Course 5: Broken Interfaces
Complete Course Preview · Read or Listen Before You Enroll
Below is the complete content of the fifth course in the Master of Christian Catechesis, Broken Interfaces. Every textbook. Every assignment. Every audio version. Free to read, free to listen to, free to work through at your own pace.
We publish it this way because we think the best case for a program is the program itself. A brochure can promise anything. A curriculum has to hold up under a reader. If you want to know what four credit hours of serious catechetical formation looks like at this stage of the program, you can find out by doing the fifth course, not by reading about the fifth course.
If the material reaches you, enroll. If it does not, you will have spent nothing and still come away with three textbooks worth of careful vocabulary study in the anthropology of the believing creature, which is not a small thing on its own.
What this course is about. A human being is, among other things, an interface — a place where two sides meet. Course 5 hands the catechist the vocabulary for what the human interface is, what it was designed to do, what happens when it breaks, and what it looks like when it is being put back into working order. The first four courses trained the catechist's reading, structural recognition, diagnostic precision, and philosophical care. Course 5 adds anthropology: the capacity to explain to a believer what kind of creature the believer is, what shape the break takes in that creature, and what the restoration looks like in architectural terms.
How this course is structured. Course 5 is built around 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 anthropological framework in your own voice. Four credits. Four assignments. One complete vocabulary for the creature that receives, the creature that has fallen, and the creature that hears and answers.
The Three Textbooks
The Language of the Receiving Creature
A vocabulary study in ten words: Rest for the Soul, Yoke, Meek, Weariness, Weakness, Thirst, Living Water, Abide, Vine and Branch, and Vapor. The catechist's vocabulary for the creature that receives before it generates, and the posture at the center of its aliveness.
The Language of the Fall
A vocabulary study in ten words: Babel, Tongue, Scatter, Generations, Seed, Groaning, Eager Expectation, Firstfruits, Resurrection, and Transformation. The vocabulary of the fracture the creature carries, the arc from Babel through Pentecost, and the shape of the repair.
The Language of Speech and Hearing
A vocabulary study in ten words: To Hear, Voice, Mouth, Silence, Meditation, Spoken Word, Writing, Parable, Ear, and To Bless. The vocabulary of the interface between word and life, where the creature meets its Maker in speech and in listening.
The Four Assignments
Each assignment is a complete work package: the reading that precedes it, three worked scenarios that model the anthropological move the course is training, 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: The Language of the Receiving Creature
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 the Fall
Same format as Assignment 1, applied to the second textbook. The scenarios turn from the creature's posture to the fracture the creature carries, and to the vocabulary of the repair.
Subject 3: The Language of Speech and Hearing
Same format as Assignments 1 and 2, applied to the third textbook. The scenarios work the interface between word and life, where hearing and answering are a single motion.
The Synthesis: Broken Interfaces in the Catechist's Voice
The capstone of Course 5. The student draws the three subjects into a single coherent anthropological framework in their own voice, handing it over as a catechist would to a believer who has never been given the framework before.