Pre-Theology & BA Degree Completion

Course Descriptions

PH-101: Academic Writing I (1 credit)
This first course in a sequence of two 1-unit courses will introduce students to the skills necessary for academic writing and research.

PH-102: Academic Writing II (1 credit)
This second course in a sequence of two 1-unit courses will help the student to further develop skills in academic writing and research.

PH-114: Humanities I: Arts and Ideas: Catholic Approaches to Beauty in Music, Architecture, and Art (3 credits)
This course sharpens students’ abilities to observe reality with wisdom and insight. By means of aesthetic education, students are guided through a history of the arts, with special attention to the philosophical ideas embedded in artistic artifacts. This course helps students both understand the significance and meaning of artistic works, as well as become capable of using the works as a tool for inspiration and teaching in priestly ministry.

PH-115: Humanities II: Theology through Literature  (3 credits)
This course leads students through a selection of works of literature. The works chosen all deal in some way with themes vital to the Christian vision of God, man, sin and guilt, redemption, and beatitude beyond death, and thus demonstrate how theological truths can be conveyed through literary art.

PP-101: Logic  (3 credits)
This course is an introduction to Aristotelian logic in which the rules of valid reasoning are studied as an aid to the analysis and construction of arguments, both in academic contexts and in everyday speech. Topics covered include the three acts of the mind, definitions, propositions, syllogisms, and formal and informal fallacies. A guiding theme of the course is the relationship between Aristotelian logic and philosophical realism.

PP-104: The Philosophy of Nature  (3 credits)
The study of the philosophy of nature treats fundamental principles like substance, form, matter, causality, motion, and the soul and provides the foundation for the study of metaphysics and natural theology.  Students will also be introduced to issues in the philosophy of science, such as the relationship between philosophy and the empirical sciences.

PP-112: History of Philosophy I: Ancient History  (3 credits)
This course traces the development of philosophical issues in the Western tradition, from the Pre-Socratics to Plotinus. It explores the origins of the great philosophical questions and examines the progress that was made in answering those questions by pure reason alone, apart from the positive influence of Judeo-Christian revelation. In so doing it emphasizes man’s natural vocation to seek ultimate truth in wonder. Special attention is given to the Heraclitean-Parmenidean dichotomy (change vs. stability, plurality vs. unity), to the solutions to this dichotomy given by Plato and Aristotle, and to the implications of those solutions for the good life.

PP-113: History of Philosophy II: Medieval Philosophy  (3 credits)
This course continues to trace the development of philosophical issues in the Western tradition, from Augustine to Ockham. It explores how the great philosophical questions were further developed under the influence of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. In so doing, it emphasizes the mutually enriching relationship between Christian faith and philosophy, manifested especially in new philosophical insights into God’s nature and relation to the world (particularly concerning the meaning of creation and the scope of providence) and into the nature of the human soul. Special attention is given to Augustine’s transmission of Platonic philosophy to early Christian thinkers through Bonaventure and to the Arabs’ transmission of Aristotelian philosophy to Aquinas and later Christian thinkers.

PP-205: Philosophical Anthropology  (3 credits)
This course explores the Thomistic view of the human person and its unique dignity. Taking the Aristotelian understanding of life and the soul as its starting-point, this course studies the nature of sensory consciousness and affectivity; how rationality, freedom, and interpersonal love rise above the sensory level; and why the human soul must be spiritual and immortal, yet without prejudice to the person’s hylomorphic unity. This holistic vision of man will be contrasted with dualist and materialist views, and applied to problems concerning the beginning and end of human life.

PP-206: Metaphysics  (3 credits)
This course studies “being as being”: the intelligibility of reality which transcends the empirical world. Pride of place is given to the metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas. Topics treated include: the problem of the “one and the many”; the possibility of shared essences; the real distinction between essence and existence; the twofold division of being into the transcendentals and the 10 categories (with particular attention to the intelligibility and self-diffusiveness of being); and the nature of separate substances.

PP-207: Epistemology  (2 credits)
This course studies the nature and possibility of knowledge of reality. Drawing on St. Thomas Aquinas’s realist epistemology, which is contrasted with post-Enlightenment “critical” epistemology, it focuses on our grasp of first principles and universal essences and on the possibility of objective metaphysical and moral knowledge. Special attention is also given to the rationality of religious belief and to the harmony between faith and reason, as articulated in St. John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio.

PP-208: Philosophical Ethics  (3 credits)
Ethics studies what it means for man to live well. In particular, this course explores the relationship between pleasure, happiness, and obligation; the nature and necessity of the moral virtues; the conditions for moral responsibility; natural law; the parts of the moral act; intrinsically evil acts and the principle of “double effect”; and God as man’s final end. This course is taught from the perspective of Aristotelian-Thomistic teleological virtue ethics, which sets the framework for evaluating utilitarianism, deontology, and other forms of contemporary moral thought. The course also develops a response to contemporary subjectivism and nihilism and considers ethical problems of particular contemporary and pastoral relevance.

PP-209: Philosophy of God  (3 credits)
Natural theology studies what can be known of God by the light of natural reason. It thereby makes an indispensable contribution to the understanding and defense of Christian claims about God, and is a culminating expression of the harmony between faith and reason; at the same time, it points toward the mystery of God’s self-revelation which can be known only by faith. The course approaches this task especially in light of St. Thomas Aquinas, while also attending to 20th century contributions. The central themes of this course include God’s existence, God’s essential attributes, the need to speak analogically of God, God’s providential relationship to the created world, and the problem of evil.

PP-210: Special Topics (1-3 credits)
From time to time, Special Topics courses may be offered that are not listed permanently in the curricula and that are infrequently offered. These courses examine comparatively narrow subjects that may be topical or of special interest. A specific course title shall be used in each instance and shall be so noted on the student record. Special Topics courses carry elective credit and may not be transferable to other institutions. Available for repeat credit.

PP-212: History of Philosophy III: Modern Philosophy  (3 credits)
This course continues to trace the development of philosophical issues in the Western tradition, from Descartes to Kant. It explores the origin of the Enlightenment and its influence on philosophical thought, especially its focus on methodical doubt and its resultant distrust of authority (both natural and supernatural), its increasing rejection of classical metaphysics, anthropology, and teleological morality, and its stress on subjectivity. Emphasis is placed on the contrast between post-Enlightenment and pre-Enlightenment thought, as well as on the contest between rationalism and empiricism leading up to Kant’s synthesis.

PP-213: History of Philosophy IV: Contemporary Philosophy  (3 credits)
This course continues to trace the development of philosophical issues in the Western tradition, from Kant to the contemporary philosophies of the 20th century. It explores the impact on subsequent philosophy of Kant’s “Copernican Revolution” (man as the source of meaning rather than its discoverer) and of the corresponding account of human freedom and autonomy. Attention is given to the transition from Kant’s transcendental idealism to Hegel’s absolute idealism; to Marx’s transformation of Hegel’s dialectic; to Kierkegaard’s and Nietzsche’s reactions to Hegel’s rationalist determinism; to Husserl’s transformation of Kant’s transcendental idealism into phenomenology; to Heidegger’s, Sartre’s, and Buber’s existential appropriation of the phenomenological method; and, in the English-speaking world, to Mill’s utilitarianism, American pragmatism, and the “Linguistic Turn” in the analytic philosophy of Russell and Wittgenstein.

PP-214: Political Philosophy (3 credits)
Political philosophy examines the nature and scope of the political dimension of human life. Its central themes include the origin of political community and authority, the nature of the political common good, and the nature of the best community. This course will cover several viewpoints from the history of political philosophy, with special emphasis on the thought of Aristotle and Aquinas as a critical lens through which to view the presuppositions implicit in contemporary political society and theory. This course lays the foundation for further studies in Catholic social teaching.

PP-215: Capstone Seminar (2 credits)
The Capstone Seminar offers students in the last semester of the Pre-theology program an opportunity to grasp the unity of their philosophical studies and to integrate the fruits of these studies into their ongoing formation as future priests.

TH-105: History of Christian Spirituality (3 credits)
This course provides an historical overview of Christian spirituality from the New Testament to the present, with an introduction to its biblical and theological foundations. The essential and distinguishing elements of Christian spirituality, ascetical practices and spiritual exercises, major schools and pivotal figures of Christian spirituality are examined in historical and cultural context.

TH-107: The Spirit of the Liturgy (3 credits)
This course enables students to see the liturgy “as the animating center of the Church, the very center of Christian life” (Ratzinger). Topics include an introduction to the sacramental-symbolic-liturgical worldview, the essence of worship, the Jewish roots of Christian prayer, major themes from part two of the universal catechism, and the Second Vatican Council’s vision for liturgical renewal.

TH-204: God and Human Existence (2 credits)
This course investigates sources of modern atheist humanism, which purports to have “moved beyond God.” Particular attention is given to Feuerbach, Nietzsche, and Comte, as the fathers of systematic atheism, nihilism, and positivism respectively. In response to this atheist ideology, students will examine works by significant Christian thinkers such as Dostoevsky, Henri de Lubac, Joseph Ratzinger and others, which substantiate the truth that “only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. … Christ…by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear” (Gaudium et Spes #22).

TH-205: Sacred Scripture: Old Testament (2 credits)
This course surveys the history of salvation leading up the coming of the Messiah and considers the covenants that God established to prepare for and anticipate the New Covenant. With a guided reading plan and accompanying lectures, seminarians read and discuss the Pentateuch and Historical Books, the Prophets, Psalms, and Wisdom Literature to gain an overall familiarity with the Old Testament.  Lectures also unfold the historical events of the Ancient Near East in relation to the Biblical text and the history of Catholic exegesis from the Church Fathers up until the twentieth century. Key concepts surrounding human authorship, inspiration, inerrancy, and the role of the Scriptures in the teaching of the Church are introduced and seminarians are exposed to basic exegetical methods and approaches in preparation for the further study of Sacred Scripture.

TH-206: Sacred Scripture: New Testament (2 credits)
This course surveys the New Testament and the revelation of God in the fullness of time through Jesus Christ. With a guided reading plan and accompanying lectures, seminarians read and discuss the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, letters of St. Paul, the Catholic Epistles, and the writings of St. John. Lectures on the history of Judah in the Roman Empire and Catholic exegesis supplement readings. Concepts surrounding human authorship, inspiration, inerrancy, the role of the Scriptures in the teaching of the Church are developed and seminarians are further exposed to exegetical methods and approaches in preparation for graduate level study of Sacred Scripture.