"What does it mean to live well?" is one of the most basic and enduring human questions, perennially asked by people who care about their well-being or that of their neighbors. "The Good Life" is a foundational course in the Honors College focused on Christian ethics and character formation, taken in the first semester of a student's first year. It considers the moral practices, virtues, vices, knowledge, and loves that help and hinder individual human flourishing, examining these ideas through the writings of select pagan and Christian poets, novelists, philosophers, and theologians, including Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, C. S. Lewis, and Graham Greene.

The Templeton Chorale is a two-semester ensemble course tailored to teach students how to sing in a choral ensemble. Students will learn notation, correct breathing, posture, and singing techniques, as well as specific strategies to participate competently in fine choral singing. Students will study, analyze, and perform some of the classic choral repertoire of the Western Christian Tradition. Upon completion of this course sequence students will have the ability to sing in a choral ensemble, to understand the basic choral repertoire of the Western musical canon, and to appreciate the art of choral music and literature.

The Templeton Chorale is a two-semester ensemble course tailored to teach students how to sing in a choral ensemble. Students will learn notation, correct breathing, posture, and singing techniques, as well as specific strategies to participate competently in fine choral singing. Students will study, analyze, and perform some of the classic choral repertoire of the Western Christian Tradition. Upon completion of this course sequence students will have the ability to sing in a choral ensemble, to understand the basic choral repertoire of the Western musical canon, and to appreciate the art of choral music and literature.

This course grapples with the history of America as the continuing struggle to complete the "unfinished" work of the American Revolution. That work was rooted in the idea that "all men are created equal" and are granted certain unalienable rights by God their Creator that should be acknowledged and honored by the government. The course will examine three "revolutions" in American history and the kinds of citizens needed to complete the aspirations of the American Revolution. It will examine the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights movement, and will include seminars at strategic locations these revolutions took place, including Valley Forge, Gettysburg, and Philadelphia. These three revolutions represent the ongoing work of the United States to live up to its founding ideals of freedom, dignity, and equality for all people.

Rhetoric, properly understood, is an art that informs a student's character through an understanding of the dynamic relationship between a speaker or writer and his or her audience. Students in this course will study and analyze a broad selection of texts to sharpen their awareness of rhetoric and the use of language. In addition to reading foundational treatises on rhetoric, students will read seminal works from an array of disciplines to learn how rhetoric functions as the basis of written and spoken communication. Careful analysis and thoughtful discussion of these readings will help students develop their own communication skills as they craft their writing and speaking according to rhetorical norms and a good end.

The books that we call the "Old Testament" provide the foundation of our faith in at least three ways: (1) they describe carefully selected events from creation through the fifth century BC/BCE; (2) they contain the poems, prayers, and reflections of wise and creative men and women of God; and (3) they report the declarations of God through his servants the prophets. This course offers an overview of the biblical books of the Old Testament (from Genesis through Malachi), according to the Protestant canon. We will read and study closely select portions of these books for two purposes: (1) in order to gain an overview of the Old Testament (its canonical arrangement and general contents, as well as "key" places, dates, people, and events); and (2) in order to begin to learn how to interact with the various genres of the biblical text in a thoughtful manner (i.e., biblical stories, laws, poems, and prophecies).

The books that we call the "New Testament" [NT] continue the story and themes found in the "Old" Testament [OT]. Although they are not more inspired or more important than the OT, they support our faith in at least three ways: (1) they describe portions of the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ, from before the annunciation of his birth until his ascension into heaven and then his continuing ministry in and through the earliest Church; (2) they contain the writings in which early believers attempt to explain the significance of the life and ministry of Christ; and (3) they remind us of the continuing and culminating work of God. This course offers an overview of the biblical books of the New Testament (from Matthew through Revelation). We will read the entire NT in canonical sequence and discuss selected passages in order to (1) gain an overview of the NT (its canonical arrangement and general contents, as well as "key" places, dates, people, topics, and events); and (2) in order to continue learning how to interact thoughtfully with the various genres of the biblical text, especially biblical stories, epistles, and prophecies.

This course is the first in a three-course series in which we will read and discuss some of the books which made the Western world what it is, so that we may understand ourselves and our world better. This first course investigates how the literature, ideas, and cultures of Mediterranean Christianity, Greece, and Rome came together to lay the foundation for subsequent Western thought and culture. Assuming a knowledge of the Bible, we begin by reading great writers of ancient Greece and Rome, then examine how Augustine used, modified, and criticized these writers in forming the tradition of Western Christian thought.

This course builds on the story that began in HONR 160, tracing how the traditions of Christian, Greek, and Roman thought and culture formed the Christian culture of late antiquity, including monasticism, feudalism, scholasticism, and humanism. It is not merely a course on synthesis, but on the creative way that the Latin Christians looked at the questions left to them by the ancient world about the ordering of the soul according to the virtues, and according to the divine order set forth in Holy Scripture and the revelation in God's creation, including the creative efforts of God's highest creation, the human soul. The course's main emphasis is on the place of love ordering one's soul to God, and how this theme is inescapably present throughout this period.

This course is primarily a science course within a historical timeframe, in which students will study humankind's preconceptions and understanding of the structure and origin of the universe and how these views have influenced belief systems and history. Without a thorough grounding in astronomy and an insight into our ages-long search for comprehending our universe and its origin, one's conceptual paradigm for understanding God and human history is severely limited and anthropocentric. A firm grounding in cosmology also equips the scholar to intelligently interpret the burgeoning field of current astronomical discoveries, as well lovingly and competently discuss controversial issues related to creation and the age of the universe. This course aims to deepen the way students see themselves, their planet, human history, and most importantly, the triune God. Includes observatory experience.

This course engages questions related to justice and the common good by examining major texts and thinkers from the classical tradition up through modern and contemporary philosophical and theological perspectives. Particular attention will be given to differing conceptions of justice and their practical consequences for political organization, the nature and purpose of law, the proper ends of money and wealth, the meaning of work and labor, and the grounds of human dignity and integrity.

The purpose of this course is to examine the common assumptions made by both sides in the debate over the origins of life. Evolutionary mechanisms need bear no terrors for a consistent biblical theist. Neither logic, nor doctrine, nor physical data need be transgressed or ignored within a concursus model of Godharmony through discussions in history, theology, and philosophy, as well as through analysis of the scientific data of current evolutionary biology. Far from removing us from our transcendent roots, a theistic view of evolution can give significance and meaning to the human struggle against evil, and to our search for significance in a spiritual cosmos.

This course engages in a study of mathematical thought in the Western and Christian Tradition from Euclid, through Newton and Leibniz in modernity, and through Cantor and G?del to the present. Attention is paid both to the mathematical work of key figures, and the relationship between their mathematical system and the concurrent development of theological and philosophical thought. Students will read the primary texts of mathematicians and philosophers, learn fundamental mathematical skills, explore the ways in which mathematical thought has interacted wtih the broader tradition of liberal arts education, and will come to see mathematics as the study of the harmony built in to the created order.

Next to the contemplative life, Aristotle views the active lifeaffairs of onethis course, we will consider the merits of the active life through a study of the art of rhetoric. While studying great texts and speeches which discuss and exemplify classical rhetorical theory, students will reflect on the nature of rhetoric and its relationship to the good life, discuss the various modes and techniques of rhetoric, and practice their own rhetorical skills by creating and performing rhetorical discourses.

This course aims to introduce students to the Christian tradition of theological reflection on Christian faith and life, addressing topically the historical formation of basic Christian doctrine concerning Scripture, the Trinity, creation and providence, Christology, grace, salvation, the Church, sacraments, and Last Things.

This concludes the Western Civilization sequence by providing students with an understanding of distinctly modern theories of society generated within the 17th-20th centuries and the American context. The course utilizes sociological, theological, philosophical, and literary texts in order to make sense of the modern world. It explores the evolution and development of "modernity" less as an idea or epoch and more as a set of institutional transformations and practices that emerge from the older tradition, but modify them in fundamental ways. Modernity's legitimating ideologies of emancipation and progress are examined through its key institutional carriers: industrial capitalism, the modern state, and the modern self. In all this, we will keep an eye towards the unintended consequences of these changes and the implicit normative visions embedded within them.

This course explores the development of theological, philosophical, literary, and political ideas in the United States. American political ideas have continually attempted to build a good and just society, balancing the needs of freedom and order by drawing upon classical and Christian sources. Churchmen and philosophers pondered the role of reason and faith in society and the individual, as the democratic environment of America offered new challenges and possibilities. While drawing upon their European heritage, American writers strove to create a distinct literary sensibility and aesthetic. Europeans grappled with perennial issues such as goodness, justice, reason, faith, freedom, and order for centuries. Americans offered their own answers, rooted in their particular culture and environment.

What does beauty have to do with human life and meaning? Why are the arts such a vital part of cultures around the world throughout history? How might art shape us morally and socially? By what criteria should we assess or regulate creative excellence and license? Can artists help revitalize cities, heal trauma, bridge social divides, and cast a prophetic vision for the good society? These are some of the questions that will arise in this course as we will explore the theme of beauty in western thought and art. Our focus will be on the traditional visual arts-sculpture, painting, and architecture-as well as more contemporary media, such as film and photography. We will look at, read about, and discuss a wide range of art forms, while engaging theological and philosophical aesthetics, from antiquity to the present. We will also interact with literary works that thematize beauty and visual art.

Honors seminars are designed to provide students an opportunity to consider specific texts, authors or subjects in a more focused, extended, and intensive way than a typical course affords. These small seminars function in a discussion format, reading from great texts and great minds about great ideas in a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary domains.

The purpose of this course is to provide students with background and understanding of distinctly modern theories of society with a particular focus from the nineteenth century to the present. The course will explore the evolution and development of "modernity" less as an idea or epoch and more as a set of institutional transformations and practices. In the last two hundred years, changes in our understanding of the major spheres of human activity-political, economic, cultural, and religious-have revolutionized how human beings experience the world and their place in it. Our main framework of inquiry will be the empirical and theoretical methods of classical sociology, which take a macro-historical approach to making sense of modern times.

A one-hour (one-credit) seminar in which we practice the close reading of poems, based loosely on Perrine's Sound & Sense.

In this course we will discuss works by the American fiction writer, Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) in the context of Southern regionalism and Christian Realism. As a regionalist, O'Connor is heir to nineteenth century Southern authors who may already be familiar such as Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain and Kate Chopin.? Are her attitudes toward the gothic, satire, humor, and social themes in literature influenced by these earlier writers?? Is her fondness for the short story format inherited from them? Coming after the Southern Renaissance (1920-1950) in the shadow of William Faulkner, O'Connor likely experienced what Harold Bloom has described as the "anxiety of influence." Can her work be seen as a reaction to Southern Renaissance authors? Many of her Southern contemporaries such as Carson McCullers and Erskine Caldwell have been described as writing gothic or grotesque literature.? Does O'Connor's work fit into this genre?? Does she want it to? As a Christian Realist O'Connor explores how people think about God, what He calls them to do, why He calls them to do it, and how He makes his desires known.? How does being a Catholic writer in the "Bible Belt," the Protestant South, affect her work?? What conclusions does she draw about the relationship between God and man and the workings of grace in the world? Finally, O'Connor's use of racial slurs demands that we think about whether her works are appropriate to read in the classroom any longer. Does her writing provide us with something we cannot get anywhere else? Or is the impact of her language so harmful in our contemporary context that she should be removed from our teaching canon?

Several years before his death, Josef Pieper was asked to compile an anthology of his own writings, which became Josef Pieper: An Anthology, a book that might be better titled Josef Pieper: Summa. He also compiled several formal and informal addresses into another of his "thick little books" (as Hans Urs von Balthasar calls them), Only the Lover Sings, a title borrowed from Augustine. Over the course of this term, we will read, discuss, and reflect upon both of these works, using them to introduce our selves to his language and thought, and to the deeper Christian and philosophical traditions upon which he reflected and wrote.

In this course we will be reading and discussing the novel Moby-Dick (1851) by Herman Melville. We will consider its position within the canon of antebellum American Literature established by F.O. Matthiessen in his critical work American Renaissance (1941) and subsequently broadened by David Reynolds in Beneath the American Renaissance (1988). As the Pequod and her crew sail around the world, the narrative touches upon myriad aspects of US political, social, religious and literary culture: social contract theory, the nature of authority, the natural state of man, sermon form, evangelism, missionary work, race relations, abolitionism, women's rights, temperance, political theory, phrenology, tattooing, natural history, workers' rights, the whaling industry, whale processing methods, etc. etc. The narration shift genre constantly touching on epic, tragedy, black comedy, adventure, reform, realism, romance, and gothic.

This course is a special reading course focused on Fyodor Dostoyevsky's masterpiece The Brothers Karamozov. The course will engage in a close study of the work to appreciate more fully its many facets, mostly focusing on the way in which the novel reflects a deep understanding of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. The class will be a seminar in which students will be responsible for engaging in discussion based on their reading of the novel.

Reading, discussing, and responding to The Count of Monte Cristo, a novel that raises and addresses the question of justice, vengeance, and providence, told from within the history of early 19th century France by Alexander Dumas (pere).

The Templeton core curriculum has been designed to nurture in students the cultivation of a rich, integrative, and coherent worldview-a worldview devoid of the common artificial divisions between academic pursuits, spiritual formation, cultural appreciation, and community life. The Honors Capstone is designed to revisit and, in some cases, recover the richness and coherence of an integrative humanistic, Christian worldview. Designed for fourth-year students preparing for graduation, Honors Capstone: The Ordinary Life extends the conversation begun in the freshman course "The Good Life" about a life well-lived and offers students the opportunity to consider the ordinary aspects that will constitute their ordinary lives to come. The course will cover the life of the mind, work, money, home, art, family, friends, church, and place. Moral concepts that frame the course include the Aristotelian ideas of intellectual and moral virtue; the Augustinian concept of rightly ordered loves; and the Thomistic idea of intrinsically good activities. It will draw on readings from the classical to the contemporary eras.

The goal of this course is to understand the origins and development of classical and Christian education and to consider how it might inform the practice of education in our own classrooms and schools. Through reading primary texts from Antiquity through the late Medieval and early Renaissance eras, this course explores fundamental questions related to the philosophy and practice of education: Who should be educated? What is the goal of education? Where should education take place? What are the primary means for education? The course also traces the development of the liberal arts, the changing relationship between Christian educators and pagan texts, the use of rhetoric, and the role of parents and polis in education.

This seminar examines the rise of the modern public school approach to education in America, beginning with the "perfect storm" of the 19th century, which entailed the Western world's fascination with the Prussian school system, fear of communist uprisings (after 1848), fear of a Roman Catholic (i.e., Vatican) "takeover" of the United States (fueled by the "Second Wave" of immigration), the rise of industrialization and the consequent need for factory workers, especially in light of workers' strikes and labour riots and the rise of labour unions. A major goal of this course is to enable classical educators to have informed discussions about the differences between classical and "normal" public schools, and also to better understand their own educational background (since most of us came through that public school system).

Thomas Aquinas argues that teachers uniquely move back and forth between the contemplative life and the active life. First, they love and pursue the truth about certain objects or fields of knowledge. Second, they attempt to nurture a comparable love and understanding within their students. This seminar has three foci, which together addreses this bifid life : (1) the nature of learning (for both teachers and students); (2) the nature and practice of teaching; and (3) the person of the teacher. Each day's session has two parts: (1) the seminar itself, in which we discuss what has been read; and (2) a meta-seminar about that conversation, and how we teachers can better model and lead thoughtful, fruitful conversations.

Teaching is a craft. The goal of this course is to move teachers toward mastering the craft of classical teaching. The end of a traditional craft is a well-made object-a table, cabinet, door, or home. The end of the craft of teaching is more than a well-formed lesson or course, but a virtuous student who has cultivated his or her knowledge, skills, understanding, and loves. This course will explore the idea of teaching as a craft and will help students learn pedagogical skills and techne practiced in the classical tradition and confirmed by contemporary research. Topics include the role of wonder, socratic questioning, seminar, catechism, quaestio, lecture, disputatio, memory devices, assessment, mimesis, and so forth. We will not only learn about these classical techne, but consider how to practice them in contemporary classrooms.

In this course, we will explore the notions of human dignity inherent in different understandings of what it is to be a person. Always in view will be how these varying understandings of dignity and personhood treat persons with various disabilities-physical and mental. Are they kept, in philosopher Raimond Gaita's phrase, 'fully among us'? Or do our very definitions of personhood exclude certain human beings? How do theological reflections affect our understanding of disability and the possibilities for grace and revelation contained therein? Are there secular means for keeping persons with disabilities 'fully among us'? Within the context of such reflections, we will begin to think about our calling to educate students with special needs. In particular, we will spend time thinking about contemporary approaches to disability generally, and reflect on how classical education might particularly serve as a model for restoring humanity to special education.

Education is often shaped by a culture's dominant understanding and expectations of childhood, adolescence, and emerging adults. This course explores anthropological, philosophical, theological, and literary texts in order to understand changing views of "the young person," or as they are commonly called "emerging adults." The course also identifies how these changing views impact education and society more generally. It aims to help students address the following questions: How did different eras view children and adolescents? When did our current understandings emerge, chy, and are they helpful? What philososophies or theologies of personhood are embedded in various understandings of children and childhood? How might these views impact our own teaching?

Thomas Aquinas said that teachers uniquely move back and forth between the contemplative life and the active life: first, we love and pursue the truth about certain objects or fields of knowledge; and secondly, we attempt to nurture a comparable love and understanding within our students. The three foci of this tutorial together address this bifidity: (1) virtue and learning; (2) virtue and teaching; and (3) the school as a polis of virtue. Among the many challenges that face any school are these: (1) reaffirming the school's original mission, or determining whether or not it needs to be modified (and why and how); (2) identifying and describing the school's ethos - what is valued, and its understanding of learning and teaching, the meaning of persons, and the pursuit of virtue (&c.); and (3) perceiving how to maintain its culture, ethos, and identity, whether the school is shrinking, relatively stable, or rapidly growing.

The readings and seminars from the Classical Education and the Black Intellectual Tradition provide a brief introduction to several key themes of the "Great Conversation" that has taken place among esteemed writers from ancient times to the present. Traditionally, the authors included in this Great Conversation have included very few, or even no black intellectuals. Writers of the black intellectual tradition have, however, much to say that contributes directly to this conversation and that is indispensable to rigorous contemplation of ideas such as liberty, equality, freedom, democracy, citizenship, and more, that are core to the conversation.

The reality of truth is the indispensable basis of logic and with it the power of reason, which is to say the ability to give reasons for what one thinks is true. The pursuit of truth distinguishes knowledge, which always means knowing the truth, from the mere acquisition of information. To be liberally educated is to acquire an autobiography that includes one's adventures in the pursuit of truth, and thus the growth of one's capacity for knowledge. Hence this course will include both instruction in logic and reflection on the nature of belief, knowledge, and reason.

Classic authors contend that the literature we encounter shapes us, for good or for ill. Hence this course will investigate how poetry and stories form and perhaps deform us, shaping our moral character and our perceptions. In addition to ancient and contemporary readings in literary criticism, this class will read poetry together, discuss particular stories, and consider how to teach so that what we read forms souls in wisdom and virtue.

'The Good' is the second in a series of three courses on 'The Great Conversation' in Templeton's MAT program in the tradition of classical education. This tradition has always been concerned with the central question: "How ought I to live?" The ancients began their inquiry into this question from the conviction that in order to know how we ought to live, we need to know what is good. But knowing this is not an easy or a straightforward task. In this course, we will explore the nature of the good and the process of how we come to know it. This exploration will lead us into an inquiry about the nature of virtue and from there into questions of where and how we may live the good life. In conversation with ancient and contemporary sources, we will consider topics including leisure, home, community, craft, and technology. Throughout the course, we will consider together how the aspects of the good explored in our various readings and discussions might be integrated into our schools and classrooms, as well as into our own lives. We will end our course together with a week exclusively devoted to how we can teach the good in the classroom.

'The Beautiful' is the third in a series of three courses on 'The Great Conversation.' These courses spring from the conviction that teachers will be most effective at embodying and passing on the classical ethos if they themselves are steeped in the classical tradition. Of the three "transcendentals"-goodness, truth, and beauty-beauty is arguably the most controversial and least understood. This course explores classical and contemporary ideas of beauty, art, and aesthetics, probing such questions as: Is beauty subjective (in the eye of the beholder)? Is beauty merely the servant of the good and the true or does it offer its own pathway to knowledge of reality? In works of art, can depictions of darkness, tragedy, and suffering be said to be beautiful? How does beauty interact with our concepts of the true and the good? The goal is not only to help students understand these concepts, but also to help them love the beautiful and consider how it can be embodied in their curricula, classrooms, and schools, as well as their own lives. Because coming to love art and the beautiful requires more than merely philosophical reflection, this course will also include experiential-poetic-knowledge of a variety of artistic media.

Required forum for the Templeton Honors College