BUILDING BIBLICAL THEOLOGY
PREPARATION FOR LESSON 1
WHAT IS BIBLICAL THEOLOGY?

In preparation for this lesson, read Genesis 15 and Romans 3 and 4. How do you think Paul's understanding of justification by faith compares to Moses' or Abraham's understanding? Write down your thoughts regarding how theological understanding progressed from Abraham's time to Paul's time.

This lesson has three main sections:

Orientation
Historical Developments
History and Revelation

Goals and Objectives of Lesson 1

GOALS

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

1. We hope you will become excited about Biblical Theology and that you will see its importance for interpreting the Scriptures.

2. We hope you will understand the nature and purpose of Biblical Theology, the history of its development, and the difference between Biblical Theology and Systematic Theology.

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 own thoughts and attitudes regarding Biblical Theology.

2. Obtain a satisfactory grade on the accumulative test, demonstrating that you can identify the following: a) the purpose and characteristics of Biblical Theology, b) the topics it studies, c) the similarities and differences between Systematic Theology and Biblical Theology d) the history of the discipline of Biblical Theology, and e) the relationship between act revelation and word revelation.

3. Answer the application questions in the study guides, in which you show how you have applied the teachings of the lesson to your own life.

"Instructions for Lesson 1"

Carefully read the summarized instructions. You may want to print them out so that you can refer to them as you proceed through the assignments.

Tutorials

If this is your first time to study one of our lessons, you should read "General Instructions for Assignments." This document will explain how to use the videos, how to arrange your word processor to take notes, how to use the quizzes, and other important suggestions.

Note about Greek and Hebrew

Once in a while, the lectures of this course include words in Greek or Hebrew. Don't worry about this, because a knowledge of these languages is not necessary for the course. Furthermore, when a Greek or Hebrew word is used in a study guide, glossary, or quiz, it will be transliterated (using English letters). However, it may be helpful to at least look at the alphabet of these biblical languages and learn something about the way they are transliterated. If you are interested, you may look at the following resources:

For Greek, see the following PDF document:
Greek Alphabet

For Hebrew, you may look at the following web site called "Judaism 101"
http://www.jewfaq.org/alephbet.htm

Glossary

Each lesson has a glossary of terms and names used in the lesson. You can find it in the "Resources" section of the lesson.