In this short video, Dr. Johnathan Pritchett, Trinity’s Vice President of Academic Affairs, explains what students can expect from programs in Biblical and Theological Studies at Trinity College of the Bible and Theological Seminary.

For more information about our college of biblical studies and online biblical studies degree programs, complete the “Request more information” form on the right side of this page.

Video Transcript

Greetings. I’m Dr. Jonathan Pritchett, vice president of academic affairs at Trinity College of the Bible and Theological Seminary. Today I’d like to share with you a little bit about our School of Biblical and Theological Studies.

In current evangelical scholarship there’s a rift that has been growing between biblical studies and theology, but we believe that that is arbitrary and unnecessary. Our systematic theology here at Trinity College of the Bible and Theological Seminary is to be thoroughly exegetical, and we believe that our biblical studies should be informed by sound doctrine. Trinity is rooted in evangelical, orthodox, conservative scholarship, and so we want to be informed by the best of that tradition.

In our biblical studies, we place an emphasis on the original languages, we place an emphasis on the socio-cultural background and the historical background of these ancient texts that we call Scripture. So we emphasize these things in a number of ways.

Many of our Biblical Studies classes are geared towards helping you be more informed about the original context in the original spirit inspired authors and the original audience. This helps us make applications that are appropriate for today. So our biblical Studies department is both scholastic and practical.

Our systematic theology, like our biblical studies, is also geared towards being practical. We believe that doctrine sets the stage for the dramatic actors of the church to go fully informed with sound truth. We believe that scripture has propositional statements that tell us about the nature of reality, and systematic theology categorizes those for us so that we have a robust understanding of what the nature of reality is like, what the nature of the biblical teachings really are, and because we are a non-denominational school, we are informed by the best scholarship from a wider perspective of evangelical scholarship. We don’t try to force different views onto people, but rather we believe that iron sharpens iron, and when you can learn from the best of a wide variety of perspectives it not only solidifies your own beliefs, but it helps you fully understand where other people are coming from.

Trinity is also unique when it comes to studying the biblical languages. We believe that it is important for those students in both biblical studies programs and theology programs to understand the original languages and to retain that knowledge long after they’ve left seminary. Too often many seminary graduates have an alarming number of evangelical scholars have largely forgotten a lot of what they learned about the original languages.

At Trinity we have a “go at your own pace” model for studying Greek and Hebrew. This is important because people learn different languages at different speeds; some people can grasp them faster others not. So what we do is we allow a self-paced study of the individual languages in the courses to get your credits during the duration of your entire degree program. So you can go at your own pace, and we believe that this helps you retain that knowledge long after you’ve left seminary. So that is one of the unique features about studying biblical languages with Trinity. It’s not Greek 1 this semester you have 16 weeks to cram it, Greek 2 the next semester you have 16 weeks cram it, but rather you can get all of your Greek and Hebrew credits at your own pace, and we believe again that this will help you keep this knowledge with you over the long term of your entire ministry, not just to pass these and remember tidbits 10 to 15 years from now.

All of our classes here at Trinity are geared towards helping you be a more effective minister. Students in Trinity’s degree programs occupy a wide variety of positions within the church, whether it’s local church pastors, whether it’s itinerant evangelists or those with speaking ministries or teaching ministries. So first and foremost we want our degree programs to aid them to better fulfill their calling in ministry.

But also we believe in a high standard of academic scholarship, so our degree programs are also geared towards Christian academia. It’s not an either/or but it’s a both/and here at Trinity.

So I invite you today to come, fulfill your calling by signing up for a degree program in our School of Biblical and Theological Studies.

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In this Trinity Insight video, Dr. Braxton Hunter introduces to the Contemporary Apologetics course at Trinity’s online bible college and online seminary.

If you are interested in getting online apologetics degree or taking an online apologetics course, complete the “Request More Information” form on the right side of this page.

Video Transcript

Greetings. I’d like to welcome you to this course on contemporary Christian apologetics. I have no doubt that it will be an exciting time of learning.

• What challenges face Christian apologetics?
• What are some of the common misunderstandings about the apologetic enterprise?
• Are there any good evidences for God’s existence and the resurrection of Jesus that still stand up to scholarly scrutiny in the 21st century?
• How do contemporary Christian apologists respond to arguments from atheists and other skeptics?

These are just some of the fascinating issues that we will walk through together as we learn to enrich our ministries with Christian defense.

We’ll also take a look at various apologetic methodologies, so that you can objectively make a choice about which approach is the most appropriate to your distinctive denominational and doctrinal background and your ministry practices.

By the time you complete this course, if we work together at this, you will have all the tools you need to begin using Christian apologetics in your counseling, preaching, teaching, and personal evangelism endeavors.

Dig into the books, get excited about the material, and prepare yourself for the journey!

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Are you busy with ministry and prefer to take classes at your own pace from the convenience of your home or office?

In the short video below, Dr. Braxton Hunter introduces you to Trinity College of the Bible and Theological Seminary in Evansville, Indiana and explains the benefits of Trinity’s 100% online degree programs.

If you would like to learn more about Trinity, complete the “Request More Information” form on the right side of this page.

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In the video below, Dr. Elbert Elliott discuss the preaching degree programs at Trinity Seminary.

For more information on how you can earn a PhD in preaching, we encourage you to read more about the Doctor of Philosophy in Preaching and Pastoral Ministry program.

Video Transcript

Welcome to Trinity College of the Bible and Theological Seminary. I’m Dr. Elbert Elliott. People here call me Doctor E. Basically, I deal with pulpit communication, sometimes called expository preaching.

We believe that preaching includes all of the categories that fall under pulpit communication. What we do in Pulpit communication is to help equip people as they go out into ministry to do the thing that they’re called to do which is most important and that’s the proclaim the gospel or to proclaim God’s word, because we believe in biblical preaching. Biblical preaching is the heart of the church. If there is not biblical preaching, the church suffers. That has been proven in history, and it is being proven today.

There are some very good some very good pupliteers out in the world and they’re very some very good preachers, biblical preachers, in the world. There are also a lot of preachers that think they’re preachers but they do not have a Biblical base.

If you come to Trinity, what we will try to do is to teach you to take the scripture and use good hermeneutical principles and to be to be able to interpret scripture accurately and then making an application to the world in which you live, so that the so that the word of God speaks to this culture and attempts to correct the culture and bring it back to what would be the roots of the Christian faith, basically how this country was established and formed.

We have a great variety of preaching courses. For example, we have of course that’s called Contemporary Preaching or Preaching to a Multimedia Generation. We have a course called preaching from the New Testament. We have one, preaching from the Old Testament. We have a course The Hermeneutical Basis of Preaching. We have one, The Theological Basis of Preaching. We have all kinds of courses related to preaching.

I approach preaching from the standpoint of being biblical but also from the standpoint of communication, because I did two degrees in one of the major universities in the country that was one of the premier universities in communication. So we will look at this very seriously. We also used very excellent text books that are very practical. We believe that everything should have some academic integrity but that it should be doable by students.

Basically, as I look, I would give you this as a quick summation. In the courses that we teach, basically I would say that every message, no matter whether it’s an idea that you you come up with or it comes straight from scripture, every message needs a major point, it needs a purpose – and that’s the response you want from the hearers or that God wants – a proposition, which is the message boiled down to basically one sentence, and usually that’s a timeless truth and you can find that in every scripture passage some way. And also it will need an application from that, because no matter where you’re picking your scripture from or your passage, there needs to be application of principles that apply to today to the listeners who hear you. You desire and God desires a response from them.

This is just a little tiny summation of all that we do, but we have seen people go out from the school and become excellent expositors of God’s work. So thank you now for listening to this little small small segment of what we do here. Thank you.

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Trinity President, Dr. Braxton Hunter, addresses that question in the video below.

We encourage you to subscribe to the Trinity YouTube channel and check back here a couple times a week for thought-provoking articles and videos.

And if you are looking for an online bible college or online seminary to further your Christian education, prepare your for ministry, or help you grow in your faith, consider enrolling at Trinity College of the Bible and Theological Seminary.

Video Transcript

Welcome to Trinity Insight: The home of the thinking Christian, and today we’re asking the question can a loving God really be just in allowing people to go to hell for all eternity.

So, how can God be just in allowing people to go to hell for all eternity? I mean after all, the punishment doesn’t really seem to fit the crime.

If you think about it, if this is true as atheist often remind us, Adolf Hitler, if he prayed to receive Christ on his deathbed, might be in heaven and six million Jews in hell. It just doesn’t seem right. After all, I’m a very conservative evangelical man, but I couldn’t hold for a man’s hand to the fire for 10 minutes to the fire even if he was the worst pedophile. So how could God send someone to a place of absolute suffering for all eternity? Better yet, how is he just in doing this?

Christian philosophers answer this question and number of ways. One of hte more popular ways  is like this and this is my rendering of it…

Imagine that you’re sitting at home one night watching television, and your neighbor’s cat is whining at your window, and you can’t watch the television show. And so you get up and after enough nights of putting up with this cat – sorry if you’re a cat person – you go out and strangle the cat in the middle of the night.

Now there’s probably a penalty for that. I don’t know what it is – maybe spend the night in jail maybe have to pay a fine, I don’t know what the penalty is for killing cats, because I usually… scratch that, I never kill cats.

On the other hand let’s imagine now that my neighbor keeps buying more and more cats and I keep strangling them. Ultimately, I might go across the street and strangle my neighbor – I mean not me, I mean somebody.

Now the penalty for this is much greater. I’m now going to have to spend the rest of my life perhaps in jail. I might receive capital punishment. The point is that there’s a penalty for sinning against a cat that is not really all that great. And there’s a penalty for sinning against a man which is equal to my own life. So, what must the penalty be for sinning against an everlasting God? Our own sense of justice that you can see as we walk through this progression leads you to the realization that it is an everlasting punishment

Now, you might say, “But God is God. Can’t he just ignore that and forgive people and let them go to heaven anyway without a sacrifice?”

Well not really. Justice is a part of God’s nature, just like the number of other things are, and just as you can’t change your own nature, God’s nature doesn’t change either. He must act justly. As a result we’re all destined to an eternity an everlasting amount of time in a place called hell unless there’s an everlasting person who can pay the price for us. But there’s only one everlasting person, or at least the godhead is everlasting. And so Jesus came to Earth as the everlasting person who paid the everlasting penalty, so that we all might go to heaven through him. And that, my friends, is how you answer the problem of hell.

Look for more of this information at Trinity Insight

And sign up for classes today at TrinitySem.edu

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