This episode is part of the Restoration Theology class.

The Bible is a collection of sixty-six books, written by dozens of authors over centuries. It did not drop from heaven, nor did it arrive all in one generation. No, God slowly revealed the Christian scriptures over time. As a result, we find development within them, which is important to understand when building theology. While next time, we’ll focus on the final form of this or that doctrine, today our focus is on how doctrines change over time. This is nothing to worry about. It’s not a bug; it’s a feature! Afterall, our God is not a stone idol, but the dynamic living God who carefully shapes history to his sovereign ends, generation by generation. Today we’ll begin our first episode in a five-part series, covering all the major branches of theology. Enjoy!

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—— Links ——

• Check out the other episodes of the Restoration Theology class
• Support Restitutio by donating here
• Join our Facebook group, follow on X @RestitutioSF or Instagram @Sean.P.Finnegan
• Leave a 90 second voice message via SpeakPipe with questions or comments and we may play it out on the air
• Who is Sean Finnegan? Read his bio here
• Get Finnegan’s book, Kingdom Journey to learn about God’s kingdom coming on earth as well as the story of how Christianity lost this pearl of great price.
• Get the transcript of this episode
• Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio Library.

This episode is part of the Restoration Theology class.

Although one of the most overlooked aspects of hermeneutics, figuring out how to apply scripture to your own context today is extremely important. If you interpret the Bible well, but never ask the question, “How does this affect me?” what good does it do you? Like the scholar of religion who is just curious, you can read the Bible and understand it correctly, but never experience the kind of change God wants for you.

Let’s say you want to apply the Bible to your life today. How do you do it? It won’t do to just pick a verse here and a verse there–taking this one literally and that one metaphorically as you like. No, you need a method to help keep you honest and to make sure you’re not leaving anything critical out. Today’s episode is going to equip you to apply scripture to your life today in a methodical way, not only providing some clear guidelines of what to do, but also some problems to avoid.

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcasts

—— Links ——

• Check out the other episodes of the Restoration Theology class
• Support Restitutio by donating here
• Join our Facebook group, follow on X @RestitutioSF or Instagram @Sean.P.Finnegan
• Leave a 90 second voice message via SpeakPipe with questions or comments and we may play it out on the air
• Who is Sean Finnegan? Read his bio here
• Get Finnegan’s book, Kingdom Journey to learn about God’s kingdom coming on earth as well as the story of how Christianity lost this pearl of great price.
• Get the transcript of this episode
• Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio Library.

This episode is part of the Restoration Theology class.

There’s no getting around it. The Bible is a historical book. The events it describes occurred in history. What’s more, biblical history isn’t just limited to a single period of time. No, it stretches over thousands of years. As a result, it’s critical that you always remember that you’re reading something from another time and place. You’re reading about people who lived long ago in a place that is far away–at least for most of us.

Now, if you’re anything like me, you found social studies, global studies, and history classes totally boring in high school. I never cared to learn much about American presidents or European wars. However, when I came to understand that the historical context was a major key for understanding the Bible, I discovered–to my surprise–a passion for history. Suddenly I wanted to learn about ancient empires and literature. I researched archeology, epigraphy, and paleography. I suppose my awakening occurred because I saw there was a payoff. I wasn’t just studying history to learn random facts about long ago. I was studying to learn how to understand the Bible better, and that made all the difference in the world.

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcasts

—— Links ——

• Check out the other episodes of the Restoration Theology class
• Support Restitutio by donating here
• Join our Facebook group, follow on X @RestitutioSF or Instagram @Sean.P.Finnegan
• Leave a 90 second voice message via SpeakPipe with questions or comments and we may play it out on the air
• Who is Sean Finnegan? Read his bio here
• Get Finnegan’s book, Kingdom Journey to learn about God’s kingdom coming on earth as well as the story of how Christianity lost this pearl of great price.
• Get the transcript of this episode
• Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio Library.

This episode is part of the Restoration Theology class.

What’s the difference between reading the Bible and studying it? Reading the Bible is like surfing on the waves, following the general flow of thought as you go. Studying the Bible is more like swimming underwater, perhaps with scuba gear to enable you to investigate matters thoroughly. Today we’re doing the second one. You’re going to learn how to interpret a biblical text in its literary context using the grammatical-historical hermeneutic. This includes learning about genre, scriptural additives, context, and intertextuality. Our goal is to understand the authorial intent of a scripture so that you interpret it accurately.

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcasts

—— Links ——

• Check out the other episodes of the Restoration Theology class
• Support Restitutio by donating here
• Join our Facebook group, follow on X @RestitutioSF or Instagram @Sean.P.Finnegan
• Leave a 90 second voice message via SpeakPipe with questions or comments and we may play it out on the air
• Who is Sean Finnegan? Read his bio here
• Get Finnegan’s book, Kingdom Journey to learn about God’s kingdom coming on earth as well as the story of how Christianity lost this pearl of great price.
• Get the transcript of this episode
• Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio Library.

This episode is part of the Restoration Theology class.

Would you agree that every translation of the Bible has some sort of bias in it? Even the most literal translations have a good deal of bias baked into them. What can we do? Well, you could learn Hebrew and Greek so you can read the Bible for yourself instead of depending on a translation. Ok, but if you don’t have the inclination, motivation, or time to do that, what can you do? This episode of Restoration Theology is going to take you step by step through an English-only process of detecting bias in translation. You’ll learn a little about the translation process as well as how to spot bias in translation. This is a necessary component in our quest to evaluate doctrines against the text of Scripture.

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcasts

—— Links ——

• Check out the other episodes of the Restoration Theology class
• Support Restitutio by donating here
• Join our Facebook group, follow on X @RestitutioSF or Instagram @Sean.P.Finnegan
• Leave a 90 second voice message via SpeakPipe with questions or comments and we may play it out on the air
• Who is Sean Finnegan? Read his bio here
• Get Finnegan’s book, Kingdom Journey to learn about God’s kingdom coming on earth as well as the story of how Christianity lost this pearl of great price.
• Get the transcript of this episode
• Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio Library.

This is part four of the Restoration Theology class.

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible, is a collection of 39 books written before the time of Christ. Today you’re going to learn about the three major manuscript families of the OT: (1) the Masoretic Text, (2) the Septuagint, and (3) the Samaritan Pentateuch. Like last time, we’ll go through several of the most significant manuscripts while also covering some of the most exciting stories of discovery. My goal here is simply to familiarize you with the texts upon which our Old Testaments are based, so that when you go to build doctrines later, you’ll be able to understand why textual differences matter and how to navigate them effectively.

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcasts

—— Links ——

• Check out the other episodes of the Restoration Theology class
• Support Restitutio by donating here
• Join our Facebook group, follow on X @RestitutioSF or Instagram @Sean.P.Finnegan
• Leave a 90 second voice message via SpeakPipe with questions or comments and we may play it out on the air
• Who is Sean Finnegan? Read his bio here
• Get Finnegan’s book, Kingdom Journey to learn about God’s kingdom coming on earth as well as the story of how Christianity lost this pearl of great price.
• Get the transcript of this episode
• Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio Library.

This is part four of the Restoration Theology class.

Last time we covered the importance of using the Bible to build our beliefs. But what is the Bible? Well, it wasn’t written in American English or in the West or in recent history. The Bible is a library of books written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Still, that doesn’t quite answer the question of what the Bible is. Let’s just focus on the New Testament (NT) for a moment. The NT contains twenty-seven books written in Greek. But that still doesn’t tell you the whole picture. In fact, when you pick up a Greek New Testament (GNT), you’re looking at a scholarly reconstruction of what textual specialists think the earliest recoverable form of each word of the original New Testament is. This reconstruction is based on thousands of little decisions of textual critics who have at their disposal thousands of handwritten GNT manuscripts. It’s a little complicated, but you need to know what’s going on.

Eventually in this class we’re going to get around to building and evaluating doctrines based on the Bible. Sometimes manuscript variations have a great bearing on doctrine. So, you need to know this stuff. What I’ve done in this episode is put together a narrative, marching through history to see not only what the most important kinds of manuscripts are, but also their exciting stories of discovery. I hope you will enjoy learning about this important field.

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcasts

—— Links ——

• Check out the other episodes of the Restoration Theology class
• Support Restitutio by donating here
• Join our Facebook group, follow on X @RestitutioSF or Instagram @Sean.P.Finnegan
• Leave a 90 second voice message via SpeakPipe with questions or comments and we may play it out on the air
• Who is Sean Finnegan? Read his bio here
• Get Finnegan’s book, Kingdom Journey to learn about God’s kingdom coming on earth as well as the story of how Christianity lost this pearl of great price.
• Get the transcript of this episode
• Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio Library.

This is part three of the Restoration Theology class.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about communicating with people who don’t come from my background, it’s that assumptions matter. It’s important to know what I’m assuming and what the other is assuming so we can have meaningful dialog. In our episode today, we’re talking about two presuppositions that restorationists bring to theology: primacy and perspicuity. These two are key footings upon which we will build the foundation of restoration theology. For some of you, what I have to say will seem obvious and unnecessary to spell out while others may find themselves disagreeing with the restorationist approach. Whatever the case may be for you, all I ask is that you hear me out.

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcasts

—— Links ——

• Check out the other episodes of the Restoration Theology class
• Support Restitutio by donating here
• Join our Facebook group, follow on X @RestitutioSF or Instagram @Sean.P.Finnegan
• Leave a 90 second voice message via SpeakPipe with questions or comments and we may play it out on the air
• Who is Sean Finnegan? Read his bio here
• Get Finnegan’s book, Kingdom Journey to learn about God’s kingdom coming on earth as well as the story of how Christianity lost this pearl of great price.
• Get the transcript of this episode
• Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio Library.