BUILDING YOUR THEOLOGY
PREPARATION FOR LESSON 3
RELYING ON REVELATION

Recently it was necessary for me to make a very long motor trip in a very old car. For more than 2,000 miles I was on “pins and needles,” constantly wondering if the vehicle was going to be able to make the journey without breaking down. Needless to say, I was very happy when I made the round trip successfully, proving that my car, while being quite old, was still reliable.

I think that many believers look at their theology in the same way. Christian theology is a very old subject, and there are so many alternatives out there that many of us go through our lives with the same discomfort as I did on my motor trip — we hope that we’ll be able to make it without our belief system breaking down. And just as the inner workings of automobiles can be mysterious to those of us who aren’t mechanics, the inner workings of theology and the Bible upon which it is based, are sometimes strange and unfamiliar to us. As a result, we often have a hard time placing confidence in them. Perhaps we even wonder if such confidence is even possible or advisable.

Dr. Richard L. Pratt, Jr.

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In this lesson we will see how theologians have learned to rely on God’s revelation in the development of Christianity. We will do this in three major sections:

Finding Revelation
Understanding Revelation
Developing Confidence

In preparation for this lesson, read 2 Timothy 3:10-17. Write down what this has to teach us about doing theology. What is the main source of our theology? How should theology change our lives?

Goals and Objectives of Lesson 3

GOALS

In this lesson, we would like to accomplish the following:

1. We hope you will grow in your confidence in deriving truth from divine revelation and in your appreciation of this revelation.

2. We hope you will make use of all the resources and activities of the lesson to understand divine revelation and its different forms.

3. We hope you make some changes in your life as a response to the teachings of this lesson.

OBJECTIVES

When you have done the following, it will show that the goals are met:

1. Use all the resources and complete all the written assignments of the lesson, expressing your attitude toward divine revelation.

2. Obtain satisfactory grades on the automatically graded activities of the lesson, demonstrating that you can identify important theological terminology and important distinctions made between different forms of divine revelation.

3. Answer the application questions in the study guides, in which you apply what you have learned in the lesson to your own life.

"Instructions for Lesson 3"

Carefully read the "Instructions for Lesson 3." You may want to print them out so that you can refer to them as you proceed through the assignments.

If you need a little reminder of how to do the assignments, go back to the instructions of lesson one and read the "General Instructions for Assignments" again.