Ancient Baffles and Modern Times: Teaching Ultimate Questions

Abstract

A special challenge of theology courses in the private liberal arts college is the ability to maintain an institutional commitment to identifiable moral and religious values while at the same time respecting the personal and academic integrity of a pluralistic student body. The Ultimate Questions course has been constructed to introduce such students to fundamental religious questions, problems and critiques and to demonstrate that these considerations begin in a wide variety of human experiences, activities and conceptualizations. Having depended on such thinkers as Tillich and Rahner to suggest that the religious problem is ultimately the human question, the course turns to an investigation of mainline Christian doctrine, worship and praxis as distinctive responses to the ultimate questions.