The earth is 4.5 billion years old. Homo sapiens is 200,000 years old. And the Christian faith is only 2,000 of those years old, though its scriptures reach back to the beginning of all things. But the authors of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament had no concept whatsoever of the scientific knowledge we’ve gained over the past 500 years or even the past 50 years.
What impact does the knowledge we possess today have on our approach to the Christian faith and its scripture? How can we practise a faith based on the life and teachings of Jesus that is faithful to the reality we have been continually discovering? Perhaps there is more yet to discover in our theology . . .
The Rev. Derwyn Costinak, Incumbent of the Church of the Good Shepherd in the Diocese of Calgary in the Anglican Church of Canada, has served as a Pentecostal pastor for 16 years and Anglican priest for 10 years.
The Rev. Derwyn Costinak considers himself to be “ecclesiastically bilingual” and offers a broad overview of the Christian faith in history, beginning with the Big Bang. Continuing into the development of religious thought in homo sapiens, we will explore how Christianity fits in with what had been going on before it and with what has been happening since.
Though it is not an academic course, it will nevertheless encourage deep thought, and may well challenge the ways we think about the faith.