Primary Authors & Sources
PHIL-202 builds its reading list from required primary and classical sources in renaissance revivals and modern epistemological shifts. The authors below are read as teachers across the centuries, not as entries in a bibliography. Petrarch contributes Letters to Classical Authors, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study. Desiderius Erasmus contributes In Praise of Folly, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study. Thomas More contributes The Utopia, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study. Michel de Montaigne contributes The Essays of Montaigne, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study. Francis Bacon contributes Advancement of Learning and Novum Organum and Bason's Essays, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study.
Taken together, these readings form a coherent conversation across centuries — students encounter real arguments, not flattened summaries. Rene Descartes contributes The Philosophical Works of Descartes and The Philosophical Works of Descartes, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study. Thomas Hobbes contributes Leviathan, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study. Benedictus de Spinoza contributes Ethic Demonstrated in Geometrical Order and Divided into…, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study. Ephraim Emerton contributes The Defensor Pacis of Marsiglio of Padua, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study. Edwin Abbot contributes Francis Bacon, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study.
What You Will Study
Students study Renaissance humanism, the recovery of classical letters, and early modern epistemological shifts that prepared Enlightenment challenges to Christian authority. The course covers Petrarch, Erasmus, Machiavelli, and transitional figures who questioned scholastic method while not uniformly abandoning Christian faith. Readings examine humanist biblical philology, its contribution to Reformation, and its unintended role in elevating human autonomy and critical reason over ecclesiastical tradition. Students analyze how Renaissance art, politics, and learning reshaped European consciousness before Descartes and Locke. Attention falls on Erasmian influence on Protestant and Catholic reform movements and on tensions between textual scholarship and doctrinal commitment still relevant for evangelical academics today.
Course Objectives
Objectives include narrating key Renaissance intellectual developments, explaining humanist contribution to biblical scholarship and Reformation debates, evaluating Machiavellian political realism against biblical ethics, and writing essays on epistemological shifts from authority-based to critical models of knowledge. Students will compare Erasmus and Luther on free will and Scripture with fairness and confessional clarity. The course cultivates historical perspective on modern assumptions about individual judgment and cultural progress. Students will identify Renaissance roots of contemporary evangelical biblicism and secular humanism alike. Assessments require primary source summaries and critical reflection on humanism's mixed legacy for Protestant churches.
Ministry & Life Application
Renaissance and humanist history explains the cultural soil from which both Reformation renewal and Enlightenment skepticism grew, equipping leaders to navigate tradition, reason, and Scripture wisely. Ministers who understand this era can guide congregants tempted by progressive narratives that despise medieval faith or by traditionalism that fears scholarly inquiry. House church teachers in the Florida Keys gain perspective on Bible study movements and cultural engagement. Pastoral ministry benefits from Erasmian reminder that Christ must be preached purely even when textual tools multiply. Congregations flourish when elders neither fear learning nor idolize human wisdom above God's Word.