Course Syllabus
BUILDING YOUR THEOLOGY
Course description
Modern evangelical theology is flooded with conflicting viewpoints. Many of these disagreements arise between denominations, while others arise within denominations and individual churches. The apparent hopelessness of reaching theological unity has even led some Christians to deny the value of theology altogether. With so many different ideas competing for our loyalty, how are followers of Jesus to determine what to believe? And how committed should we be to specific doctrines and traditions? This course is based on the lecture series, Building Your Theology, produced by Third Millennium Ministries and hosted by Dr. Vincent Bacote with contributions from a variety of professors.
Goals and Objectives
GOALS
In this course, we would like to accomplish the following:
1. We hope you will learn the proper nature and purpose of theology.
2. We hope you will develop a new love for theology, and that you will become excited about doing theology that flows from the Scriptures and changes your heart and life.
3. We hope you make changes in your life as a response to the teachings of this course. It should change the way you do theology and analyze theological expressions, taking into account the aspects of orthodoxy, orthopraxis, and orthopathos.
OBJECTIVES
When you have done the following, it will show that the goals are met:
1. Obtain satisfactory grades on the tests, demonstrating that you can do the following: a) identify key reasons to study theology, b) distinguish the significance of orthodoxy, orthopraxis, and orthopathos in the task of theology, c) identify the key thoughts of important theologians, d) distinguish the different kinds of revelation and their importance in doing theology, e) distinguish different views of inspiration and of the proper interpretation of Scripture, and f) identify the key distinctive emphases of reformed theology.
2. Complete the study guides and other assignments, expressing your attitude regarding theology, and showing how you have applied the teachings of the course to your own life, especially that you can do theology and analyze theological expressions, taking into account the aspects of orthodoxy, orthopraxis, and orthopathos.
Thematic Outline of the Course
1. What is Theology?
2. Exploring Christian Theology
3. Relying on Revelation
4. Authority and Theology
Explanation of Assignments
The Multimedia Lessons
1. Study the lessons, watching the video, listening to the audio, or reading the text.
2. Complete the study guides for each lesson. These study guides will prepare you for the online quizzes and help you apply the teachings of the lesson to your own life. (For those students associated with a particular institution wishing to track the completion of the completion of the Study Guides, a drop box has been provided at the end of the course.)
3. Take the online quizzes on each section of the lessons. The quizzes may be taken as many times as you want, but you must wait five days between each attempt, and the official grade will be from the first attempt.
4. Optional: We recommend that you look through the glossaries and use the learning games to become familiar with special names and technical terms used in the lessons.
5. Take the cumulative test for each complete lesson. You may take the test again as many times as you want for review, but you must wait five days between each attempt, and the official grade is from the first attempt.
6. When you have finished all the lessons on the multimedia lectures, take the final exam on the lectures.
Other Activities
1. Complete the supplementary lessons for each lesson. These lessons give you additional background information and provide other learning aids related to the lessons. You may repeat these lessons as many times as you want, and the official grade will be the highest score out of all the attempts.
2. Complete the questionnaires for the lessons to help assimilate the teachings and apply them to your own life. These are not quizzes. The answers are more subjective. The grade is for completing the assignment.
3. There is a final lesson based on additional readings. These are optional readings designed to supplement the main lesson materials. The student should do the reading, complete the study guides, and take the corresponding quizzes and cumulative test based on the reading. These are graded as extra credit. (For those students associated with a particular institution wishing to track the completion of the Reading Study Guides, a drop box has been provided at the end of the course.)
We recommend that you work on these reading assignments and quizzes during the entire course, instead of waiting until you finish all the lessons based on the video lectures. For each lesson, do the percentage of the work on them that corresponds to the number of lessons in the course.
Optional Activities
Some institutions may require you to do one or more of the following optional assignments. If so, read the instructions in lesson 1 and follow the specific guidelines given in the instructions for each lesson.
1. The Written project
2. Essay Questions
3. Journal Questions
4. Optional Additional Reading
Grades
The final grade will be calculated as follows:
1) The quizzes on the lectures are each worth 10 points.
2) Each cumulative test is worth 30 points.
3) Each supplementary lesson is worth 10 points.
4) Each questionnaire is worth 10 points.
5) The final exam on the lectures is worth 100 points.
6) Each quiz on the reading assignments is worth 10 points (extra credit).
7) The cumulative test on the additional reading is worth 30 points (extra credit).
The final grade of the course will be calculated by adding the corresponding percentages of all assignments and tests, making a total of 100% possible.
A total course score above 70% is considered passing.
Greek and Hebrew
Some lessons in our courses make reference to words in Greek or Hebrew. If you have not studied these languages, you might want to at least become familiar with the alphabets.
For the Greek alphabet, see:
https://www.billmounce.com/greekalphabet/greek-alphabet
For the Hebrew alphabet, see:
http://hebrew.billmounce.com/BasicsBiblicalHebrew-01.pdf