Summer Bible Institute # 1 - The Attributes of God

On Wednesday, June 16 I will teach the first week of our Summer Bible Institute class on "Basic Theology."

The first class will cover the Bible's teaching on the Existence and Attributes of God. In theology this subject is called "theology proper." Since the word theology means "the study of God" then any study of the Person of God is, properly speaking, what theology is all about...or "theology proper."

For each class, I plan to put some articles on the web about the topic. While reading them beforehand is not a requirement of participating in this class, if you have a chance to read any of them, it will help you as a preparation for the class. Today, I have put three articles to the web that are available below - I intend to do this for each one of the topics we will cover this summer. The articles range from relatively easy, to somewhat demanding, to downright difficult. You will note that people writing about theology tend to use an "in-house" language which can be sort of like listening to your family doctor talk about a medication - it can be a little off-putting at first. Theological writing is a mixture of terms and phrases from philosophy, the Bible, Latin, and the discipline's own language. One helpful thing to know is that most theological words (unlike most medical terms) are properly defined in a standard English dictionary so you don't have to look very far to find out the meaning of the words.

The topic for the first class is the attributes (characteristics) of God which can be divided up and viewed in many different ways. The three articles are not three way of looking at the topic, though there are some differences between the writers; rather they are written at three levels of difficulty:

Relatively Easy: Chapters Three and Four from "The God You Can Know" by Dan DeHaan on "The Perfections of God."

Somewhat Difficult: The article on "God, Attributes of" written by G. R. Lewis from "The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology" edited by Walter A. Elwell.

Downright Difficult: Chapters vi and vii on the "Communicable" and "Incommunicable Attributes of God" from Systematic Theology by Louis Berkof.

When you click on one of the above titles, you will be taken to a webpage and allowed to download that article to your computer (you do not need to sign up for anything!). Choose which article you want to read...and read away.

See you on Wednesday, June 16 in the Impact Room at the White Lake Campus for our first class on "Basic Theology."