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Passions of God MASTER COURSE
After several years of refining the material and teaching it in various iterations, I’m planning to record a 10-lecture master course: Passions of God in Scripture and Tradition.
But before I finalize all my lectures and actually sit down to record it (quite a bit of work!), I’d like to take a quick poll to see your interest in purchasing such a course in its finished form. Here are the concrete details, then the course description, and then the quick poll at the end.
Concrete Details
The course will be 10 full lectures, along with a syllabus/recommended reading list. You’d get permanent access to everything.
Cost: pre-pub price will be $99; normal price will be $149.
Course delivery time: June.
Course Description
This master course is a comprehensive examination of the four main passions of God found throughout holy Scripture:
God regretting past misdeeds.
God being jealous of Israel.
God being angered by sinners.
God sympathizing with our pain.
Over ten lectures, we will resolve the seeming conflict between (1) holding God’s impassibility (him lacking all passions), and (2) satisfying the letters of holy Scripture (him having these passions). We will be guided by church fathers like Augustine and Origen, and scholastics such as Thomas.
Especially, we will pay attention to the actual sayings of holy Scripture, learning to establish its different readings (ad litteram senses) in the context of competing texts and traditions: e.g., God regretting versus him relenting (using the same Hebrew word); different definitions of anger in Latin scholastic versus Greek patristic traditions (the non-vicious and vicious passion), yielding different ad litteram senses; differences between the Hebrew mercy/sympathy and the Latin-Aristotelian, also yielding different ad litteram senses; etc.
Our aim is twofold: first, to thoroughly familiarize ourselves with the various possible interpretations and their inflections according to these differences; and second, to achieve the overarching principles of interpretation found throughout the “classical” tradition–the whole of which, from Philo to Thomas and beyond, is forced to render all these as various kinds of metaphor, given “divine impassibility.”
By the end of the course, you should be equipped to adequately give the possible interpretations of all scriptural sayings involving passions of God.
The Poll
Would you take the following poll, to express your feelings about such a course? Additionally, if you have other thoughts/ideas/suggestions/etc., do leave them in the comments.