their own personal and professional lives and to refine skills for creative, sensitive engagement with themselves and others in relation to experiences of loss and religious/cultural diversity. HLSP 542 God and Human Suffering 3 credits This course offers an invitation to explore the mystery and meaning of human suffering, one that engages the paradoxes of darkness and light, despair and hope, death and life, cross and resurrection. Stories of women and men, both biblical and contemporary, whose lives were transformed by suffering will be analyzed for the redemptive elements embedded in their experiences. Through theological reflection, students will examine the nature and gifts of suffering: endurance, hope, compassion, intimacy with God, and a contemplative life-stance with all that is. HLSP 551 Forgiveness and Reconciliation 3 credits This course is designed to ponder stories, pursue questions and consider the gift that lies at the heart of the journey to forgive and reconcile as persons and as a people. To this end, the course will engage several disciplines from its primary ground in theology: psychology and history, literature and political theory, social science and cultural anthropology. Its scope will encompass the inner regions of the human heart, the shape and character of human behavior and the distant reaches of the global family. Students will encounter others in reading, research and conversation whose experiences of “forgiveness and reconciliation� will inform and challenge their own. HLSP 552 Spirituality of Peace and Justice 3 credits Readings and discussion will explore the theory and practice of Christian nonviolence in the context of current U.S. experience. Nonviolence does not withdraw from violence, but engages violence with the powers of truth and love. Nonviolence will be examined in four dimensions: personal, interpersonal, national/international, and ecological. From the lives and works of outstanding practitioners, practices of nonviolence will be identified and their relevance to contemporary Christian life demonstrated. HLSP 640 Spirituality and Science 3 credits Philosophy, theology and literature are all dedicated to a search for human meaning, relevance and truth. However each of these disciplines approaches these questions in different ways and from different perspectives. It will be the intention of this class to use these disciplines together in an effort to allow each to assist the others so as to help us achieve some insight into the nature of the human condition. Literature will gives us specific scenarios and detailed characters so as to flesh out certain remote and esoteric philosophical concepts. Philosophy will give use organizational patterns and direct assertions that may serve to grant us a deeper and more subtle understanding of our literary characters. Theology will grant us a focus on the interpretation of meaning that will serve center of our inquiry. The directing questions of the semester will be as follows: What matters and how do we know?
HLSP 641 Spirituality and Literature
3 credits