Session 5: Humanities Resources for Theo Students
Theological studies are interdisciplinary
"For God's sake, why bring God into everything?" --Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
Philosophy
"See to it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty deceit" (Colossians 2:8)
Why Philosophy?: TPHL500
- Key reference sources
- Key database: Philosopher's Index
- Helpful websites: Databases by subject (scroll down to Philosophy) and another listing
- Making sense of difficult philosophers
- Routledge Critical Thinkers: Bhabha, Derrida, Levinas, Spivak, Zizek....
- Guides for the Perplexed (Continuum): Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Heidegger...
- (finding books in series: use "Exact" search in the catalog)
History
A key distinction:
- Primary source: "A document, datum, or artifact that belongs to the era under examination and that offers the most direct access
to the person or issues being studied."
--James Bradley and Richard Muller, Church History: An Introduction to Research, Reference Works, and Methods (Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 1995), 39 - Secondary sources: "Offer information about an event but stand removed from it either in time or by a process of transmission of information." Ibid., 41.
Key reference sources
- Online
- Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church [Ref BR95 .O8]
- Encyclopedia of Ancient History
- New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1st and 2nd eds, 1967 and 2003 [Ref BX841 .N44; online]
- Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation [Ref BR302.8 .O93 ]
- Encyclopedia of Religion in America [Ref. B2520 E52]
- Encyclopedia of World Methodism, 1974: vol 1 (A-K) andvol 2 (L-Z)
- Salem History: Decades
- Print
- New Westminster Dictionary of Church History (Westminster, 2008) [Ref. BR95 .W496]
- Encyclopedia of Early Christianity (Garland, 1997) [Ref. BR162.2 .E5]
- Dictionary of the Middle Ages, 1982-1989 [Ref. D114 .O94 ]
- Encyclopedia of Protestantism, 2004 [Ref BX4811.3 .E53 ]