Degree Programs

General Education

Year One
Year Two

Year One

In the first year of undergraduate study, students read, write, and conduct research on the Great Texts of the Ancient Greek, Roman, Early Christian, Early Islamic, and Medieval worlds.

Each week, they have three discussion classes and one individual tutorial on these Great Texts. The reading load for these discussions and tutorials is both demanding and rewarding, and by the end of Year One, the students will have read and studied over 35 classic texts in their entirety, including Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Plato’s Republic, Virgil’s Aeneid, Augustine’s City of God, John Damascene’s Treatises on the Holy Images, and Dante’s Divine Comedy, as well as the entire Bible and Qur’an.

First Year students also take courses in Classical Geometry and The Classical Cosmos.

Year Two

In the second year of undergraduate study, students at Saint Constantine read, write, and conduct research on the Great Texts of the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Modern worlds.

Each week, they attend three discussion classes and one individual tutorial on these Great Texts. By the end of Year Two, the students have read and studied over 50 texts in their entirety, including Machiavelli’s The Prince, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of a Slave, Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, and King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” By the end of Year Two, students have experienced a rigorous overview of the texts and ideas that have shaped both the Eastern and the Western Christian consciousness.

Second Year students also take courses in Biology, Greek I, and Greek II.

The B.A. in Great Texts of the Christian Tradition

Having completed their chronological overview of Great Texts, students in Years Three and Four begin to study the great authors in tremendous depth, and have their choice of two degree emphases:

Literature and Religion, or
Philosophy of Religion

In their upperclassman years, students dig deeper in their study of great writers and are apprenticed in the research, writing, and dialectical skills required at the graduate level.

The Bachelor of Arts in Great Texts of the Christian Tradition (GTCT) is an interdisciplinary course of study that apprentices students in the core texts and authors of the classical, Christian tradition, from Plato and the New Testament to Shakespeare and his modern inheritors. Special focus is placed on the role of the philosophy and literature of classical antiquity and early Christianity in the development of the philosophy and literature of the medieval and modern worlds.

In addition to core Great Texts discussions and tutorials, students may choose, through upper division electives, to specialize in either Literature and Religion or Philosophy of Religion.

Through rigorous discussion and individualized tutorials, the student who majors in Great Texts of the Christian Tradition are prepared to pursue a wide variety of careers in Christian education, leadership, and scholarship.

At a Glance: Great Texts of the Christian Tradition

36 credits of upper division Great Texts discussions and tutorials focusing on the major classics of ancient Greek, Medieval Christian, and English Renaissance literature, philosophy, and theology
12 credits of upper division electives in either Literature and Religion (includes Literary Theory) or Philosophy of Religion (includes Logic)
Capstone Senior Thesis with a special focus on either Literature or Philosophy

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