The Essentials of Christian Thought: A Video Study
Overview
Christians disagree on doctrine, politics, church government, certain moral questions—just about everything under the sun, it can seem. Yet a unity remains, centered around a core outlook on God and the world that is common to all believers. Or at least, such an outlook should unite Christians of all theological and church backgrounds. However, alternate visions of reality often infect and corrupt Christians’ thinking.
In The Essentials of Christian Thought: A Video Study, together with the accompanying book The Essentials of Christian Thought, eminent theologian and church historian Roger Olson outlines the basic perspective on the world that all Christians, regardless of the place and time in which they were born, have historically held. This underlying metaphysic accords with all orthodox theologies, whether Calvinist or Arminian, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Protestant, but it separates Christianity from other religious and secular perspectives. It is, quite simply, the essential requirement of a Christian view of the world.
The Essentials of Christian Thought: A Video Study will prompt viewers to more consciously appropriate the core of their faith, guarding against ideas that subtly but necessarily invite compromise.
The Essentials of Christian Thought: A Video Study is part of the Zondervan Scholar Series, which is dedicated to bringing expert teaching from world’s best biblical scholars and theologians directly to interested learners. The Essentials of Christian Thought: A Video Study offers the chance to learn about the necessary principles of a Christian outlook on the world from one of today’s premier theologians.
- Outlines the basic Christian perspective on the world
- Aids viewers in guarding against ideas that subtly but necessarily invite compromise
- Prompts viewers to more consciously appropriate the core of their faith
- Introduction (11 min)
- Knowing Christianly: Seeing Reality through the Biblical Story (22 min)
- Interlude One (10 min)
- Ultimate Reality is Supernatural and Personal (But Not Human) (23 min)
- Interlude Two (13 min)
- The Biblical View of Ultimate Reality Retrieved (24 min)
- Interlude Three (11 min)
- Non-Biblical, Non-Christian Views of Reality (28 min)
- Interlude Four (14 min)
- The Biblical-Christian View of Ultimate Reality: God (24 min)
- Interlude Five (10 min)
- The Biblical Christian Perspective on the World (24 min)
- Interlude Six (12 min)
- Biblical-Christian Humanism (26 min)
- Interlude Seven (15 min)
- A Model for the Integration of Faith and Learning (13 min)
- Title: The Essentials of Christian Thought, A Video Study
- Author: Roger E. Olson
- Series: Beyond the Basics
- Publisher: Zondervan
- Publication Date: 2019
- Resource Type: Video
- Topic: Theology
Roger E. Olson is the Foy Valentine Professor of Christian Theology and Ethics at Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary. Previously he served as professor of theology at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is the author of 18 books, including The Journey of Modern Theology: From Reconstruction to Deconstruction (IVP).
Dr. Olson was born and raised in the Upper Midwest of the United States and considers himself a “Bapticostal.” He grew up Pentecostal but became Baptist while attending North American Baptist Seminary. His PhD in religious studies is from Rice University in Houston, and he studied at the University of Munich with theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg. He served as editor of Christian Scholar’s Review in the 1990s and has served as consulting and contributing editor for Christianity Today. He is married and has two daughters and two beautiful grandchildren. He enjoys southern gospel music, Victorian gothic mystery books, and traveling.