REL 440 - Seminar: How Christians Read Scripture

This is a close-reading seminar, guided by the following questions: How do we make sense of the existence of both moral evil-e.g. injustice, cruelty-and natural evil-the seeming suffering endemic to the world? Whence these evils, if the Divine is deemed good creator of all that is? Are there defensible accounts of faith in light of these realities and commitments? And how can humans respond to experiences of evil and suffering? Drawing primarily but not exclusively on Christian and Jewish thought, this class will explore ways of both formulating the problems and responding.