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Week by Week Course Preview
Week One: Introductions.
Discussion of several different traditions’ conceptions of God or
divinity: 1) “Hinduism’s” four approaches to the divine (love, knowledge,
work, physical mastery); 2) The concept of Fate as seen in Homer and the 5th
century (BCE) tragedians; 3) The God of History (progressing from the creator of
Genesis 1-2, to the personal God of Abraham, to the national God of Israel, to
the universal God of the prophets and mainstream Christianity); and 4) the God
of the mystics, exemplified by Meister Eckhart and his famous prayer to be able
to “leave god for God.”
Week One/Two: Aeschylus,
Prometheus Bound—The discussion will revolve around issues of the (in)justice
of "divine" authority (in this case, that of Zeus) and the role of the
rebel, the recusant, or nay-sayer in the face of such authority.
Week Three/Four: Homer,
The Odyssey—Odysseus and his plight are set against the background of a
struggle between the gods of Olympus. Zeus specifically denies that the bad
things that happen to humans are in any way the result of the will or actions of
the gods. The discussion will explore what the justice and truth of Zeus’
claim may be, as well as what responsibility for Odysseus’ struggles may lie with
Odysseus himself.
Week Five/Six: Hebrew
Traditional Texts:
1) Job—What is the nature of God? Is God really a
personality in the human sense? Can God be held to moral expectations,
expectations that are formed in human terms? Is a God that cannot be relied upon
in those human terms worth struggling with at all? This discussion will explore
the various ways of relating to God outlined by the primary speakers in the book
of Job, and grapple with Job’s enigmatic final words. What conclusion does Job
come to regarding his God?
2) Hosea—Most of the same
questions as above, with the addition of the following: What is the nature of
the human relationship to the divine?
Week Seven: Hindu
Traditional Text, The Chandogya Upanishad—This combination of
literature, philosophy, and theology presents a different conception of God than
does Job or the Greeks. The divine of the Upanishads is not a person. When the
divine is conceived of without reference to personality, without identity in the
normal sense, how does the human relation to the divine change? Is there
something lost, or something gained?
Week Eight: Hindu Traditional Text,
The Bhagavad-Gita (Chapters
1-5, 9, 11, 18)—This session will consider questions of
activity and/or passivity in heroism. What justification, if any, is there for taking part in war
(including a civil war fought against members of one’s own family)?
Week Nine/Ten: John
Milton, Paradise Lost—This work returns the course
to the realm of personal divinity. The contrast between Satan (of one of
world literature's most famous rebels) and the Son of God (a figure who
challenges his Father to be truly divine) will allow for a fruitful
consideration of the contrasting natures of military conquest and moral choice
as modes of relation to the divine.
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