updated 5/18/20 Greystone Theological Institute Syllabus 2020 PS774/974 – Advanced Church Polity General Information Semester: Summer Meeting times: Week of 10-14 August 2020 Format: Residential and Online/Distance; Full Credit and Audit Location: Residential: Mid-America Reformed Seminary, Dyer, IN; Online: Greystone Zoom Credit hours: 3 Instructor name: The Rev. Dr. Alan D. Strange Tel. office: 219-864-2407 Tel. home: 708-822-8357 e-mail: [email protected] | [email protected] Course Purpose • To acquaint students with the exegetical, historical, and theological dimensions of ecclesiastical polity in the Christian faith and especially in the Reformed and Presbyterian traditions. • To instruct students in the role and place of the doctrine of the spirituality of the church in the theology and polity of the church, particularly as that impacts the question of slavery and race in the Reformed and Presbyterian churches in the American context, both historically and in current resonance. • To model scholarly inquiry by exploring textual and contextual phenomena at an advanced level by way of select case studies throughout church history, including contemporary ones. • To explore the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition in ecclesiastical history and polity through the lens provided by our respective church orders and from the perspective of catholic confessional Reformed theology. • To instruct in the proper interpretation—theologically, ecclesiastically, pastorally, and sociologically—of the spirituality of the church and its impact on the polity of the church in personal, pastoral, and ecclesiastical uses of Christian Scripture and tradition. 1 updated 5/18/20 Course Description What lies at the heart of Reformed and Presbyterian church polity is the conviction that the Bible sets forth the fundamentals foundational to the government of the church and that the church is a spiritual, not a civil or biological, institution. This course will explore these and like polity matters, drilling down deep in our church orders to ferret out the implications of the nature of the church. The church, at its heart and in its essence, is a spiritual institution, a kingdom not of this world, and as such employs spiritual means to obtain spiritual ends. The nature of church power is spiritual, the power of the keys; it is ministerial and declarative. That the church enjoys spiritual independency from all other earthly institutions, including the state, is expressed in the doctrine of the spirituality of the church (or in the affirmation of the sphere sovereignty of the church). The proper use, as well as the abuse, of the doctrine of the spirituality of the church and allied concepts, has received much attention in both the academy and the church in recent years. This course will give special attention to American slavery since the spirituality of the church has been abused to defend and excuse that institution. Though American slavery ended more than a century and a half ago, the racism that bought contributed to and developed from it remain with us, providing a continuing challenge to the church. At the same time, the contemporary politicization of all institutions threatens to compromise the church’s true spirituality. We will examine the variety of ways that the faithful have sought to relate church and state and Christianity and politics, seeking not only to assess the past but also to address the present. This course will focus then on recovering the spirituality of the church, exploring its potential contributions to the ongoing dialog of how the church is to relate to the world in which it finds itself, both in how it distinguishes itself from the world and how it gives itself to the world. Course Objectives Objectives of this course include the following: 1. Upon completion, the student will produce a piece of original work demonstrating knowledge and application of high standards of independent research that evinces a mastery of his/her Church Order, particularly the part dealing with the nature of the church and the nature and limits of church power. (Supports SLOs ThM 1; PhD 1). 2. Upon completion, the student will demonstrate commitment to the vocation of theological education and research. (Supports SLOs ThM 1; PhD 2a; 3c). Course Assignments 1. Attendance at and participation in all course lectures. Discussion both of readings and of lectures (and a bit of Socratic questioning/interaction) will be a vital part of this course. 2. The first course readings should be completed before the beginning of the lecture portion of the course. A reading report of 8-10 pp. (doubled-spaced) should be submitted covering these readings by the due date: This assignment is due on 7 August (12:00 PM) and must be uploaded to the correct spot in Populi. All times in this syllabus are listed as Central Standard Time. 2 updated 5/18/20 3. The additional course readings should be completed by 18 September 2020 and a reading report of 8-10 pp. (double-spaced) should be submitted covering these readings by the due date: This assignment is due on 18 September (12:00 PM), and must be uploaded to the correct spot in Populi. 4. The topic for a course paper of approximately 5000 words should be approved by 11 September 2020. This assignment is due on 11 September (12:00 PM) and must be uploaded to the correct spot in Populi. 5. Additional course reading of 400 pp., drawn from the recommended reading list or work(s) approved by the Professor. A reading report of 4-5 pp. should be submitted covering this additional reading. This assignment is due on 25 September, 2020 (12:00 PM), and must be uploaded to the correct spot in Populi. 6. Course paper (of approximately 5000 words) on previously approved topic: This assignment is due on 23 October 2020 (12:00 PM), and must be uploaded to the correct spot in Populi. Weighting of Course Assignments and Time Expectations Expected Hours Expected Hours Percentage for ThM student for PhD student Weight Lectures: 27 hours 27 hours 0% Required Reading 165 hours 200 hours 30% Research Paper 35 hours 60 hours 35% Reading Reports 5 hours 5 hours 25% Discussion participation 27 hours 27 hours 10% Total: 205 hours 265 hours 100% 3 updated 5/18/20 Course Required Reading (3846 pp. for Th.M; 4974 pp. for Ph.D.) Legend: A single asterisk (*) denotes course material to be read and reported on first (before the class meets). A double asterisk (**) denotes additional reading material for Ph.D. students, to be read and reported on second (at the time of the last reading report). Primary Sources: *Respective Reformed and Presbyterian Church Orders (sections on government and discipline), varying pages. *Beza, Theodore. Right of Magistrates. Geneva, 1574. 18pp. Online (widely available) *George Buchanan, De Jure Regni Apud Scotos; A Dialogue Concerning the Rights of the Crown in Scotland (English translation), (1579; rpb., Colorado Springs, Colorado: Portage Publications, 2016), 85 pp., online at http://www.portagepub.com/dl/caa/buchanan.pdf?. *The Magdeburg Confession: 13th of April 1550 AD, Matthew Colvin, translator. (North Charleston, SC.: CreateSpace, 2012), 126 pp. Alexander McLeod, Negro Slavery Unjustifiable: A Discourse. New York: T & J. Swords, 1802. 42 pp. Robinson, Stuart. The Church of God as an Essential Element of the Gospel. Philadelphia: Joseph M. Wilson, 1858. Reprinted, Willow Grove, PA: Committee on Christian Education of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 2009. 232 pp. **George Gillespie, Aaron's Rod Blossoming, Or, The Divine Ordinance of Church Government Vindicated (1646; Edinburgh: Robert Ogle, and Oliver and Boyd, 1844), 276 pp., online at https://archive.org/details/aaronsrodblosso01gillgoog/page/n7/mode/2up **Charles Hodge, Discussions in Church Polity (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1878), 532 pp., online at https://archive.org/details/discussionsinchu00hodg/page/14/mode/2up. Secondary Sources: *John Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? Revised edition (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016). 328 pp. *Katharine Gerbner, Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 296 pp. Philip Hamburger, Separation of Church and State (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002). 528 pp. 4 updated 5/18/20 James Davidson Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 368 pp. *Abraham Kuyper, “State and Church,” in On the Church from the Collected Works in Public Theology, v. 4 (Bellingham, Wash.: Lexham Press, 2015- ), pp. 373-437. *Joseph S. Moore, Founding Sins: How a Group of Antislavery Radicals Fought to Put Christ into the Constitution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 232 pp. *Alan D. Strange, The Doctrine of the Spirituality of the Church in the Ecclesiology of Charles Hodge (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2017), 432 pp. *Jemar Tisby, The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2019), 256 pp. Matthew Tuininga, Calvin's Political Theology and the Public Engagement of the Church: Christ's Two Kingdoms (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 402 pp. David Van Drunen, Politics after Christendom: Political Theology in a Fractured World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2020), 400 pp. Willborn, C.N. “Southern Presbyterianism: The Character of a Tradition.” Confessing Our Hope: Essays Celebrating the Life and