2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog

REL 330 History of Christian Thought

This course surveys the history of Christian thought within the embodied cultural, political, geographic, scientific, and artistic contexts that helped birth and mold it. Setting the stage with Greek philosophy and the Greco-Roman world, we then transition to the early church up through the Middle Ages into modernity and beyond. Particular attention is paid to the history of ideas, and the theological/philosophical notions that helped shape events, beliefs, and practices.

Credits

3

Offered

Every term

Outcomes

  1. Students should learn about the key thinkers, movements, and events that helped shape the Western world.
  2. Students should develop critical thinking skills, historical awareness, and perspective of scope required to engage and think through the relationship between Christianity and Western culture.
  3. Students should develop an interdisciplinary appreciation for how religion shapes and is shaped by the broader tapestry of culture, including science, art, politics, economics, et al.