THE BIBLE & THE CREED

Jamie Johnson (PhD, BIOLA), Jamie Noling-Auth (DMin, Gordon Conwell), and Rusty St. Cyr (MA, George Fox University), all campus pastors at George Fox University, join the panel to talk about the Christian life. What is the meaning of our lives here on earth—are we basically just waiting until eternity? And what is eternity supposed to be like? Sitting on harps playing clouds? Burning eternally in a fire? Do Christians believe that we gain “salvation” at a particular point in time, and then lose (and gain back) that salvation repeatedly?

How should we read the Bible, when all is said and done? How does the Christian story end? What is the fate of the believer? Is Jesus returning to earth, and if so, when? What is heaven like…and hell?

Professor Todd Curtis (MA, University of Colorado) and Dr. Celeste Jones (PsyD, George Fox University) join us for a round-table discussion on the body and forgiveness. Is it strange, from the perspective of psychology and biology, to think of God redeeming our literal bodies? What about science—does anything in our material world give us hope for expecting anything remotely like a resurrection?

Jesus died and rose from the dead—what does this mean? How do the Gospels communicate the meaning of Jesus’s suffering, and the larger purpose of Jesus? What does the book of Romans have to say about “faith”?

Jamie Noling-Auth (DMin, Gordon Conwell), Leah Payne (PhD, Vanderbilt), and Joe Thouvenel (MA, George Fox University) join the panel to talk about the Holy Spirit. What is the Holy Spirit? How does the Holy Spirit function within the trinity? And what about “spiritual gifts” such as speaking in tongues—is this a real thing?

What happens after the Gospels? How do Jesus’s earliest followers form a community and carry on with the message? What is the “Holy Spirit,” and how is the Holy Spirit a part of the Trinity? Who was Paul, and what were his letters (“epistles”)? What role does the theme of “descent” play in the Christian conception of Jesus?

Guest host Anderson Campbell (DMin, George Fox University), Paul Anderson (PhD, Glasgow), Nijay Gupta (PhD, Durham), and Steve Sherwood (DMin, George Fox University) join the panel to talk about Jesus in the Gospels. What is the “Kingdom of God”? Why wasn’t Jesus more open about his identity as divine? What is the core message of Jesus?

We finally arrive at the New Testament, the distinctly Christian part of the Bible! The main character here is Jesus, the center of Christian biblical interpretation. Where does Jesus come from, and what was his political and social context? Jesus announces the coming of a “kingdom”—but what kind of kingdom is it, and what kind of “king” is he, if he gets killed in a shameful and horrible way?

Lisa Cleath (PhD, UCLA) and Melissa Ramos (PhD, UCLA) join this week’s panel, held outside the classroom in Brian’s office with no audience, for a broad conversation on the Old Testament story. What should we make of Israel’s story, now that it has ended in the Old Testament? Or did it really end? Does God’s covenant continue on—and how? Is the Old Testament God “mean”? Join us for these questions and more!

We finally arrive, roughly, at the end of Israel’s story in the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament—at least the major thread of Israel’s story as it occurs in Genesis – 2 Kings. The Babylonians destroy Jerusalem and the temple, culminating in the events of 586 BCE (narrated in the first part of 2 Kings ch. 25). How does Israel come to this? What happened to the covenant? The promise to the ancestors? What about the land? What about the promise to David? And where could this story possibly go next?