Semester Two’s Doctrine, Truth and Pluralism unit is now being offered as an intensive unit, running in July and October, 2016. This makes it an ideal study opportunity for prospective students who may struggle to commit to a weekly lecture-style unit.

Taken by Geoff Thompson, Doctrine, Truth and Pluralism explores the highly-charged interface between these three phenomena. The unit will examine issues such as:

“Doctrine divides experience unites.” | “All claims to truth are arrogant.” | “Pluralism is essential for a multi-faith society”.

What kinds of truth claims can, or must, the church make to be the church? Is doctrine an embarrassing relic of a rationalist insistence on belief over practice? How does the church bring its convictions to the almost irreducible plurality of competing, overlapping and sometimes shared visions of life in the contemporary world?

Students in this unit will have the opportunity to explore the place of doctrine as a dynamic resource for shaping the church’s collective imagination and embedding Christianity’s truth claims in the practices which emerge from that imagination. How doctrine functions in the church and how it relates to hermeneutics, contextual theology, and denominational diversity will also be studied. Students will come away from this unit with an appreciation that Christian doctrine is a dynamic and imaginative enterprise. It is not something over and against pluralism, but that it is a conversation partner with the (usually unacknowledged) doctrines of pluralism.

An ideal unit for UCA ministers pursuing continuing education opportunities, postgraduate students and those people looking to explore the big issues of doctrine, truth and pluralism, this unit is running in two parts:

Part 1
9.30am-5.30pm, Friday, 29 July
9.30am-4.30pm, Saturday 30, July

Part 2
9.30am-5.30pm, Friday, 7 October
9.30am-5.30pm, Saturday, 8 October
11am-5pm, Sunday, 9 October

View the course video for more details.

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