Course 3: Forensic Theology
Complete Course Preview · Read or Listen Before You Enroll
Below is the complete content of the third course in the Master of Christian Catechesis, Forensic Theology. Every textbook. Every assignment. Every audio version. Free to read, free to listen to, free to work through at your own pace.
Course 1 taught you to restore the weight of precise legal terms that English translations had softened. Course 2 taught you to restore the weight of structural vocabulary that the modern reader had flattened. Course 3 teaches you to diagnose. The forensic-diagnostic vocabulary of Scripture is the subject of this course: design recognition, diagnosis, and the language of brokenness and repair.
The move you practice in this course is not just definitional recovery or structural restoration. It is diagnostic. You are learning to look at a passage the way a forensic examiner looks at a site: noticing what was built, what broke, and what the text itself prescribes as the repair.
How this course is structured. Course 3 follows the same shape as Courses 1 and 2. Three textbooks plus a synthesis. You read the first textbook, then complete Assignment 1. You read the second textbook, then complete Assignment 2. You read the third textbook, then complete Assignment 3. Finally, you complete Assignment 4, the synthesis, which draws the three subjects into one coherent model in your own catechetical voice. Four credits. Four assignments. One complete way of seeing how the biblical authors built the diagnostic vocabulary the catechist needs.
The Three Textbooks
The Language of Design Recognition
A vocabulary study in eleven words: three Creation Verbs, Sabbath Rest, Tabernacling, Fullness, Glory, Formless and Void, Sixfold Spirit of Isaiah 11, Will, Name, and Daily Bread. The vocabulary of how Scripture is built, the design the biblical authors embedded in their architecture.
The Language of Diagnosis
A vocabulary study in eleven words: three Sin Words, Salvation, Heaven, Hell, Eternal Life, Faith, Steadfast Love, Reconciliation, Paradise, and Testing. The diagnostic vocabulary a catechist needs when a believer is carrying a word that has been thinned, misshapen, or quietly replaced.
The Language of Brokenness and Repair
A vocabulary study in eleven words: Kinds, Fruitful and Multiply, Dominion and Subdue, Till and Keep, the Serpent, Helper Corresponding to Him, Deep Sleep, Dust and Ground, Curse, and Painful Toil. The vocabulary of Genesis 1–3 read as the diagnostic blueprint the rest of Scripture assumes.
The Four Assignments
Each assignment follows the same format you worked through in Courses 1 and 2: the reading that precedes it, three worked scenarios that model the cross-reference discipline, and the specification for the paper and videos the student produces. Assignments 1 through 3 are one per textbook. Assignment 4 is the synthesis.
Subject 1: The Language of Design Recognition
Complete the first textbook. Choose one of three worked scenarios. Produce a paper of roughly 1,500 words and a recorded video of up to 20 minutes. Respond to three challenge questions in a second video.
Subject 2: The Language of Diagnosis
Same format as Assignment 1, applied to the second textbook. The diagnostic posture begins to settle into the hands. The work you did in Courses 1 and 2 is paying dividends here.
Subject 3: The Language of Brokenness and Repair
Same format as Assignments 1 and 2, applied to the third textbook. By Assignment 3 you are working in vocabulary that traces back to Genesis itself, and the rhythm of diagnostic restoration is fluent in your hands.
The Synthesis: Forensic Theology in Your Own Voice
The capstone of Course 3. The student draws the three subjects into a single coherent model in their own catechetical voice. The third place in the program where a student practices the catechist role in the form it will take at the end.