Christianity for the confused - Key Ideas: An Overview of Christian Thoughts & Beliefs

By Adam Boulter

‘Christianity for the confused’ is a set of short introductions to Christian thought and beliefs, which aim to explain the basics of the Christian faith.
To be a Christian you do not have to be born from Christian parents, rather you have to have certain beliefs. What are those beliefs and what are the key ideas they are based on? The key ideas in Christianity matter, whether you are new to faith, exploring possibilities or a committed atheist, as Christian faith and its ideas has shaped our world. This short overview of Christian ideas aims to give you a map of those ideas that are foundational to believing and living out a Christian faith, and understanding the basics that underpin the kaleidoscope of different groups that make up the Christian Churches.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 24, 2024
• ISBN: 9781445793115

Book preview

About the Author

Born in 1971, Adam Boulter was educated in Fine Art before working as a painter specialising in religious commissions. He then studied theology at Cambridge University and was ordained as an Anglican clergyman into a south London parish in 2008. He worked as a chaplain in Jordan and France, and was then dean and principal of the Anglican Bible college in Toliara Madagascar. Currently, he paints and writes from France. His paintings can be seen on his website at: www.adamboulter.co.uk

Other Books in This Series

Christian Ethics: An overview of Christian virtue ethics

The Bible: An introduction to the Bible and how to read it

The Old Testament: A brief overview

St Paul: His life, thought, and writings

The life of Christ: Jesus, his life, and his teachings

Acknowledgements

This book is dedicated to my late father Hugh Boulter with many thanks for so many joyful theological discussions over the years.

Thanks also to the late Caroline Moore for her encouragement to start writing these books. Also to my students and the other clergy and staff of St Patrick's Bible college in Toliara Madagascar where the ideas for these books took shape. Thanks to my tireless editor Terence Handley, you were a great encouragement and a sharp eye. To all my teachers and colleagues over the years, especially Professor Graham Davies who took me on as a mature student in Cambridge. To my family for keeping me returning to this project and putting up with me stressing over minutiae of layout and theology.

Needless to say, any good ideas in these books are due to drawn from good teaching and reading, and any errors are entirely my own.

Introduction

Christianity for the Confused

These books have emerged over a decade of ministering, teaching and preaching all over the world. While running talks, discussion groups, and beginners theology classes in London, Jordan, France and Madagascar, I came to realise that there is very little written about Christianity for the interested, thoughtful person with a busy life, and a multitude of other things to think about. This series hopes to add to that small but growing collection of books that seek to explain the Christian faith in a brief, intelligent, practical way.

How to Use This Book

This book works well as a short course with a Bible study or Lent group, or you can simply work through it on your own. These books are short but much of their content takes time to really absorb. Christianity, like all faiths, is not just a set of ideas, but a way of life. To fully understand these concepts you need to take time to consider them deeply, to see if they match up to your lived experience.

I have included some suggestions for activities, readings, and questions, that are intended to help you engage with this book. These often use visual art as a way of helping you engage creatively, they are not about making great art, but rather about helping you think in different ways. These are optional, only do them if you find them helpful.

1: How Are We Saved?

Where to Start?

To really grasp Christian belief we need to understand it as a whole, a complete system of thought where the different ideas and areas of thought all interrelate. Christian beliefs are a complete system, which raises the question of where to start.

With Us

There is no right answer to this dilemma, but we must start somewhere. If we are honest our first thoughts tend to be: what does this all mean for me? So, we will start with ourselves and what is wrong with us, and how we are saved from ourselves and get drawn back to God by Jesus Christ.

To God and Back

From there, our tour of basic Christian beliefs will talk about who this person Jesus Christ is. We then will reach the peak of our tour in considering the Holy Trinity and God, before working our way back again to this world by revisiting who Jesus is in the light of what we have learnt about the Trinity and God. We will finish