Galilee from Mount of the Beatitudes Church
“I know what I believe about God and Christ!”
But do you know how the faith got to you? Do you know what had to be wrestled with and clarified in order for you, and the wider church, to understand the faith “given once and forever”?
The Teaching Company’s course, “Great World Religions: Christianity,” helps give foundations and context to the listener’s faith. It also respectfully raises questions that can enrich your faith.
About the teacher: Professor Luke Timothy Johnson was a Benedictine monk, holds a slew of academic degrees, teaches at a United Methodist Seminary, has written over 20 books, has multiple courses for The Teaching Company, has won awards for his teaching abilities and probably most importantly cares deeply about individuals’ and the church’s experience of God’s grace and truth.
About the format: there are 12 lectures, each 30 minutes long, on 6 CDs. The course comes with a guidebook that outlines the lectures, ends each lecture with a few questions, a useful bibliography and glossary (a mini-dictionary that defines terms used in the discussions), and a time line. I listen to this and other courses in my commute time. The book and CD case will be in Tabernacle’s Church Library by the end of June (2010).
Lecture topics are:
- Christianity among World Religions
- Birth and Expansion of Christianity
- Second Century and Self-Definition
- The “Christian Story”
- What Christian Believe
- The Church and Sacraments
- Moral Teaching
- The Radical Edge
- Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant
- Christianity and Politics
- Christianity and Culture, and
- Tensions and Possibilities.
Any one of the lecture topics is worth a course. So each is an overview, but done with enough depth that you can get both the sweep of the topic and the concrete difference that dimension makes in the Christian faith. This is not a course on why one should believe in Christ, nor is it a Bible study. It is a study on how believers got where we are, why we are so diverse, who we are as the largest religion in the history of the world.
Will you agree with everything Professor Johnson says? I doubt it. Will you care about all the topics he touches on? I doubt it. Will you benefit from “taking” the course? No doubt–you definitely will.
Believers and non-believers probably won’t change what they think about God and Christ because of this course, but listening will certain increase understanding of why the Christian truths and church have stood the tests of time and diversity of cultures, languages, institutions, political systems and philosophies.
Take a listen and grow wiser for it.
