THEO621 The Literature of the Church to Gregory the Great

I did this unit on the Church Fathers at ACU back in second semester 2005. I suppose the current equivalent there now is THCT313.

I was already 44 years old and working as a GP and as a Medical Advisor at DVA, so I should have been busy enough without all this going on.

The course was co-ordinated by Bronwen Neil. She now works at Macquarie University and has had a most impressive academic career.

The text was How to Read the Church Fathers by Adalbert Hamman, which was out of print so we were given a link to download a copy from the library. I’m pretty sure I have got a real copy somewhere – I must look for it.

We were given the usual extensive lecture notes for twelve modules and a bibliography. This was still prior to any real time online contact so, while everything was done on line, it was all written work. There was a discussion board and participation on that amounted to 20% of the assessment, which was filled out with two 2000 word assignments.

The Modules were:

1 The Birth of Christian Literature

2 The Apologists and the Meeting of Faith and Culture

3 Irenaeus and the Development of Heresy

4 Alexandrian Christianity

5 African Christianity and a Balance Sheet of the Church to this Point

6 The Conversion of Constantine

7 Factors and Figures within Fourth Century Christianity

8 The Christian Latin West and its Literature

9 Augustine’s Impact on the Christian World

10 The Christian Church After Theodosius

11 Issues Facing the Fifth Centruy Church

12 The End of the Ancient World: Gregory the Great

Unusually, I have many of my submissions to the discussion board.