A Basic Christian Theology

By Dr. Jeffrey P. Pedersen

A Basic Christian Theology is a book that teaches the basic understandings of Christianity. Dr. Jeffrey P. Pedersen has taken the profound truths of Christianity and has explained them in an understandable way. There are many stories, illustrations, and examples that will engage readers and stimulate learning. There are also study questions at the end of each chapter that will allow for small group study. Whether you are reading this book as an individual or as a member of a group, you will have opportunity to learn and grow in your Christian theological understanding. Dr. Pedersens theological arguments are based on the teachings of the Bible. His most central point and argument is that Jesus Christ is the incarnate Son of God. Dr. Pedersen wants each reader to enjoy this book, learn from it, wrestle with it, debate it, but most of all grow from it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Dec 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490861463

Dr. Jeffrey P. Pedersen

Dr. Jeffrey P. Pedersen has been a pastor and theologian for more than twenty-six years. He has programs on the Christian Television Network and has spoken at many Christian conferences. Dr. Pedersen has authored the following books: Endless Running, River Reflections, Cross-Winter Skiing, Christmas Ponderings, The Tie That Binds, A Solvang Christmas Tale, and God Is Spirit. Dr. Pedersen has received degrees from Concordia College, in Moorhead, Minnesota; Luther Seminary, in St. Paul, Minnesota; and Colorado Theological Seminary, in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. In addition to Biblical and theological studies, Dr. Pedersen has a degree in psychology, and has studied philosophy. Dr. Pedersen’s interests include spending time with his family, traveling, running, canoeing, snowmobiling, cross-country skiing, and model railroading.

Book preview

Basic Christian Theology

When traveling throughout the Holy Land, I was able to see many of the biblical sights. The one sight that I thought would be the most inspiring for me was the tomb of Jesus. I thought it would be the highlight of my life to enter into the very place where Jesus was raised from the dead. I thought Jesus’ risen presence was going to radiate in the tomb. Thinking I was going to have a spiritually uplifting experience, I went into the tomb, but I felt nothing. It was so anticlimactic. I was also hoping that our tour group could meet in the Holy Sepulcher Church that now encases the tomb for Sunday morning worship. When Sunday morning came, we worshiped at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in Jerusalem. I felt disappointed, thinking that Jesus would be found in the true place to worship, in the Holy Sepulcher Church. As I worshiped, the time came to receive Holy Communion. When I received the body and blood of Jesus, I felt the radiance of the Holy Spirit. God communicated with me that day, Jesus is no longer in the tomb but risen! Jesus said he would make himself present in the living Word of God and also the sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.

We seek to learn about the eternal God who has created all things and has made himself incarnate to us in Jesus Christ. As we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we experience the manifestation of God, who transforms our lives into the likeness of Jesus.

Theology is the study of God. The Greek etymology of this word is theos, meaning, God, and logos meaning, study. A theologian asks the questions: What is the message of the Bible? Are there theological themes? Is there a central point to the Bible? As a baker bakes a cake, he will use the ingredients that the recipe calls for, and so the theologian looks at the Bible for the ingredients to formulate a theology. Theology is the interpretation of the Bible’s message.

I have heard Christians say, We are not into theology. The only book we read is the Bible. We don’t want the pure message of the Bible tainted by theology. Theology is interpreting the Bible; even these Christians, when trying to interpret the pure message of the Bible, are now into theological work. This is why it is important for Christians to have a well-developed theology. Otherwise people will develop heretical teachings that are misleading and often damaging to people’s faith and lives. It wasn’t until the fourth century that the church was able to develop a formalized theology. It was then that theological creeds were documented, after councils and theological debate. Prior to this time, the church was ravaged by many false teachings as a result of an undeveloped theology. It was in the year 313 that Emperor Constantine of Rome legalized Christianity in the empire. In the year 325, the bishops gathered in Nicea to hammer out a basic theological statement called the Nicene Creed. This creed was written as a statement of faith, and also a defense against the Arian heresy. The Apostles’ Creed was written in the second century as a statement of faith for those being baptized. The Bishops expounded on the Apostles’ Creed in writing the Nicene Creed. All Christian churches subscribe to these creeds. The main emphasis of these creeds is that God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were all of the same substance. The Greek word homousious means of the same substance.

As the Holy Spirit uses the Bible to develop faith in Christian believers, the Devil also uses the Bible to mislead us. A good example of this is recorded in Matthew 4:1–11, where the Devil quoted Bible verses to lead Jesus into temptation. He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone (Psalm 91:11–12). The Devil quoted this verse to Jesus, tempting him to use his powers for purposes other than for what God intended.

As the early church was formulating a Christian theology, there were a lot of false teachings. There were the Donatists, who believed that the holy God could not become human. They believed that Jesus only appeared in a physical form but was not really human. There were the Arians, who believed that Jesus was human but not divine. They believed that God adopted Jesus as his Son at Jesus’ baptism. There were the Montanists, who believed in spiritual practices outside the church. They believed that the Holy Spirit would speak directly through them, giving them new prophecies and revelations that contradicted the ones given by Jesus. There were the Marcionists, who believed in the New Testament, but not in the Old Testament. They believed that the God of the Old Testament was different than the God of the New Testament. They believed that the God of the Old Testament was of wrath and judgment of the law, while the God of the New Testament was one of love, pardon, and grace. There were the Pelagianists, who did not believe in original sin. They believed that people still had the freedom to choose between good and evil, thus renouncing the need for infant baptism.

The most basic theological point of Christianity is this one: Jesus Christ is the incarnate Son of God. What this means is that Jesus is God in human flesh. This statement is the cornerstone of theology. The whole Bible needs to be interpreted with this most central theological point in mind.

The Bible is the final revelation of God. We are not to add to it or subtract from it. It is the written Word that the Holy Spirit uses for the development of faith and life. It is always important to understand the message from cover to cover and to look at each biblical story, teaching, book, and verse in that context.

The eternal God, who created all things, has become one of us in Jesus Christ. Even though all of creation reflects God’s creative and redeeming work, the most central point is the incarnation of Jesus Christ. For the church today, God has given the Holy Spirit, who brings life in the incarnate written Word, the Bible, and the holy sacraments of baptism and communion. All of the books of the Bible, the stories, the commandments, the history, the prophecies, and the death and resurrection of Jesus support the theological claim, Jesus Christ is the incarnate Son of God. Why? Because Jesus fulfills all of these things. Jesus continues to make himself incarnate to us in the Word and in the sacraments, offering salvation life to us. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. He embodies himself in the Word and in the sacraments. A faithful teacher will instruct his students in this truth while a false teacher will deny the truth of the incarnate Jesus and teach deceit.

Many Christians have diminished the risen presence of Jesus to lifeless symbols. They say that the bread and wine are only symbols of Jesus body and blood. Jesus instructed us that the bread and wine are his body and his blood (Matthew 26:26, 28). They say that the waters of baptism symbolize our faith in God. The Bible instructs us that the waters of baptism are a means of grace to save us. We are washed in the blood of Jesus, in the waters of baptism (1 Peter 1:2; Romans 6:3–7).

When we are thirsty, a symbol of water does us no good. We need actual water. When we are hungry, if we are served a plastic steak that symbolizes steak, it will do us no good. We need the real thing. This is how Jesus continues to offer his risen, living, and real presence to us; he embodies himself in the living Word and the holy sacraments. This is how the salvation of Jesus works. We can believe that water can give our bodies life, but we need to do more than believe this; we need to drink the water. We need to do more than just believe that Jesus can save us; we need to receive his salvation. We do this through receiving his Word and the holy sacraments of baptism and communion. When the church offers lifeless symbols, there is no point in receiving them. Jesus then has no power to save. Don’t let false teachers come and peddle counterfeit symbols that will draw you away from Jesus’ salvation. They have no power to save. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, and he has the power to save us from our sins, death, and the fires of hell.

It is from the Bible that we develop a strong theology, but it is also with a sound theology that we are able to interpret the truth of the Bible’s message. It is very important to develop a good theological understanding of the Bible, and it is also important to reflect that theological understanding in Christian living. In other words, we live what we believe.

Jesus offers his life to us, and the Holy Spirit has been given. As we receive the risen Christ and the Holy Spirit, Christ is alive within us. Jesus now makes himself living and incarnate in believers, being the church, the body of Christ. Together we are the church; God’s kingdom in this world has no boundaries. I once worshiped in a church in Denmark. The worship service was in the Danish language. I worshiped in a church in Germany where the service was in the German language. When I worshiped in Palestine, the service was in Arabic. During all three of these worship services, I was moved when I received Holy Communion. I was worshiping with the gathered saints of God in other parts of the world, and the Holy Spirit was present in all of these places. Together we are the church, the communion of believers. Jesus, who is risen from the dead, gives his eternal life to us. He is the one who binds us together in his sacrificial love.

Study Questions

1. Where do you seek Jesus’ presence?

2. How do we receive Jesus?

3. What is the etymology of theology?

4. Why is theology important?

5. What are questions theologians ask?

6. What are the dangers of not having a good theology?

7. How does Jesus offer himself to us?

8. What is the most basic theological point?

9. How is Jesus incarnate for us today?

10. What danger do we risk in diminishing the Word and sacraments to mere symbols?

The Bible

Christians believe that the Bible is the Word of God. The apostle Paul writes in 2 Timothy 3:16–17, All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

The Bible is not one book but rather a library of sixty-six books. These books were written by forty different authors, and most of them did not know each other. The Bible was written over the course of fifteen hundred years; this too would suggest that the authors could not have collaborated with each other in writing the Bible. The Bible was written in three different languages: Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. The Bible was also written in three different continents: Africa, Asia, and Europe. As we read the Bible, it is a seamless message from cover to cover, thus leading us to believe that the Holy Spirit is the inspiration of the Bible. The Holy Spirit wrote the Bible with human hands over the course of a fifteen hundred–year history. The Bible has a seamless, cohesive message from cover to cover, but every book of the Bible also tells the story of God working his creative and redemptive purposes. In many cases each chapter tells the story (Psalm 23), and in some cases even one verse tells the message of God’s grace and redemption, as we read John 3:16. The Bible has been crafted together unlike any other literary work of humanity. Even the greatest human writers in history could not have written the Bible. The Bible is a masterpiece of God.

The places and events of the Bible are supported by archeological evidence, so the Bible isn’t about a fictitious fairy-tale land. The events of the Bible are also supported by other historians of the time, such as, Josephus, Philo, and Eusebius. The Bible parallels history. When we study history apart from the Bible, we learn about empires, rulers, and events. The history in the Bible has the same empires, rulers, and events as its stage. The Bible does not contradict history in any way, but rather it aligns with history. History teaches that the first civilization was the Sumerian, B.C. 3500. The Bible makes the same claim. The location of this civilization would be the modern nation of Iraq.

The prophecies in the Old Testament were spoken seven hundred to two thousand years before the time of Jesus and were all fulfilled in Jesus. Many of the prophecies that Jesus spoke have been fulfilled. An example of this is Israel becoming a nation again. Jesus prophesied that Jerusalem would be destroyed. This prophesy came true in AD 70. Jesus also prophesied that Israel would become a nation again (Luke 21:24). Israel became a nation again in 1948. The main prophecy still waiting to be fulfilled is Jesus second coming. This fulfillment of prophecy will be the final culmination of all Jesus’ end-of-times prophecies.

The main reason Christians believe that the Bible is the Word of God is because of how it transforms people’s lives. All of Jesus’ disciples were filled with fear and betrayed him before the crucifixion. After the resurrection, not only did they believe, but they also were willing to die for Jesus. They went from being filled with the fear of death to being filled with courageous hope in the resurrection.

The Bible is the incarnate Word of Jesus, used by the Holy Spirit to give us spiritual life. "But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, will teach