Monks, Nuns, Demons and Hermits:
Ascetic and Monastic Christianity
Winter Semester, Religion 245
Instructor: |
Robert W. Allison
|
Office: |
73 Campus Ave. no. 7
|
Office hours:
| Mon, Wed, and Thurs. 1:30-2:30 p.m. or by appt. |
January: Asceticism in the Bible, in Judaism & in Greco-Roman Religion
-
Ideas of personal renunciation in the Jesus movement & early church
- Jewish Ascetical thinking
- Holiness; vows; wilderness tradition
- Jewish Monastic and Ascetical Groups:
- Therapeutae;
- Rechabites;
- Essenes (Dead Sea Scrolls)
- Followers of John the Baptist
- Followers of Jesus' brother, James the Just
- Satan & Struggle vs. Evil in Judaism & Xnty
- Greco-Roman Philosophical Asceticism
- (Stoicism; the philosophical resistance; Apollonius of Tyana)
February The Christian Monastic Tradition: history, ideas & practises
- Relation to martyrdom in early church
- The foundation myth: the Life of Antony
- Pachomius & Coenobitic ("Communal Life") Monasticism
- Monastic Rules
- The Egyptian Desert Fathers
- The Wisdom of the Hermits (Sayings of Desert Fathers)
- Sexual Continence: Acts of Paul & Thecla, Acts of Thomas
March: Monastic Spirituality & Religious Experience
- Monasteries & Pilgrimage
- Mysticism
- Female Mystics in Western Xnty
April: Mount Athos and Monasticism in Contemporary Eastern Orthodox Christianity
Eastern Orthodox Monastic Mysticism (Palamas; The Philokalia)
Field trip; Athos pilgrimage slides
To Monthly Assignments: January | February | March | April
Themes running through the course:
Religious death/life symbolisms
(ideas of dying to enter real life)
Why Satan, demons & and dualism
Transformation of Apocalypticism
Out of body experience
Suppression of will to live and to be assertive
Sexual suppression and gender issues
Food symbolism and eating
Holiness and purity ideas
Unification with the divine (mysticism)
Ideas about transfiguration and divination of the human being
To Monthly Assignments: January | February | March | April
Questions running through the semester:
- How & Why do we find very similar phenomena in different religious traditions? Are they really the same? Is the religious experience the same?
How can any religious tradition claim to be unique when the religious phenomena (like monasticism and asceticism) of other traditions look the same (understanding how contexts and traditions shape meaning for the individual)
How/why do humans construct a world where rununciation and even dying to the world make sense? (understanding the power of symbolism and symbolic constructions of the world)
Why did the monastic ideal (the celibate priest) come to be the model for the worldly church? How has the dominance of monasticism affected Christian thought?
What has monasticism meant for women through the ages? Are men and women different when it comes to renunciation, mystic experience and symbolisms of life and death?
Maintained by Robert W. Allison
Dept. of Philosophy & Religion and
Classical & Medieval Studies,
Bates College
Lewiston, Maine 04240
Communications may be sent by e-mail to
Robert W. Alllison