Course 2: Structural Christianity
Complete Course Preview · Read or Listen Before You Enroll
Below is the complete content of the second course in the Master of Christian Catechesis, Structural Christianity. Every textbook. Every assignment. Every audio version. Free to read, free to listen to, free to work through at your own pace.
Course 1 taught you to restore the weight of precise legal terms that English translations had softened. Course 2 teaches you to restore the weight of structural vocabulary that the modern reader has flattened in a different way. Where Course 1's puzzles were about words whose specific legal meanings had been made vaguer, Course 2's puzzles are about words whose entire categories have been converted from one kind of thing into another: reigning converted into place, rank converted into birth order, bounded epochs of time converted into physical matter, a load-bearing foundation stone converted into a decorative ornament, formative paideia converted into punishment.
The move you practice in this course is not just definitional recovery. It is structural restoration. You are learning to see when the English reader has reached for the wrong category of thing entirely, not just the wrong word inside the right category.
How this course is structured. Course 2 follows the same shape as Course 1. Three textbooks plus a synthesis. You read the first textbook, then complete Assignment 1. You read the second textbook, then complete Assignment 2. You read the third textbook, then complete Assignment 3. Finally, you complete Assignment 4, the synthesis, which draws the three subjects into one coherent model in your own catechetical voice. Four credits. Four assignments. One complete way of seeing how the biblical authors thought in wholes rather than in fragments.
The Three Textbooks
Structural Christianity Scope
A vocabulary study in ten words: Logos, Wisdom, Restoration, Mind and Heart, Truth, Covenant, Kingdom, Age and Eon, Beginning, and Spirit. The vocabulary of wholes that the biblical authors reached for when they wanted to describe how the whole creation, the whole story, and the whole life of the believer hang together.
The Language of Pattern Recognition
A vocabulary study in ten words: Foundation, Cornerstone, Rock, Household, Head, Counsel, Correction, Firstborn, Testimony, and Remnant. The specific structural features the biblical authors use as patterns, the concrete load-bearing elements a catechist learns to recognize in any passage.
The Language of Textual Relationships
A vocabulary study in ten words: Watchers, Nephilim, Sons of God, Corruption, Violence, Flood, Grief, Walking with God, Outcry, and Bound in Chains. The tradition that begins in Genesis 6, runs through Second Temple literature, and is picked up by New Testament authors who assume their readers know the material.
The Four Assignments
Each assignment follows the same format you worked through in Course 1: the reading that precedes it, three worked scenarios that model the cross-reference discipline, and the specification for the paper and videos the student produces. Assignments 1 through 3 are one per textbook. Assignment 4 is the synthesis.
Subject 1: Structural Christianity Scope
Complete the first textbook. Choose one of three worked scenarios. Produce a paper of roughly 1,500 words and a recorded video of up to 20 minutes. Respond to three challenge questions in a second video.
Subject 2: The Language of Pattern Recognition
Same format as Assignment 1, applied to the second textbook. The structural-recognition posture begins to settle into the hands. The work you did in Course 1 is paying dividends here.
Subject 3: The Language of Textual Relationships
Same format as Assignments 1 and 2, applied to the third textbook. By Assignment 3 you are working in vocabulary most catechists never touch, and the rhythm of restoration is fluent in your hands.
The Synthesis: Structural Christianity in Your Own Voice
The capstone of Course 2. The student draws the three subjects into a single coherent model in their own catechetical voice. The second place in the program where a student practices the catechist role in the form it will take at the end.