THEO 201 — Christian Theology I: God, Humanity, and Sin
Christian theology is not primarily a collection of beliefs to memorize. It is a disciplined way of thinking about God and about everything else in relation to God, a way of thinking developed over twenty centuries in conversation with Scripture, with tradition, and with every major intellectual movement of the Western and Eastern worlds. A student who wants to understand not just what Christians believe but how Christians think theologically needs to meet the theologians on their own terms: to watch Augustine argue with Pelagius about what sin has done to the human will, to follow Aquinas through his arguments about the simplicity and the attributes of God, to see Calvin's distinction between the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves, and to hear Barth insist that theology must begin with God's self-revelation rather than with human religious experience. THEO 201 is the first systematic theology course in the Cathedra catalog. It assumes the student has completed DISC 103 (which introduced the basic content of Christian belief) and BIBL 210 (which taught how to read the Bible's literary forms), and it goes deeper into three of the foundational loci of Christian theology: the doctrine of God, theological anthropology, and hamartiology. The course covers theological method and the question of authority, the classical doctrine of God and its main modern alternatives, the doctrine of the Trinity as developed at Nicaea and Constantinople, the image of God and the body-soul question, the fall and the doctrine of original sin in its historical articulations, and the social and structural dimensions of sin in modern theological discussion. For each doctrine, the course engages the primary theological sources directly rather than presenting disembodied summaries of them. The student meets Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Barth, and others in excerpted form, follows their actual arguments, and learns to weigh the evidence for different positions. The goal is that a student who finishes THEO 201 can read a theological text, identify its methodological commitments, follow its argument even when they disagree with it, place it within the broader Christian tradition, and understand why different Christians arrive at different theological conclusions without treating the differences as either trivial or catastrophic. Every downstream theology course in the Cathedra catalog (THEO 202, THEO 220, THEO 230, THEO 501 at the graduate level, and the various theological loci courses) assumes the foundation THEO 201 provides. Note on scope: THEO 201 follows a three-topic focus on God, Humanity, and Sin, deferring creation ex nihilo, providence, and the problem of evil to THEO 202 and THEO 210 so that the three central doctrines can be treated with primary-source depth that a broader survey at the same hour count would not allow.
Learning outcomes
- Describe the task of theology as a discipline, distinguish the main theological methods and sources of authority (sola scriptura, Scripture plus Tradition, the Wesleyan Quadrilateral), and explain why methodological commitments shape every downstream theological conclusion
- Describe the classical Christian doctrine of God (divine simplicity, aseity, omniscience, omnipotence, impassibility, immutability) as developed in the patristic and medieval tradition, and articulate the main modern critiques and alternatives (open theism, process theology) fairly
- Articulate the doctrine of the Trinity as developed at the Councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381), distinguish the Cappadocian and Augustinian approaches, and describe the filioque controversy between Eastern and Western Christianity
- Describe the doctrine of the image of God (imago Dei) and the main scholarly interpretations (functional, structural, relational), articulate the body-soul question with its main positions, and describe the range of Christian positions on gender and the image of God
- Describe the Christian doctrine of the fall and the range of Christian readings of Genesis 3 (historical event, theological narrative, mixed positions), and explain how different readings shape downstream theological conclusions
- Describe the doctrine of original sin in its main historical articulations (Augustine, Pelagius, the Eastern Orthodox view, Reformed total depravity, Catholic woundedness), and articulate the range of faithful Christian positions
- Describe the social and structural dimensions of sin in modern theological discussion (liberation theology, structural sin), and explain how these categories relate to the traditional doctrine of personal sin
- Engage primary theological sources in excerpted form (passages from Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Barth, Gregory of Nazianzus, Athanasius, and others) and follow their arguments even when you disagree with them
- Distinguish how different Christian traditions (Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant) approach the doctrines of God, humanity, and sin, and explain why these differences flow from deeper methodological and historical commitments
- Apply the orientation skills of THEO 201 to an unfamiliar theological claim or argument, producing a responsible first reading that identifies its methodological commitments, its historical context, and its relationship to the major Christian traditions
Prolegomena — Theological Method and Authority
Most undergraduate theology courses skip or rush 'how we do theology' to get to the doctrines. Cathedra does not. A student who understands why Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants arrive at different conclusions (because they work from different sources of authority and different methods) will navigate the rest of the course and the rest of the catalog with much greater comprehension than a student who just memorizes positions. Module 1 is a framing module that does two things: Lesson 1.1 introduces theology as a discipline in the Anselmic tradition of 'faith seeking understanding,' distinguishing revealed from natural theology and kataphatic from apophatic approaches; Lesson 1.2 takes up the question of theological authority and presents the three main approaches (sola scriptura, Scripture plus Tradition, the Wesleyan Quadrilateral) fairly, showing how methodological commitments shape every downstream theological conclusion.
The Doctrine of God
The doctrine of God is the most foundational of all theological loci because every other theological claim depends on it. Module 2 takes up the doctrine in three movements. Lesson 2.1 engages the biblical and traditional picture of God as holy, eternal, and self-revealing, and introduces the distinction between God's knowability (that God can be truly known) and God's incomprehensibility (that God cannot be fully comprehended by finite minds). Lesson 2.2 presents the classical Christian doctrine of God developed in the patristic and medieval tradition, with divine simplicity, aseity, omniscience, omnipotence, impassibility, and immutability as the central attributes, and engages Aquinas's reasoning from the Summa Theologiae directly. Lesson 2.3 takes up the main modern critiques of classical theism (open theism and process theology) fairly, identifies the specific classical attributes each critique targets, and describes the range of faithful Christian positions.
The Trinity
The doctrine of the Trinity is the most distinctively Christian claim about God. It is not stated in the Bible as a formal proposition; it is the theological conclusion the church reached after three centuries of wrestling with the biblical witness, the worship of Jesus alongside the Father in earliest Christian practice, and the pastoral pressures of the first Christian centuries. Module 3 takes up the doctrine in two lessons. Lesson 3.1 traces the biblical foundations and the development of the doctrine through the Councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381), explaining the technical vocabulary (homoousios, ousia, hypostasis) the councils introduced. Lesson 3.2 distinguishes the Cappadocian and Augustinian approaches to the Trinity, presents the filioque controversy that contributed to the East-West schism, and engages the modern retrievals of Trinitarian theology in the twentieth century.
Theological Anthropology
Theological anthropology asks the question: what is a human being? The Christian answer begins with the claim that human beings are made in the image of God, and the doctrine of the imago Dei has been one of the most generative and most contested doctrines in the history of Christian theology. Module 4 takes up the doctrine in three lessons. Lesson 4.1 introduces the foundational text (Genesis 1:26-27) and the three main scholarly interpretations of the image of God (functional, structural, relational), with representative proponents from the patristic tradition through twentieth-century theology. Lesson 4.2 takes up the body-soul question and the main Christian positions (substance dualism, hylomorphism, emergent dualism, non-reductive physicalism), engaging Aquinas's hylomorphic position from Summa Theologiae Ia q.75. Lesson 4.3 takes up the question of gender and the image of God, tracing the historical development from the patristic period through modern retrievals.
Sin — The Fall, Original Sin, and Structural Sin
The doctrine of sin is the Christian doctrine that most directly shapes the answer to the question 'what is wrong with us?' and the range of Christian positions on the question is both wider and more interesting than most modern undergraduates realize. Module 5 takes up the doctrine in three lessons. Lesson 5.1 reads Genesis 3 directly, identifies the main theological claims Christians have drawn from it, and articulates the range of Christian readings of the passage (historical event, theological narrative, mediating positions). Lesson 5.2 traces the doctrine of original sin through its historical articulations: Augustine's anti-Pelagian writings of the 410s and 420s, Pelagius's counter-position, the decisive Council of Carthage in 418, the Eastern Orthodox treatment of ancestral sin, Reformed total depravity, and the Catholic doctrine of woundedness as formalized at Trent. Lesson 5.3 takes up the social and structural dimensions of sin in modern theological discussion (liberation theology, Reinhold Niebuhr, the Catholic magisterium's reception of structural-sin language) and explains how these categories relate to the traditional doctrine of personal sin.
Synthesis — Thinking Theologically from Here
The final module of THEO 201 is a synthesis lesson. It steps back from the five content modules and asks how the pieces fit together as a coherent introduction to systematic theology, applies the orientation skills the course has built to an unfamiliar theological argument as a worked example, and hands the student off to the rest of the Cathedra theology catalog (THEO 202, THEO 210, THEO 220, THEO 230, THEO 501 for graduate-level depth, HIST 201 for the historical context, BIBL 301 for students drawn to Genesis).