Theological education for everyone. Explore issues that matter to your faith and community with leading scholars and experienced practitioners. A variety of short courses, most or all available online.
Not Yet in the Now: Waiting for the Apocalypse
Eschatology is defined as the study of the last things. Traditionally, these “last things” have been defined as death, judgement, heaven, and hell; in truth, though, they include all that we imagine the “end” of our life and of history to be. In the Christian church, our eschatological expectation is our blessed hope: the resurrection …
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The Trinity and the Church Fathers
In this course we’ll explore the church fathers’ understanding of the Trinity and how and why they thought this model of God represented the biblical teaching of God faithfully and beautifully. Students will learn to read the Bible through patristic eyes and discern with the church fathers the problems presented by the relational complexity in …
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The Puritan Literary Imagination
Immerse yourself in two classics of the Christian imagination: Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1678). Written just over a decade apart, these texts have profoundly shaped the modern literary and theological imagination–especially our concepts of God, Satan, sin, the fall, human nature, and paradise. Join us as we explore the artistry and …
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Smartphones, Surveillance, and Human Flourishing
Explore tools for building a theological framework for one of the most rapidly developing ethical challenges of our day: data collection and surveillance. Smartphones are everywhere, a valuable tool with thousands of uses in everyday life. But smartphones, along with many other daily-use devices, also perform regular surveillance. What happens to the data they handle? …
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Working Blessedly: The Shape of Marketplace Theology
Marketplace theology is good for the soul, the body, and the workplace. But what is it? Join us as we build on the Puritan William Perkins’s definition of theology–the science of living blessedly forever–to explore a Christian vision of marketplace theology: working blessedly forever. Reflect scripturally and theologically on practical questions: Why work–remunerated or not? …
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Partaking of the Divine Nature: Salvation, Holiness and the Doctrine of God
Christian salvation is a gift, but what is the nature of that gift? The doctrine of theosis suggests that God’s best gift in salvation is, quite simply, God’s self. Theosis–also called “divinization” or “deification”–teaches that God the Father sends the Son and the Spirit so that the saints may partake of the Trinity’s own divine …
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When Christians Disagree: Church Unity in an Age of Division
Survey the typologies of engagement by various Christian traditions (giving particular attention to the broad evangelical tradition) with the public square, along the spectrum of disengagement, cooperation, co-optation, and confrontation. Analyze the theological assumptions and perspectives on the gospel that inform such engagement or lack thereof. Dominant evangelical paradigms of Christian engagement in the public …
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The Early Church in Africa and Asia
Many studies of non-Western Christianity focus on the modern period, emphasizing the impact of Western missions and colonialism. But this approach neglects the rich traditions of African and Asian Christianity that were established long before the earliest Western colonial contact. Join us as we explore early history of the church in North and East Africa, …
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Systematic Theology Overview
Gain an introductory grasp of the central doctrines and tasks of Christian theology. Learn to think doctrinally in the context of our current moment, situating theology within the industrialized West’s post-Christian context. Reflect on Christianity’s central doctrines in relation to a contemporary society that’s constituted by deep pluralisms and where the logic of Christian thought …
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