Why I write these courses

 Robert C. Jones

In the mid-1990s, I became a Presbyterian elder. I was pretty familiar with the Bible (I had taught Disciples I several times by then), and yet many of the questions I would get from the Congregation and friends and family had to do with Christian history and Christian theology, but not necessarily the Bible. These questions often came from people who had a very logical approach to their faith (engineers, skeptical teenagers), and they were very much looking for specific answers to specific questions. I decided that before I could answer these questions for other people, I needed to answer them myself. The results were the courses that I wrote – first for me, then for others.

Here are the types of questions that I was being asked (and am still asked):

• What are the theological differences between Catholics and Protestants?
• Were the Christians the bad guys in the Crusades?
• Doesn’t it say in the Bible that 1) Mary ascended to heaven 2) that Peter preached in Rome, and started the church there?
• I can’t find any reference in my Bible to Lucifer – why?
• I read a commentary that says that Satan isn’t mentioned in the Old Testament. Is that true?
• How can we trust the Bible, after two thousand years of potential transcribing and copying errors?
• Don’t the Dead Sea Scrolls prove that there was nothing unique about Christianity?
• If Jesus was married, does that mean he can’t have been the Son of God?
• Christianity claims to be monotheistic, but isn’t it polytheistic, with three Gods – Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?
• Explain the nature of the Trinity in terms I can understand
• Is there any archaeological or historical evidence that Jesus actually existed?
• Isn’t the key message of Christianity the Sermon on the Mount?
• Why should we trust the New Testament – wasn’t it decided upon arbitrarily by a group of bishops at some obscure Church conference?
• Isn’t it true that Constantine never really became a Christian?
• Isn’t Jesus on a lower level than the Father?
• Isn’t it true that God is inside us all?
• The Catholic Bible has 12 more books in it than the Protestant Bible – why?
• Shouldn’t we view that Gnostic Gospels found at Nag Hammadi in 1945 as being of equal authority to the New Testament Gospels?
• Does the New Testament say anything in it about infant baptism?
• Is Revelation metaphorical, or does it describe a series of historical or future events?
• Isn’t Revelation unique in Jewish history?
• Isn’t it true that most of the New Testament was written in the 2nd or 3rd century, and has little to do with the 1st century church?
• Explain the Nicene Creed to me
• I’m a good person – doesn’t that mean I’ll be saved?
• If I’m baptized in my church, and it later turns out that my pastor was a serial killer, is my baptism still valid?
• What is the central message of Reformation theology?
• Isn’t the King James version the only true version of the Bible?

As I started to research the answers to these types of questions, I discovered that church libraries often have little on the topics of Christian history or theology – rather, they are filled with inspirational books (what I’d call the Chicken Soup for the Soul phenomenon.) Lots of self-help type books – not much on the Council of Nicaea, or on Augustine’s views on predestination.

Luckily, technology in the mid-1990s provided a wealth of information. With CD-ROM collections, and later, the Internet, Christian source documents were available on a scale never seen before. My Christian History and Theology Sunday School courses started to take shape.

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