- Dates: September 2 – September 30, 2026
- Time: Wednesdays, 6:30 – 8:00 pm
- Location: Emmaus Institute
- Class sessions are offered in person, live online, and by video (usually) the day following each class.
In this five-week course, we’ll reflect on the Church’s consistent position that although the Christian Bible has two testaments, the central subject matter of both is the one God revealed in Jesus Christ, who has called to himself one people constituting one body, and that the Church anointed by the Holy Spirit in the New Testament just is the self-same ‘Israel of God’ (Gal 6:16) we see being created in the Old Testament.
With this understanding in mind, we’ll spend the first two class sessions in the New Testament engaging the following kinds of questions: What sort of thing did Jesus establish that came to be called ‘ekklesia’ (‘Church’)? What are its essential features, without which a faith community could not rightly be called ‘Church’? And how do the apostles show themselves not only to be referring but also deferring to the Old Testament to bear witness about it?
In light of this last question, we’ll spend the third class thinking through the perspective of the apostles about the perpetual role of ‘the law and the prophets’ (Old Testament) in the Church’s emerging self-awareness [“Here we are. God has called us into existence. But what are we, and toward what have we been called?”]. In particular, we will learn what is meant by interpreting Sacred Scripture “figurally,” and how the two testaments of Sacred Scripture—Old and New—relate to each other as one unified witness delivered in two registers.
In the final two class sessions, we will take our cue from the apostles and the early Church, and revisit the Old Testament to hear how it means to continue to shape our thinking even today by what it says about Israel as ‘the assembly of God’ (Hebrew: qahal adonai; Greek: ekklesia; English: ‘church’).
Thanks to a generous grant, this course is being offered free of charge to the first twenty-five registrants.
About the instructor
Chad completed his undergraduate studies in Philosophy at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln while studying the biblical languages and biblical introduction and interpretation on the side. Following graduation, he taught with his father at a small Bible institute in Lincoln for a number of years before moving to England with his wife Kacy to begin graduate work in biblical studies. Upon their return to Lincoln in 2005, Chad resumed teaching and writing full time with the institute where he remained until its closure in 2013. His interests lie especially in cultivating Christian unity, and in sharing the task of interpreting Sacred Scripture with Christians across denominational lines. He and his family were received into the Roman Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil at St. Peter in 2011. Since then he has enjoyed singing in the choir and serving as a regular catechist for the OCIA program at the parish. He and Kacy have eight children, a goofy pyredoodle, an opinionated Quaker parrot, an easier-going rabbit, a growing population of fish in multiple aquariums, and an ark under construction.
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