Charles Dickinson

Tuesdays, February 2-April 13 (not March 30)
10:00 a.m - 12:00 noon, 10 sessions
Church of the Advent (enter on Mt. Vernon Street)

It has been said that there is more of "ethics" in any number of the ancient Greek tragedies than in all of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Perhaps so; it remains to be seen. We will look at eight Greek tragedies to see the weighty ethical lessons they have to teach us. Starting with “the true creator of tragedy,” we will first look
at Aeschylus’s “Oresteia” trilogy consisting of Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, and Eumenides. At one point we will be treated to JoAnne Dickinson’s dramatic presentation of Euripides’ Medea. We will conclude with Sophocles, “who saw life steadily, and saw it whole,” and his Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus; then – to bridge the story – Aeschylus’s Seven Against Thebes; and finally Sophocles’ perennially relevant Antigone.

Charles Dickinson III has a B.A. from Dartmouth College, B.D. from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. in theology from the University of Pittsburgh. He studied at Chicago, in Germany, at Yale, Oxford and Harvard. He has taught languages, Bible, theology, philosophy, humanities and linguistics in Zaire, Africa; Richmond, VA; Charleston, WV; Rome and China. He published The Dialectical Development of Doctrine in 1999 and, most recently, has taught at Andover-Newton Theological School. He has led courses for BHS for many years.