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Normal People
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When Old Answers Stop Working: Ecclesiastes on Doubt, Disappointment, and Faith After Certainty
Did you know there’s a book in the Bible whose main voice is in full-blown faith-crisis mode for twelve chapters? Now you do. His name—or at least his pen name—is Qoheleth, and the book is Ecclesiastes. He looks at life, death, work, wisdom, and even God and asks: What’s the point? Why care? So if you’ve ever been mad at God, wondered what any of this is for, or found that the old answers just don’t work anymore, Ecclesiastes might be your new best friend.
Understanding Eve: Looking At The Harm & Why It Didn’t Have To Be That Way
For centuries, the story of Eve has been used to say something about women: that they are more easily deceived, less trustworthy, or even responsible for humanity’s downfall. But is that really what the story says? In this class, we’ll explore how interpretations of Eve have shaped the way women have been understood and treated —and how reading the story from different perspectives can reveal an Eve we've never been taught to see. Along the way, we’ll discover that the harm caused by this story wasn’t inevitable but came from choices people have made about how to interpret it.
Is The Bible Relevant?
Many of us grew up being told the Bible had an answer for every moral dilemma, every political debate, every life decision. When we discovered it didn't work that way, we were left wondering: Is the Bible even relevant anymore?
In this class, theologian Drew G. I. Hart argues that if we're looking for a rulebook, the answer is clearly no. But if we're willing to read scripture as a living conversation of wisdom and inspiration that bends toward justice, liberation, and shalom, then the Bible becomes extremely relevant. Drawing on his own theological traditions, Drew will walk through how different parts of the Bible are healing as well as harmful, yet collectively can inform some of today's most urgent concerns (race, empire, gender, land, and peacemaking) and how we can interpret, wrestle with, and embody scripture’s wisdom for pursuing more just and mutually liberative communities rather than as a weapon to dominate others.
Is The Bible Authoritative?
Most Christians would affirm that the Bible is “authoritative” in some way—not just important, but also revelatory, instructive, reliable, or even definitive in its communication of certain truths. The word “authority” has its roots in the idea of an author: a singular origin or source imparts meaning through the words of a text, and the reader’s job is to receive whatever the author intended to communicate. But how can a text be “authoritative” if its readers cannot agree on what it means? Which readers get to decide which interpretation is the “right” one?
In this class, Cameron Howard will explore what it might mean to shift our understanding of biblical authority away from discerning the authors’ intent and toward embracing the messy, generative encounters between the text and its readers. That is, what if the Bible’s authority rests not in narrowing down meaning to the “right” interpretation, but rather in the conversations, conflicts, possibilities, and uncertainties that critical study of the Bible unleashes? We will look together at several biblical texts, ranging from the mundane to the controversial, to explore how meaning is unstable in them, and we will consider how we might find authority in the Bible because of this instability, not in spite of it.
Is This The Apocalypse?
Few questions have haunted human beings more persistently than this one: are we living in the last days? From the early church to the medieval plague years, from the World Wars to the Cold War, every generation has had its reasons to suspect the end was near. Our own moment — with its wars, pandemics, environmental crisis, and fracturing political order — feels no different.
In this class, Robyn Whitaker takes a candid look at scripture's apocalyptic texts and how they have been interpreted within American Christianity. We'll explore what texts like the Book of Revelation and Daniel meant in their ancient context and ask how that should shape the way we read them today. We'll also reckon with the history of apocalyptic prediction in the USA, and why dispensationalism has proven so persistently popular due to the influence of the Scofield Bible and the Left Behind novels. We’ll see how the theologies of Rapture, Tribulation, the Antichrist, and Armageddon have hijacked our thinking and quietly shaped foreign policy and popular culture.
But this isn't just a history lesson. We'll wrestle seriously with the unsettling feeling that our own moment somehow feels like the end of something. What do the Bible’s apocalypses have to say to people living in genuinely frightening times? And what does it mean to live faithfully when the world seems to be unravelling?
The Real David
David is the hero of the Hebrew Bible: the great warrior, the great poet, the king against whom all others are measured, the “man after God’s own heart.”
From Goliath to the Psalms, David’s name and story have inspired generations, and continue to be deeply embedded in modern culture. Even his failings are held up as proof of his humanity: after all, what is a hero without a tragic flaw (or two)?
But how much of this story is true? What can we know about David, and how, at a distance of three thousand years, can we know it?
Back to the Beginning: How to Ask Better Questions of Genesis
Questions about why God does what God does have baffled readers of the Bible since forever, especially when it comes to the book of Genesis. But what if we’ve been asking the wrong questions? What if Genesis isn’t giving us unchanging information about what God is actually doing or thinking, but instead doing something completely different?
In this class, Pete Enns will guide us through why Genesis was actually written—and how understanding the “why” will help us to ask better questions of the text.
The Bible is Not a Rulebook
For many Christians, the Bible has long been treated as a moral instruction manual—offering clear, timeless, universal rules for right and wrong. But what happens when the text doesn’t behave like a rule book? When it contradicts itself, feels outdated, or refuses to give us the clarity we crave?
Shaped by Suffering: How Trauma Impacts the Bible and Its Readers
Shaped by Suffering: How Trauma Impacts the Bible and Its Readers with Alexiana Fry explores how trauma-informed interpretation reshapes our understanding of Scripture, from the wounds of war and exile to the grief we carry as modern readers. This class offers tools for reading the Bible with greater empathy, honesty, and awareness.
Who the @#!% Wrote the Bible?
Curious about who really wrote the Bible? This class with Dr. Aaron Higashi probably won’t give a final answer—but it will give you the tools to understand how scholars approach the question. If you want to think more deeply and critically about biblical authorship, this is the class for you.
Digging Up Dirt on Joshua: Historical Conquest or Fan Fiction?
Digging Up Dirt on Joshua: Historical Conquest or Fan Fiction?. Is the book of Joshua an accurate historical rundown, a tall theological tale, or something in between? Join archaeologist and Hebrew Bible scholar Dr. Cynthia Shafer-Elliott as she digs into how Joshua fits into the big-picture Bible narrative and tackle big ethical and theological questions about divine warfare, land possession, and how these texts have been used—and misused—in modern times.
Blood and Belief: Exploring the Biblical Texts of Terror
Blood and Belief: Exploring the Biblical Texts of Terror. The Bible features both explicit and subtle depictions of violence, join scholars Caroline Blyth and Emily Colgan as they examine how these “texts of terror” reveal enduring lessons that help us understand and confront contemporary violence in its various forms.
A Manger Misunderstanding: Exploring Luke’s Narrative of Jesus’s Birth
A Manger Misunderstanding: Exploring Luke’s Narrative of Jesus’s Birth. Pete Enns dives into the 1st-century Jewish world of Jesus’s birth, unraveling the surprising depth and meaning often lost in popular depictions of the nativity story.
Banned Books: The Apocrypha Edition
In this one-night class, Dr. Brandon W. Hawk will define what “apocrypha” are and why they matter for understanding the Bible as well as the histories of Judaism and Christianity.
Go To Hell?: Alternatives to Eternal Damnation
Go To Hell?: Alternatives to Eternal Damnation. Dr. Jaime Clark-Soles teaches on the history, language, and “meaning” of hell, what the Bible says about hell, the implications of hell on God’s character and morality, and how the concept of hell intertwines with the desire for justice.
The Bible and Multivocality
For some readers, the idea that the Bible is composed of varied, distinct, and even contradictory voices is not only controversial but incompatible with taking the Bible seriously. However, in this class Dr. Pete Enns argues that multivocality is a central component of the Biblical text. The multiplicity of voices, even those that are in direct opposition to one another, is by design. This multivocality is at the heart of the Bible. Join Dr. Enns as he examines why the Bible has multiple voices as well as how these voices shape how we understand and view the text.
Divine Violence in the Old Testament
For some readers, the idea that the Bible is composed of varied, distinct, and even contradictory voices is not only controversial but incompatible with taking the Bible seriously. However, in this class Dr. Pete Enns argues that multivocality is a central component of the Biblical text. The multiplicity of voices, even those that are in direct opposition to one another, is by design. This multivocality is at the heart of the Bible. Join Dr. Enns as he examines why the Bible has multiple voices as well as how these voices shape how we understand and view the text.
Origin of the Old Testament
For those who have embraced the idea that the Bible in its original form is perfect and unchanging, the answer to the questions of how and why the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible arose is simple: it came directly from God to humanity. Any errors and discrepancies are the result of careless transcribers. However, as Dr. Peter Enns explores in this class, the historical evidence demonstrates the answers to these questions are, in fact, much more complicated. Join Dr. Peter Enns as he examines the convoluted, lengthy, and messy origin of the Old Testament.
Is God All-Knowing?
What Does God Know? Omniscience is one of God’s most iconic attributes and an attribute many Jewish people, Christians, and Muslims believe in. Yet when we look at several of the stories in the opening chapters of Genesis, God does not appear to be omniscient! God appears to make simple mistakes, needs to change plans, is unable to foresee easily predictable situations, and regrets choices after making them. What are people in general, and people of faith in particular, supposed to do with biblical stories like these? The answer to that question will affect not only our beliefs about God’s knowledge, but about every single thing we believe about God.
Universal Salvation is Not Modern
This class will introduce participants to the Christian eschatological position of universal salvation, which teaches that all persons will eventually be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit. Key figures in the Christian tradition (e.g., Origen of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, Isaac of Nineveh, Julian of Norwich, etc.) who have held the universalist hope will be surveyed, in preparation for a systematic analysis of the key theological factors motivating an affirmation of universal salvation (e.g., biblical evidence, the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, the revelation of God as self-giving, omnipotent love in Jesus Christ, etc.). Taught by Roberto de La Noval.