Brian Hamilton

Fall 2007: Courses and Projects

I’ve just begun my fall semester here at Notre Dame, which seems disjointed but nonetheless promising. Disjointed, I mean, in that none of my classes have any overlap this time around. I’ll mention them chronologically, more or less.

First, I’m taking an Old Testament survey course with Gary Anderson. There will be a lot of review here, but also some emphases that are new to me. Anderson seems to be planning on making consistent note of how these texts have been (and should be) appropriated by Christians. It is, uniquely among courses in biblical studies I’ve taken, a course in the Old Testament, in the ancient witness to the work of the same God who eventually took on flesh in Christ. Fruitfully, though, it doesn’t look like that approach will overpower Anderson’s ability to view the text as a Jewish work written for Jews. In fact, half of our secondary texts come from Jon Levenson, the Jewish theologian who has done so much in comparing Jewish and Christian readings of these texts. So this will be a profound lesson in Old Testament hermeneutics for me, which I very much look forward to.

I’m also taking Intermediate Latin, focusing on reading classical texts like those of Livy, Catullus, Martial, etc. With any luck I’ll also find time to keep up with a reading group in Christian, probably medieval, Latin, so I can keep developing my familiarity with that vocabulary and those grammatical shifts.

Third, a course on Jonathan Edwards, particularly his moral theology, with Jennifer Herdt. I know little to nothing about Edwards at this point, but I’m about halfway through Marsden’s magnificent biography of him (really, the best written biography I’ve ever encountered) which is filling out the picture. There are many aspects of his thought and life that trouble me tremendously, but much that I also find quite profound. He seems to have woven trinitarian theology and theological aesthetics into his ethics in an unusual and, fittingly, beautiful way. I’m also looking forward to paying attention to the development of his thought with respect to the question of membership in the church, which shifted overtime from a broader, Christendom-style inclusion to a more disciplined conception of the community of converted believers.

Finally, Postmodern Theologies with Cyril O’Regan. This course will spend its first half on later Derrida’s supposed religious turn, reading his Acts of Religion, Gift of Death, On the Name, and Circumfession. His conversations with Marion and Levinas will be kept closely in mind here, of course, as will Caputo’s interpretation of Derrida as a religious figure. The second half will turn to Georges Bataille and Michel Foucault, quite different thinkers both continuing Nietzsche’s tirade against the Christian tradition. Both thinkers, in quite different ways, also refashion and reintroduce some notion of transcendence (more horizontal than vertical) which will be of particular interest to us as we read for religious themes.

I also have a few other projects to keep me engaged over this semester (as if these courses weren’t enough!). I’m submitting a paper proposal on Michael Sattler and the idea of ‘the perfection of Christ’ for the Believers Church Conference at Canadian Mennonite University next June—thus the recent glut of posts on Sattler. I’ll be working on that paper slowly throughout the year. More importantly, I’m beginning work on Ph.D. proposals, which will likely circle around the theme of political theology. More on that as I figure it out.

That’s the plan for the fall, in far too many words, and so also the topics for this blog over the next several months!

29 August 2007 |
tags: Personal