement and its reverberations in European religious lifestyle, spirituality, theology, literature and art. It also will familiarise students with appropriate historical sources and methodologies and will provide students with an insight into religious and theological developments during the medieval period.

Structure

1 x 2 hour seminar per week

Assessment

100% continuous assessment consisting of a major essay (60%), a presentation (10%) and a book review (30%)

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr Joachim Schaper

Pre-requisites

Available only to students on Postgraduate level 5

Co-requisites

None

Notes

Overview

Key topics in Jewish history in the Persian, Hellenistic, Roman, Mediaeval and modern periods.
Selected aspects of Jewish culture through the ages, concentrating on religion and ritual.

Structure

1 one hour lecture and 1 one hour seminar per week.

Assessment

Written examination (60%) and continuous assessment (40%: 10% for oral presentation and 30% for a 2,000 word paper developed from that presentation).

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer

Pre-requisites

none

Co-requisites

none

Notes

Overview

This course provides a foundation of knowledge in the areas of rabbinics and Jewish philosophy and explores the interaction
between the two. It centres on the origins of rabbinic literature and its further development (with a special accent on the
mediaeval period) and of Jewish philosophy, with a special accent on Hellenism (especially Philo) and on the twentieth century.

Structure

1 x 2 hour lecture

Assessment

Examination (60%) and continuous assessment (40%) consisting of a presentation (10%) and a short paper of 2000 words (30%).

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr Francesca Murphy

Pre-requisites

N/A

Notes

Overview

Students will study Augustine's "De Trinitate", Anselm "On the Trinity", the Trinitarian treatise in Thomas Aquinas' "Summa Theologiae" (and the Trinitarian sections of his other writings), Calvin's "Institutes", Hegel's "Phenomenology of the Spirit", Karl Barth's "Church Dogmatics I.1" and sections from the "Theo-Drama" of Hans Urs von Balthasar. These texts will be informed by discussion of the history and development of the doctrine of the Trinity.

Structure

One two hour seminar per week.

Assessment

Examination (50%); continuous assessment (50%, including a reseatch paper of 6,000 words (40%) and seminar presentation and paper (10%).

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr Philip Ziegler

Pre-requisites

N/A

Notes

Overview

Key topics in the development of modern theology in the West from the Enlightenment to the end of the 20th Century. Themes will include doctrines of God, revelation, anthropology, salvation, history, the idea of 'religion', the nature of the Christian Scriptures and their interpretation, theological method and the nature of Christian doctrine. The work of the smeinar will centre on critical examination of the primary and 'agenda setting' texts by leading Protestant and Catholic figures from across the period.

Structure

One two hour seminar per week.

Assessment

Written examination (40%) and continous assesment (60%).

Credit Points

10

Course Coordinator

Jane Heath

Pre-requisites

Undergraduate degree or equivalent in any area.

Overview

This course explores the character of theology as a scholarly discipline, particularly its task and method, the relationships between its subdisciplines and its vocation within the university.

Structure

One two-hour tutorial per week

Assessment

100% continuous assessment.

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr Joachim Schaper

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Postgraduate level 5

Co-requisites

None

Notes

Overview

The subjects covered are those which are currently of special importance to the development of Hebrew Bible Studies, namely the history of ancient Israel, Pentateuch Studies and exegetical methodology, anthropology and its use in Hebrew Bible research, and the history and theology of the Septuagint (inasmuch as it pertains to the understanding of the Hebrew Bible).

Structure

2 one hour lectures per week and 1 one-hour seminar per fortnight

Assessment

Written examination (60%) and continuous assessment (40%): 10% for oral presentation and 30% for a 2,000 word paper developed from that presentation.

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr Don Wood

Pre-requisites

None.

Co-requisites

None.

Notes

Overview

x

Structure

x

Assessment

3-hour written examination (40%) and continuous assesment (60%).

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Prof. Segal

Pre-requisites

None

Co-requisites

None

Notes

Overview

A survey of eight leading theories of myth from the fields of anthropology, sociology, psychology, and religious studies. The focus will be on the differing answers the theories give to the questions of the origin, the function, and the subject matter of myth. Each theory will be applied to a familiar myth.

Structure

1 x 2 hour seminar plus 1 x 1 hour seminar plus 1 x 1 tutorial per week

Assessment

100% continuous assessment - 6,000 word essay

Credit Points

10

Course Coordinator

Nick Thompson

Pre-requisites

Undergraduate degree or equivalent

Co-requisites

None

Notes

Overview

Training in research methods appropriate to the particular style of dissertation that is expected in the various MTh programmes (e.g. ethnographic research skills and related ethical issues in the MTh Ministry and Mission; historical skills, knowledge of how systematic theology works, or the way in whch source materials are used in Biblical studies).

Structure

One two hour tutorial per week.

Assessment

100% continuous assessment, in line with the learning outcomes listed above.

Credit Points

60

Course Coordinator

TBC.

Pre-requisites

Satisfactory progress in Diploma/Master's programme

Overview

10-15,000 word dissertation written on a topic related to the student's taught Master's programme and agreed to by the supervisor and the programme co-ordinator

Structure

Students will normally have passed the course DR5063 (Dissertation Colloquium), in which they will have been assigned a dissertation supervisor and will have developed a dissertation proposal in consultation with the supervisor. During the second half-session and summer months students will meet and consult with their supervisors regularly as they continue their research and bring their project to completion.

Assessment

The dissertation is to be submitted by the due date (normally 31 August) and is marked by two examiners.

Credit Points

40

Course Coordinator

Prof. John Swinton.

Pre-requisites

This course is only available for students doing the Diploma in Pastoral Studies.

Co-requisites

None.

Notes

Overview

The module comprises of a supervised fieldwork project which will last for a minimum of four weeks. This practical work will be done under arrangements to be approved by the course co-ordinator.

Structure

The student will receive guidance in praxis-reflection from her practice supervisor and from her course co-ordinator. This will comprise of the following elements:

1.The student placement will be designed so that there are specific tasks and areas which it has been determined are suitable to the vocational needs of the individual student. These pastoral goals will be worked out prior to the placement in discussion with the placement supervisor and the course co-ordinator.
2.The student will have regular meetings with the practice supervisor during which the pastoral work that has been done will be reflected on critically and theologically in the light of the previously determined goals. In this the guided learning experience can be maximised.
3.The student will meet fortnightly with the course co-ordinator to discuss their progress, assess the experience and work through issues which emerge from their reflective journal. Advice and guidance will also be given with regard to suitable reading material which will help with the development of their self-directed learning.

Assessment

The student will produce a detailed reflective journal of his or her experience on the placement.

Credit Points

80

Course Coordinator

TBC

Pre-requisites

Satisfactory progress in Diploma/Master's programme

Overview

15-20,000 word dissertation written on a topic related to the student's taught Master's programme and agreed to by the supervisor and the programme co-ordinator

Structure

Students will normally have passed the course DR5063 (Dissertation Colloquium) or DR5064 (Research Methodologies) as appropriate to their masters programme, in which they will have been assigned a dissertation supervisor and will have developed a dissertation proposal in consultation with the supervisor. During the second half-session and summer months students will meet and consult with their supervisors regularly as they continue their research bring their project to completion.

Assessment

The dissertation is to be submitted by the due date (normally 31 August) and is marked by two examiners.

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Prof John Swinton

Pre-requisites

Available to level 5 students in appropriate degree programmes

Co-requisites

None

Notes

Overview

The course aims to introduce students to the theology and practice of ministry with people who are considered or consider themselves to be marginalised. It will develop a multidisciplinary approach which will enable students to reflect critically and theologically on the care of people considered ‘outsiders,’ and will develop rigorous practical theological responses to issues of marginalisation. Areas explored will include the theology of disability, mental illness, homelessness, children and disaffection, ministry with people who have HIV and AIDS.

Structure

One two hour seminar once per week.

Assessment

100% continuing assessment: 1 essay of 4000 words(60%); two book reviews of 1500 words each(30%); 1 oral presentation. (10%)

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer

Pre-requisites

Introductory Modern Hebrew (DR5073) or equivalent

Co-requisites

None

Notes

Overview

The class hours comprise a variety of integrated learning activities and exercises including grammar practice, reading comprehension, vocabulary building, productive writing, translation and listening comprehension.

Structure

2 one hour classes per week (times to be arranged)

Assessment

Examination (50%) and continuous assessment (50%). The continuous assessment includes homework assignment (10%), recorded class participation (10%), quizzes (20%), and an oral presentation (10%)