Schools Introduction by Matt Slick

Hi, my name is Matt Slick and I am the founder and president of CARM. I would like to introduce you to the online schools of theology, apologetics and critical thinking, but before that I would like to answer a few common questions about the schools.

Accreditation, Self-Paced Lessons, and Certificates

First of all, the three schools are not accredited. However, they do contain material that would be taught in a typical Christian college and some seminary classes. And no, we don't grade papers because, well, there aren't any.

Instead, the lessons are self-paced. You read them, answer the questions, check your responses with the answers that are provided in a link, and then you progress to the next lesson. Each one can be finished in less than 10 minutes and there are about 90 in each of the theology and apologetics schools with about 40 lessons in the critical thinking course.

Oh, and there is no denominational leaning. And at the end of each school is a certificate that you can print up, sign, and put on your wall. I wrote these schools based on my college and seminary training as well as the thousands of hours of experience I have had in various ministry outreaches where I was required to explain and defend the Christian faith.

Theology School Curriculum

The schools contain a lot of knowledge gained through research and experience. Let me tell you what is in these schools. First of all, the school of theology focuses on the basics of the Christian faith.

It covers topics such as the Bible, interpreting the Bible, God, the Trinity, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, creation, man, the fall, the law, sin, salvation, the church, and end times. It is rather thorough and after completing it you will have a very good understanding of what the Christian faith is as well as what it is not.

Apologetics School Topics

The apologetics school continues where the theology school leaves off. It covers additional topics such as the different kinds of apologetic approaches that there are and some basic logical principles used in defending the faith.

The topics covered there in that school are such things as relativism, atheism, evolution, abortion, Islam, the cults like Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormonism. It also deals with Roman Catholicism and its many unbiblical teachings such as Mariolatry and salvation based on faith and works.

The idea of the apologetics school is to further ground you in the biblical faith and help you defend it. The school of critical thinking is intended to give you a practical, easy to use approach to deal with many of the attacks levied against Christianity.

To do this you focus more on logic as well as logical fallacies and there is an examination of various theological and secular errors where you get exposed to those errors and learn how to detect bad arguments.

There is also a section that takes real dialogues I have had with people and analyzes them so you can learn more naturally and see how it is done in practical terms. The course does not use theoretical, logical symbols and concepts.

Instead, it uses practical, everyday examples of arguments against Christianity and shows you how to think through those critical issues. Each school is identical in format. Each has a navigation table on the left of the screen.

How the Lessons and Navigation Work

At the bottom of each lesson is a link to the previous lesson and the next lesson. There you will also see a link for questions to answer and another link that provides the answers. This way you can check your answers.

The goal of the schools is to ground you in your faith, to teach you how to respond to attacks on your faith and also to help you think more critically. If you are interested in learning, please consider signing up for the online schools.

God bless and thank you.