Books for Further Reading

We discussed some books in class in our last session, and as promised I'm giving you a short list of these here. I do most of my book shopping at http://www.bookfinder.com/, a site which searches a lot of different booksellers (Amazon included) and gives you the best price, including shipping.

For Christian Thought, our main textbook is Created for Community by Stanley Grenz. For a basic introduction to the course I use Who Needs Theology? by Stanley Grenz and Roger Olson (I see it listed by just Grenz as well as Grenz and Olson - same book). I also have my students do a "Life Response Project" out of The Life You've Always Wanted by John Ortberg, because theology is not just about correct thinking, but much more importantly about living correctly as a member of God's kingdom. This assignment/book results in something very unusual every semester: thank you notes from students for the work I've assigned! If you decide you want to go much deeper after you've finished these, I heartily recommend Christian Theology: An Introduction by Alistair McGrath. It's available in a number of editions, and any of them from the third edition on are worth getting (just in case you find a big difference in price between 3rd, 4th, and 5th editions).

We actually started our discussion on books with the topic of church history. An excellent and non-boring look at history with an eye to theology is The Story of Christian Theology (also listed as The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition & Reform - get whichever is cheaper) by Roger Olson. I also like the two-volume set The Story of Christianity by Justo Gonzalez.

Have fun meeting some of my friends!

Link for Christian Thought outlines

For anyone following along with our discussion on God's story and our place in it, I have a link here for the outlines we'll be using. These are in Microsoft Word format, and you can download them and use them for organizing your notes as we discuss things.

I'm sharing them from SugarSync, which is an excellent way of putting resources up for others to access. They offer free storage, and you can check my post in my TechRoadShow blog for some of the ways I use this. You might find some of these ideas useful as well.

Looking forward to another session tomorrow with the class at Cedar Park! We'll be discussing perhaps the most crucial element of actually doing the work of a theologian: judging what is true, and just how important that particular truth is. (Just in case that's set off sirens in your mind, while my choice of favorite color and my choice of belief about God's existence both are "truths", one of these is much more important than the other!)

See you tomorrow, I hope!

Christian Thought class at Cedar Park

I'm very excited to be launching into a new class at Cedar Park. We met this last Sunday (Nov 27th) for the first time, and covered some of the basic definitions of what theology is and means. It was a great group, and I'm looking forward to the series.

For anyone who would like to subscribe to a weekly feed of the class, here are some links:

iTunes with audio and video - itpc://panopto.northwestu.edu/Panopto/Podcast/Podcast.ashx?courseid=7519af72-c344-42f4-8b88-07fb0035db42&type=mp4

iTunes with audio only - itpc://panopto.northwestu.edu/Panopto/Podcast/Podcast.ashx?courseid=7519af72-c344-42f4-8b88-07fb0035db42&type=mp3

RSS feed with audio and video - http://panopto.northwestu.edu/Panopto/Podcast/Podcast.ashx?courseid=7519af72-c344-42f4-8b88-07fb0035db42&type=mp4

RSS feed with audio only - http://panopto.northwestu.edu/Panopto/Podcast/Podcast.ashx?courseid=7519af72-c344-42f4-8b88-07fb0035db42&type=mp3

Holler in the comments below if you need some help with what to do with these links. Otherwise, those who are a part of the class, either gathering in person each week, or joining us in cyberspace, welcome!

Halloween - Holy or Defiled?

This last Sunday (Oct 30th) was a sad day for me at Calvary Christian Assembly, as we finished off our session on Romans and I said goodbye to friends who love studying God's Word. (At the same time, I was excited to see the love of my life again, as Rosemarie returned from a three-week doctoral research and studies stint in Springfield.) We blazed through Romans 14-16, and spent some time on the issue of "disputable matters" in chapter 14.

As a child growing up in a quite conservative German church in Canada, I was trained to see Halloween as an example of depravity and evil, or at least that's what I recall. This was by no means the view of all believers in our small town, and I have a vague recollection of doing some trick-or-treating, but have difficulty figuring out how that happened! In the course of our class I brought up, in passing, the issue of Halloween as a "disputable matter".

It is good to think and to learn. One of the things which I had read just prior to our session was the Internet Monk rant on Halloween, presented by someone who had grown up in a likewise conservative setting, but had a very different recollection of Halloween: fun without any taint of the occult. And then I read this article by David Mathis on why Luther chose Oct 31st as the day for the nailing of the 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg: it was a day that celebrated the triumph of good over evil, among other things.

Hmmm... that's not what I had understood growing up, and yet I like that idea. Not as an excuse to have fun, but as a true expression of Romans 12:21 - "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." Whatever your view on this particular day, may we be those who overcome evil with good!

Any thoughts to share in the comments?

Governments and Capital Punishment

This last Sunday, our topic was the interaction of citizens with their government, coming from our discussion of Romans 13 at Calvary Christian Assembly in Seattle. Two blog postings somewhat "framed" this for me: before our discussion, I had just read this post quoting John Frame on the ChurchLeaders blog, where he says that "The mission of the church was nothing less than to establish a new world order." Just this morning I read a post from Ben Witherington on governments and capital punishment. He argues that while governments may commit acts of capital punishment (and this could be done rightly or wrongly), Christians should not be involved in such.

So, what do you think?

Series on Theology at Renton New Life

I had a great time at Renton New Life last night, with Pastor Troy Jones and a "small group" of about 100 avid students of theology - it was a lot of fun! We talked about the basis, benefits and dangers, and tasks and tools of theology. As noted by a number of people, understanding that things we believe to be true can fit into three categories was a significant take-away. These categories are

• Dogma - something essential to the faith. Denying this is in essence excluding yourself from the classification of "Christ-followers."
• Doctrine - something important to a specific group of believers (church, denomination, etc.) but not essential to the faith. Significant disagreement here might mean you'd be better off with a different group of worshipers, but doesn't mean you're not a Christian.
• Opinion - something of interest to you, but definitely not worth dying for.

Next week we'll be tackling theology proper: what we understand about God from his revelation of himself in his works and his word.

If you're a part of that group (or are interested in theology and want to enter the conversation), use the comments feature of this blog to facilitate interaction. I'm looking forward to learning with you!

A New Series: Romans at Calvary Christian Assembly

This last Sunday I had the privilege of starting on another Bible study at Calvary Christian Assembly in Seattle (http://www.ccassembly.org/). What a wonderful group! There were a number of us (over a hundred) who are all lovers of the Word and who love to study and discuss. Join us either in person (9:15am, Sundays, until the end of October 2011), or by following the recordings given below.

The first session was on the nature of Sin, and how it needs to be distinguished from and results in "sins".

Here are a few links, if you'd like to follow the conversation:

Subscribe to video and audio in iTunes
Subscribe to video and audio as RSS Feed
Subscribe to audio (only) in iTunes
Subscribe to audio (only)  as RSS Feed