Course Introduction
Hi everyone, and welcome to the Theological Foundations course.
This course is intended to give an introduction to the purpose, activity and content of the discipline known as theology. This is an introductory course. However, it attempts to be intellectually significant, without overwhelming with irrelevant details. It is intended to help the student understand and begin studying the things taught and believed in the Christian faith and apply them to their current life.
I have taught this material at the college level for years. And I'm now making this material available for schools, churches, small groups, and individuals who would like to know God's Word better. I'm fortunate to be able to offer this material without charge, but please don't assume that it is low quality because it is free. This course has been proven in many educational settings, and I have worked hard to make this material beneficial at many levels. Feel free to use this material in any way that honors Christ and advances His kingdom.
Introduction Video:
This is a brief video which introduces the nature of this course and what you will accomplish through this course. Click the banner below to open the video.
Course Description
The official description of this course is: An introduction to theology to provide students with a starting point and system for discovering and discerning Christian theology. Students will learn a rationale for developing theologically, skills for articulating doctrine, and a framework for systematic theology. Along the way, students will choose an area of interest in theology and go through the process in order to learn about sources, practice the skills, and intentionally deepen their understanding of God and His ways with mankind.
What You'll Accomplish
Who should take this course?
This course is aimed to be useful for a broad spectrum of students. This course is an introductory survey of the Teaching of the Bible and how to learn the Bible's teaching for yourself. Therefore, it is aimed for people with little or no previous knowledge of Theology. However, this course can also be beneficial to those with significant previous exposure.
This course is primarily designed to help Christians grow in their faith. But it will also be informative for any person who would like to be better informed about the what Christians believe and how they come to this understanding. This course will give a systematic survey of the main ideas taught in the Christian Bible.
This material was originally taught at the college level, but it is accessible to almost any level, because it is a beginner level course.
And this course has been designed to be used by either an individual, or by a group. Therefore, it is appropriate for churches, colleges, schools, small groups, or any group or individual who wishes to understand the Bible's teaching better.
Course Objectives (Cognitive):
Upon successful completion of this course, each student should be able to:
- Describe the nature, necessity, means, and goals of Christian theology.
- Follow a systematic procedure for investigation and application of theological issues.
- Articulate an organized framework for theological truth that is faithful to Biblical organization.
- Formulate a survey understanding of the Biblical teaching of the nature of God, the nature of the universe, the nature of humanity, and the nature of God's revelation to humanity.
- Formulate a survey understanding of the Biblical teaching on the nature of Jesus and His work, Christian salvation and life, the Holy Spirit, the nature and mission of the church, and the final consummation of God's work in this world.
Course Goals (Mindset and Skills):
Upon successful completion of this course, each student should have opportunity to:
- Demonstrate a commitment to the primary functional authority of Scripture in all theological work.
- Read and understand the Bible in a manner that is consistent with the nature of the Bible and the way it communicates.
- Demonstrate how their personal theology is an outworking of the Gospel of Christ crucified, raised, and reigning as Lord.
- Demonstrate a commitment to reject false worldviews and to conform their thoughts, affections, and actions to the true nature of all reality.
- Investigate and synthesize the teaching of the Bible on any topic into a coherent, systematic summary, and faithfully apply this teaching to relevant issues and questions.
- Demonstrate a commitment to the priority application of Biblical truth to all areas of life and ministry.
- Demonstrate a commitment to reject false lifestyles, and to conform their thoughts, affections, and actions to God's unique design for them as individuals, and to God's corporate design for all of human society.
How This Course Works
Course Syllabus
Click the following link to access the course syllabus, which gives detailed overview, explanation, instruction, and resources for the entire course.
Course Concept Map
This course is divided into five modules covering four basic groups of concepts, skills, and truths. The fourth and fifth modules cover the same kind of material, but break the larger amount of material into two smaller modules to facilitate learning. There is a logical progression to the design of this course, as described in the Concept map below. Click the link to view the concept map.
Resources & Activities Video
This is a brief video, which describes the course resources and the student activities which make up this course.
Course Textbooks
the following resources are required for this course, and the student is responsible to acquire them for use in this course:
Required Textbooks
The Holy Bible in a literal [formal equivalent] or dynamic equivalent [functional equivalent] translation (a paraphrase, such as The Message or The Voice is not appropriate for this course).
Grudem, Wayne, Bible Doctrine: Essential Teachings of the Christian Faith, Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1999.
This textbook may be obtained in more than one format, both of which are appropriate for this course:
Jamieson, Bobby, Sound Doctrine, Wheaton, Crossway, 2013. ISBN: 978-0830839759
Kapic, Kelly M., A Little Book for New Theologians: Why and How to Study Theology, Downers Grove, InterVarsity, 2012. ISBN: 978-0830839759
Recommended Supplemental Resources
Sproul, R. C., Everyone's a Theologian, Orlando, Reformation Trust, 2014.
This textbook may be obtained in more than one format, all of which are appropriate for this course:
Grudem, Wayne, C. John Collins, & Thomas R. Schreiner, eds., Understanding the Big Picture of the Bible, Wheaton, Crossway, 2012. ISBN: 978-1433531620
Course Resources
The following resources are made available to the student as part of this course:
Video Lectures
Each module contains a number of lectures on video. The videos cover a portion of the course material. And they also include reviews at the end to summarize the teaching of each section. It is recommended that the student not just passively watch the videos, but actively interact with the course material. These can all be watched from the course website or, if you prefer, there are links to each video in the Rumble or YouTube interface, in addition to an audio only version for download. Study Guides and Blank lecture notes and are included before each video for your benefit. And a slide-show review and review quiz is provided after each video for to summarize and reinforce the teaching of each section.
Reviews
As mentioned earlier, each video lecture contains summary reviews. The review material for each module is gathered into a slide-show, so that the student can view all the review material for each module in a convenient format.
Quizzes & Discussions
In addition to the review quizzes included with each video lecture, each module has a review quiz to review and test the student's understanding and retention of the course material for the entire module. Most of the questions come from the video Lectures, but the required textbook reading is also fair game for the review quizzes. The questions are objective type questions and are automatically graded. The quiz questions are randomly generated from a larger bank of questions, so that the quiz is different each time. Therefore, the student may profitably take the quiz more than once to see more questions.
And each module has a list of discussion type questions which concentrate on thematic issues and application of course material. If the student is working through this course as an individual, these questions can be used for personal reflection and meditation. If the course is taken in a group setting, these questions are appropriate for group discussion, or possibly for essay questions on an exam, if the group leader chooses. These questions are also randomly generated from a larger bank of questions, so that they will be different each time.
Course Documents
The following documents (in addition to the syllabus above) are relevant throughout the entire course, and so, they are included on this introduction page to cover the whole class. They are also made available in every module in which they are necessary. You may wish to look them over now, and then review them whenever they are relevant.
Instruction Documents
Each module contains links that open documents which contain detailed instructions for all the module's activities. There are two different instruction documents in each module. One is for a person who is working through this course on their own, with instructions for individual activities. The other instruction document is for people working through this course in a group setting. And it contains instructions for group activities.
There is also a detailed instruction documents for the (optional) ongoing activity across all modules. This can be found below in the Course Documents
section as well as instructions for this activity in every module.
Textbook Reading Schedules/Study Guides
For each module, there is a document which specifies which portions of the course textbooks should be read for the module. It also lists supplemental readings which would be very beneficial if the student would wish to dig deeper into the material. And these documents contain a study guide to help the student get the most understanding and retention out of their textbook reading.
Supplemental and Reference Documents
Some modules contain documents which supply supplemental information relevant to the module. These are contained or linked in the appropriate module when they should be needed.
Course Schedule
This course is divided into five modules based on the content. Therefore, each module has a different amount of material, and will take a different amount of time. The course is designed so that an individual student can go at their own pace.
In the past, this course has been taught as a 16 week course and in a 5 week intensive format where each module was covered in one week. Below, I have included those schedule as well as an extended section by section schedule as a possible guideline for groups.
Whether you are working through this course as an individual or as a group, I recommend finding whatever schedule works best for you. And I encourage you to remain faithful to completing this course and growing in your theological knowledge and practice.
Course Bibliography
Below you will find a document which gives a detailed list of various resources for further study. This is not an exhaustive list, but will give you a head start at some of the resources available
(optional) Theology Project
The student may create a project that will span all five modules of this course. The project will examine one theological topic of the student's choosing from a number of different perspectives, following a general theological method learned in this course. This project will be composed of five separate activities, one from each module. The link below contains detailed instructions for the entire project. And specific instructions for each module is included in each module throughout the course.
Course Activities
There are three basic groups of student activities for each module: intake activities, interaction activities, and application activities. In each of the activities, the student should concentrate on gaining knowledge, but also focus on conforming their attitudes and lifestyle to the course material, as they use this course to know and serve Christ more wisely, intentionally, and intelligently.
Intake of course information -
The intake activities are designed for the student to gain access to and receive relevant information about the course topics. Because of the nature of Christian theology being response to God's revelation, it is important that the student start with a humble listening posture, to receive information and insight in the faith delivered once and for all to the saints. There is certainly a time for the student to contribute their insights (in the next two types of activities), but it is important to start with receiving the information. This does not mean the student should be passive in these activities. Rather the student should actively engage with the course material, with a goal to listen and learn.
Interaction with course information -
The interaction activities are designed for the student to thoughtfully process and mull over the information until they thoroughly understand it and have it committed to memory. The student will rehearse the information in a variety of ways and assess how well they have understood and retained the course content.
Application of course information -
And finally, the application activities are designed for the student to solidify their understanding by working through the ways that the course information connects with their own life and ministry in current society. The process of learning is not complete until the information is put into practice.
Detailed activity instructions -
Detailed instructions for all course activities are included in each module in slightly different forms for either individual or group study. See the Student Guide or Group Guide in each module for a description of this module's activities.
How This Website Works
The layout of this website is intended to be fairly self-explanatory. You follow each module, in order, from top to bottom, completing each activity in the order it is given.
In order to keep each page from being too long, requiring the student to scroll forever, much of the material is hidden at first, and the student may click to access the material as it is needed. There are two general types of triggers on this website that will reveal hidden material, demonstrated below.
Links to Internal Documents
Many documents, such as instruction sheets and study guides are embedded into each module. If your browser allows display of pdf documents, these links will open on the same module page, with appropriate buttons to download, print, zoom, etc. those documents as your browser's settings allow. If your browser does not have a resource to read pdf documents, this link will appear and function the same as the link to External Documents, as described below. Click the link below to see an example of this type of embedded document and to test your browser's functionality.
Links to External Documents
Some documents are hosted on external websites, and are linked to those other pages. These links will open the external documents on another page or tab in your browser. The links themselves are displayed in a slightly different shape to indicate that it will lead to an external page. Click the link below to see an example of a link to a different page.
Links to Various Activities
Various activities such as quizzes, videos, etc. can be accessed by clicking on the icon such as the one below. Clicking these icons will trigger access to the activity.
Sorry, but there is not really an activity here. This is just an example to demonstrate the activity triggers you will see on this site. You may click the banner above to close this lame excuse for an activity.
Main Navigation Menu
The menu at the top of the page may be used to jump to any module in this course at any time. This menu should be self-explanatory.
Links to the Next Module
At the bottom of each module is a link to the next module. Directly below is an excellent example of this. I pray that you will be able to find your way around this site with no issues and get the most out of this course.
Getting Started
At any time, you can click the menu at the top to jump to any module in this course. Or you can click the button below to begin Module 1. I hope you enjoy, and I pray that you grow in understanding of Christian Theology and in devotion to Jesus Christ, Who is the center and Lord of all Christian theology.
