The Beginning of History

These Christian curricula herald the Bible as the authoritative text for interpreting the earliest history of the world. On the basis of their insistence on biblical inerrancy, they present fundamental positions that underlie their historical analysis, as follows. The Bible establishes Young Earth creationism, divides human beings into races, and stipulates that God established government as limited. The Tower of Babel indicts humanism and efforts to unify governments or societies. The Creation Mandate, taken from the Book of Genesis, endorses both human control of the earth and Christian hegemony. Mosaic Law defines the legitimate basis for law and morality. The ancient Israelites set the standard against which other ancient civilizations are judged for their failure to believe in the one God. The modern state of Israel points to the fulfillment of biblical prophecies of end times. These central claims developed within evangelicalism.

An analysis of Accelerated Christian Curriculum in Biblical Christian Worldview

<p class="abstracttextDILIGENTIA">God gave man his commission (Gen. 1:26-30), called the Cultural Mandate. In this mandate mankind is to steward the created order, in accordance with God’s law-Word, for God’s glory. Shortly before the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ ascended to heaven, he issued the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20). The Great Commission command to disciple all the nations into obedience to the comprehensive and absolute lordship of Jesus Christ. There is no area of thought, life, or culture outside the scope of the Creation/ Dominion Mandate or the Great Commission. Thus, the extent of the Creation Mandate and the extent of the Great Commission necessitate Christian Education.<strong> </strong>Accelerated Christian Curriculum is a curriculum that has been helping pastors and parents by developing and publishing quality, character building Christian educational materials for Grade Levels K3-12. By integrating character building principles and scripture memory into the academics, the program helps children master each concept before moving to the next concept.<strong> </strong>In this essay I analyze the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum from a Biblical Christian Worldview.</p><div><div><p class="footnoteDILIGENTIA"> </p></div></div>

Beginning at the beginning: Reading missio Dei from the start of the Bible

While Missiological hermeneutics have pointed to the missio Dei concept as key to the entire Biblical narrative, these readings have described God’s mission activity as commencing after the entrance of sin, rather than at the beginning of the Bible. This article argues that a mission hermeneutic ought to begin with the Bible’s opening chapters, where humanity’s vocation in the narratives of Genesis 1 and 2 need not be treated as a separate “creation mandate,” but as involvement in the missio Dei. Iranaeus’ theology provides a precedent for thinking that God’s perfecting work was still at an early stage when sin entered creation; and G. K. Beale’s reading of Eden as a garden sanctuary to be expanded gives at least one exegetical avenue for seeing the creation narratives as continuous with the mission entrusted to Abraham’s descendants. Missio Dei participation, then, is inherent to humanity, and sin’s origins can be framed as a refusal to embrace it.