General resources for individual and group study

[Mike]

http://www.explorefaith.org/

 

I've grown kind of fond of this site.

[glintofpewter]

Marcus Borg has always been a good voice for me. 'The God We Never Knew' might be good for a group book discussion. Or, there is content on the internet you may find useful.

 

Saltproject.org has some nice portraits and poems and a few videos,

 

explorefaith.org has a lot of content from many different well-known spiritual teachers - like Marcus Borg - short articles and excerpts about various topics.

 

religion-online.org: Full texts by recognized religious scholars

[Nick the Nevermet]

I'd also recommend the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, an utterly massive collection of theological treatises that has entered the public domain, and is therefore legally free to download. The Church Fathers, Luther, Calvin, Wesley... there is more here than you could read in a year. Excellent resource for historical theology. I think it would be potentially valuable for people to read the works of the various people who founded various Christian traditions. What did Calvin actually say? Why is Aquinas considered one of the greats?

[glintofpewter]

Yale On Line Religious Studies

 

Thanks for the link! I downloaded all the mp3s.

 

Here is the link to the Introduction to New Testament course:

Perhaps someone will find this useful. Videos for all the lectures are online.

 

Introduction to the Old Testament

[glintofpewter]

 

Put simply, how do you seek & study, developing your beliefs and faith?

 

There's a great sociology article called "The Extended Case Method", by Michael Burawoy. Now, it's sociology not theology (let alone any other element of religion), but it advocates a wonderful method to study:

 

1. Find your favorite tradition / belief system (or in sociology, your favorite theory)
   
2. Study it, deepen your knowledge of it, learn it until you can reflexively think in terms of it
   
3. Now the fun part: actively look for things that "break" your favorite theory. Look for things that disprove it, or that it cannot answer, etc.
   
4. Attempt to "extend" the theory, reconstructing it to deal with the problem.
   

 

So, I'm extending my knowledge of religion through this manner. Who knows if I'll stay Reformed in my approach?

1. 
    
   
2. I'm learning up on Reformed Christianity right now as I've mentioned before. Why? Because it was what I was raised in, and even if I didn't explicitly know Calvinist theology, a lot of what I took for granted was Reformed.
   
3. So, I've read some Karl Barth, I'm reading Calvin right now, and I'm reading some history to put it in context.
   
4. I'm looking for ways to break Reformed Christianity. I'm reading up on Calvin's theodicy, which I find... well, consistent at the very least.
   
5. I'm worried that the rejection of works may throw the baby out with the bathwater. And so on.
   

 

So... yeah. That's me. How about you?

[glintofpewter]

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[glintofpewter]

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