The purpose of this course is to hone skills at the doctoral level in various tasks of hermeneutics (fancy word for interpretation) necessary for preaching and religious education. Religious life has both ultimate predicaments and ultimate ecstatic fulfillments. These can be sorted roughly into five basic problematics that take various forms in nearly all religions, although this course will focus on Christianity with some informal treatments of other religions. These problematics are (1) living under obligation, with issues of righteousness, discernment of justice and morality, guilt, and forgiveness, (2) the quest for personal wholeness, with issues of suffering, brokenness, dignity, and sanctification, (3) the engagement of others, with issues of ingroup/outgroup distinctions, loving enemies, loving in different ways, and loving nature, (4) the attainment of a value-identity in ultimate perspective, with issues of the meaning of life and coping with finitude and ambiguity, and (5) gratitude for sheer existence, with issues of radical contingency, affirmation of life and death, and union with and distance from God. Each of these problematics singly and in combination with others has been called "salvation," but the complexity of religion requires that they be thought together and each one interpreted to the others. The four domains of hermeneutics (scripture, experience, tradition, and reason) will be explored through the grid of these five religious problematics.