Upcoming Courses
Flexible courses
study in person or online
All Orthodox studies courses within the Faculty of Divinity at Trinity College are available online, and most have returned to also being offered in person.
For online courses, please note that courses vary in terms of asynchronous (materials and activities which can be accessed and completed at any time) or synchronous (live scheduled activities) delivery. Please check with the individual course instructor and the course syllabus to ensure you understand how the course will be delivered.
We understand that accessing education can often present even greater challenges for those with special needs, particularly remotely and during these difficult times. As well as registering with U of T’s accessibility services, please let us know if there is anything we can do to make our courses more accessible.
All times given are Eastern time zone.
View the full listing of Faculty of Divinity courses for 2022-23 on the main Trinity College website >
Students at Trinity College may also register for any courses across the Toronto School of Theology >
Listed below are the subset of Faculty of Divinity courses in 2022-23 that count towards the Concentration in Orthodox and Eastern Christian Studies existing fully within Trinity College’s CTS, MTS, and MDiv programmes.
Fall 2022 (September to December)
Modern Orthodox Theology — 15th to 21st centuries (TRH2452)
Dr Paul Ladouceur
In-person and synchronous online section: Mondays and Thursdays, 7pm to 9pm (irregular schedule over two three-week sessions)
Note that online students may also participate asynchronously if desired
This course will allow students to familiarize themselves with the principal theologians, themes and writings of modern Orthodox theology. The course will highlight the two main theological approaches of the 20th century, “religious philosophy” and “neo-patristic” theology, mindful of both personal and theological convergences and divergences among the leading figures.
Living Tradition: Reading the New Testament (TRT2110)
Dr Daniel Opperwall
In-person and synchronous online section: Tuesdays, 7pm to 9pm
Note that online students may also participate asynchronously if desired
This course is a required survey of the New Testament books in their historical and religious background with attention to hermeneutics, the patristic exegetical heritage, and modern biblical studies. The New Testament will be read in its entirety in this course, along with other early Christian texts and literature from the same period, commentaries by Church Fathers and writings by modern theologians.
Salvation Is from the Jews: Christianity and Judaism in Theological Perspective and Dialogue (TRT2680)
Fr Geoffrey Ready
In-person and synchronous online section: Wednesdays, 7pm to 9pm
Note that online students may also participate asynchronously if desired
The relationship between Christianity and Judaism is central to the identity of Christians and the church. Yet for much of the past two millennia, from the “parting of the ways” in the first and second centuries, the story of Christians and Jews has been difficult and troubled, culminating in the tragic events of the 20th century. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, there has been a renewed engagement between the two traditions, and with a proliferation of scholarship and deepening of knowledge of Second Temple Judaism over the last half century, a joint effort has been made by Christians and Jews to correct historical inaccuracies and prejudices and amend theological traditions that had separated Jesus and Paul from their Jewish contexts and driven a hard wedge between communities sharing faith in the one God of Israel. This course will delve into key elements of this new scholarship and rekindled dialogue, enabling students to apply these insights across their theological studies and pastoral practice.
Winter/Spring 2023 (January to April)
Sanctification of Time: Orthodox Liturgy of the Hours and Liturgical Year (TRP2171)
Fr Geoffrey Ready
In-person and synchronous online section: Mondays, 7pm to 9pm
Note that online students may also participate asynchronously if desired
The aim of this course is to explore the way in which the church over the centuries has employed the various cycles of time — daily, weekly, and annual — to redirect our lives toward the kingdom of God, which is our ultimate goal. Just as all the major passages of our lives, from birth to death, are sanctified, so also is the daily course of life. The approach will be primarily historical, moving through the origin and development of the cycles of time in both Judaism and Christianity.
The first half of the course will focus on the daily cycle, the liturgy of the hours, which is the most primitive: Vespers, Compline, Midnight Office, Mattins, the Little Hours and Typical Psalms. The second part will focus on the annual cycles of the liturgical year, including the moveable paschal cycle, as well as the cycle of fixed feasts and commemoration of saints.
Orthodox Life I: Eastern Christian Understanding of Ethics and the Person (TRT3913)
Fr Geoffrey Ready (with Prof Richard Schneider)
In-person and synchronous online section: Wednesdays, 7pm to 9pm
Note that online students may also participate asynchronously if desired
Eastern Christian theology is all-too-often thought of as having its primary concern for formal issues: dogmatics and doctrine, liturgy, iconography, and so on. But in fact, Eastern Christian theology has only one primary purpose – the divinization of life itself – and the East-Christian world-outlook embraces all those formal fields, not merely as intellectual resources for illuminating the Truth, but rather as necessary knowledge framing and making possible the life of the soul on its path to God. In this understanding, the primary reason for the gift of life – life which is the eschaton of Creation – is so all that lives within the framework of Creation can reveal, witness, incorporate within itself, the Holy.
History of the Eastern Churches, 1204 to the 21st Century (TRH2414)
Dr Daniel Opperwall
In-person and synchronous online section: Thursdays, 7pm to 9pm
Note that online students may also participate asynchronously if desired
The Orthodox churches today are a group of dynamic communities building new, yet consciously traditional identities in the West as well as in traditionally Orthodox countries now free from Communism, while still struggling for the same goals in places of continuing repression such as Egypt and Syria. Freedom, identity, survival, and the encounter with modern Catholic and Protestant thought will mark the terms of Orthodoxy’s engagement with the rest of the 21st Century.
In this course we will explore the story of modern Orthodoxy, and the thinkers, bishops, priests, laypeople, and monastics who have made it what it is, and who will define its future in an ever-changing world. Who are the Orthodox, where have the been in recent centuries, what makes them unique today, and what will define them tomorrow? Join us as we ask these questions through the most engaging primary sources, the best in modern secondary scholarship, and plenty of good conversation.