TH 216 Violence & Atonement

Atonement, as celebrated weekly during the Eucharistic Mass or other equivalent celebrations, stands as a central doctrine to the Catholic Church and the Christian world. The problem with the doctrine, however, is that it has come to be interpreted almost exclusively through an ill-advised and even heretical model called 'penal substitutionary theory,' This class will not only call into question and overcome penal substitutionary theory, it will posit and evaluate a number of other atonement models that the Church has historically taken seriously. Moreover, it will spend a lot of time both understanding and evaluating one form of atonement in particular, which we can call the 'anti-scapegoat' model, which at least fits the truth-criterion that must lie at the bottom of any model of atonement: that the ground of peace which founds the Church must come in and as peace to us.

Credits

3

Prerequisite

Take TH-101. Take 1 Philosophical Reasoning course. Take 1 Cultural Diversity course. Take 1 Intermediate Writing course previously or concurrently. Take 1 Integrated Learning course previously or concurrently.

Course Types

ER.THE

Distribution

ER,THE

Offered

Fall Semester