Post your case study below in the response area 300-500 words.
This is going to be a “real life” case study. You are to find a person who would be willing to sit down and talk to you for thirty minutes to an hour. This is to be one who professes to be a Christian. With your Student Notebook in hand, you are to explain what you have learned concerning the distinction between the essentials and non-essentials in session 6.
• Walk through the Quadrant of Objectivity and then ask the questions. Help the person to think through where they place them.
• Explain the Concentric Circle of Importance.
• Finally, explain the Chart of Certainty and ask the questions on that follow.
The object of this assignment is to help your friend understand how to think through issues that concern faith, objectivity, and certainty.
After you are done, write a half page to a page summary of the encounter and hand it in. Online student are to post their summary in their class forum. Grades will be based upon the completion of the assignment, not the effectiveness of the presentation. Everyone who completes this will receive credit for the case study.
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October 23rd, 2008 at 2:22 pm
(Note: I went over this with my wife again as I did a couple of years ago doing this self-study and I’ll note any changes for this 2008 one)
As in my first Case Study, I went over it with my wife. I explained that a big topic in the mid to latter half of this course has to do with Postmodernism, relativism, etc. I told her three tools we were using were the Quadrant of Objectivity, Concentric Circles of Importance, and Chart of Certainty. I think in my my initial explanation I didn’t clarify enough that the most essential had to do with what was essential for salvation, but got that cleared up with a little explanation. 2008: Again I needed to clarify better - when will I learn, lol?
For the Quadrant of Objectivity, and for all these it seems, she stuck with pretty decisive answers. For the Quadrant, She put the Trinity at Objective Essential, and the rest at Objective non-essential. She didn’t really seem to consider anything relative. 2008: No difference in these answers.
With the Concentric Circles, there was a little more variation. Trinity came in as essential for salvation. Smoking, Drinking, Drugs (or not rather!) came in as essential for orthodoxy. This may sound extreme, but then we both come from fairly traditional backgrounds. Eating healthy and exercise came in as important. 2008: The smoking, drinking, and drugs questions dropped to Not Important because she said they are topics that should be understood to be bad by any believer, therefore should really be a non-issue.
For the Chart of Certainty, it was back to extremes - all -10’s, 9, or 10. The smoking, drinking and drugs (based on does one belive they are all right for this question) all got the -10’s. Trinity got the full positive 10, and health got 9. I’m thinking many people offhand unless they had a really long time to sort their positions out will probably tends towards extremes. 2008: still extremes I think for the same reason that positions of certainty are not everyday considerations.
Another good talk, I don’t know if I might have influenced the results by mentioning postmodernism or relativism first. And I think a better selection of topics (for many drinking and drugs and even smoking are gonna draw the same responses) would help with more variety in response. If I was making a large case study out of this, I think I would come up with a wide variety in the selection.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:12 am
Case study 2
For this case study my wife volunteered to be my subject, so today we walked through Case Study 2.
First we talked about the Quadrant of Objectivity and tried to explain the four squares. I then asked where she would put topics like going to movies, drinking wine, and home schooling. Nothing was put in to the quadrant of situational relativity instead she thought everything seemed to fit into the autonomous quadrant. I probably failed to give a good explanation of the situational relativity quadrant.
Then we talked about the existence of God, Christ’s Resurrection, Christ’s Deity, and being saved by faith alone. There was no problem here as she entered them into the essential Objectivity Square.
Then the questions on tongues, predestination, the date of Christ’s return and the creation of earth in seven literal days and where would she put these Christian doctrines? She did really well positioning all into the non-objective quadrant. The one question that arose was when she wanted to put the canon of scripture into the essential quadrant too. So we discussed why this might not necessarily be considered an essential, at least not for salvation. But we did agree that it was foundational for orthodoxy.
Then we briefly went through the concentric circles and discussed its importance and found similarities here to the four quadrants.
Finally we looked at the chart of certainty together spent some time defining certainty and discussed the types of certainty. This was eye opening for her as it was for me. First we discussed how certain we were that “There is a God.” This did get a high mark on Emotional Certainty but Absolute Certainty could not be arrived at. However we did a little work and thought that Intellectual Certainty was more in the positive.
All in all, when we looked at the different questions and the different categories of certainty. We found emotional certainty reined high but with what she knew at this time she really couldn’t back-up or support Intellectual Certainty. We did talk about prophecy, the uniqueness of the bible, morality and where morality may have come from. This when taken together seemed to increase the probability well into the positive portion of intellectual certainty on the chart of certainty.
When you put a little thought into this concept of certainty and its implications there seems to be a myth here of how the certainty of many of our preconceived ideas may be taken for granted. This could explain why sometimes when Christians try to share their faith with those of opposing viewpoints there is often more heat than light coming out of their discussions.
Well that’s my analysis. It seems to be lacking in many respects so I hope it works for this assignment.
October 31st, 2008 at 11:09 am
My wife was my guinea pig for Case Study 2.
I explained the Quadrant of Objectivity to her to begin the case study and asked her about each topic listed in the student handbook; going to movies, wearing a head covering, eating meat sacrificed to idols, home schooling, and drinking. She nailed every one of the topics listed into the situational relativity box. We went through each box and she did very well at placing the topics where we have them listed in the handbook. The one outlier was ‘faith alone’ which is listed in the Essential Objectivity box, but she liked it better in the Non-Essential Objectivity box.
We then changed gears and went through the Concentric Circle of Importance, but our discussion continued from the previous topic of the Quadrant of Objectivity. “Our faith itself if a gift of grace. You don’t have to believe that salvation is by faith alone to be saved; even though it is true.” But she says that it should be ‘by grace alone (through faith)’ and isn’t necessary for salvation, but is essential for Christian orthodoxy. There seemed to be quite a bit of overlap from the Quadrant of Objectivity and the Concentric Circle of Importance.
As it turns out, my wife is much surer of some things than I am. I recorded responses to fourteen of the twenty questions as either plus or minus ten. There were two nines and an eight in there as well. Emotional Certainty was her strongest point followed by Moral, and Intellectual Certainty.
After only being married a few months, this was an enlightening case study. These are things many Christian couples never speak about in their lifetimes and was interesting and fun for us to dig a little deeper into our deepest-held beliefs after just a short time together.
November 1st, 2008 at 12:31 am
With the consent of the group from the Friday evening Bible Study that I teach, this case study was our excursus for the evening.
After opening with prayer, I spoke briefly about distinguishing between essentials and non-essentials as they relate to being a Christian and to Christianity in general. I explained that at the very heart of Christianity are some very key things that are absolutely essential for one to know and believe in order to be truly classified as a Christian. We define “being a Christian” as one who has accepted the free gift of salvation earned for them by Jesus Christ, and have surrendered their heart and life to the control and direction of Jesus Christ.
Then I introduced the Quadrant of Objectivity by handing out copies of the blank quadrant pages from the workbook. I had the group label each quadrant as I explained what each one meant.
For example, when I explained the “Essential Objectivity” quadrant, I used the same phaseology that Michael and Rhome used in the video: “It is true for all people, in all places, at all times.” I also explained that our ability to understand that truth and I willingness to accept that truth had absolutely no bearing on the reality of that truth.
Once the four quadrants were introduced, I began reading the labels of the orbs in the quadrants and the list on the next page in the workbook, then asking the group to tell me which quadrant they felt each item should be placed in. The discussion got quite lively several times, especially when items came up like the canon of Scripture, drinking a glass of wine or beer, and even eating right and taking care of ourselves physically. There was a lot of emotional response to some of this, particularly from those who came from a Roman Catholic background.
When we all seemed to be pretty much on the same page as far as understanding the difference between objective and subjective truth, and between essential and non-eseential, we moved on to the Concentric Circles of Importance. This seemed to make the same information from the previous section clearer to some in the group. Not being as linear a diagram made the difference. The gals especially seemed to be able to grasp how things related better with this diagram.
Again we discussed what markers we wanted to try to use to determine which circle the items discussed before would fit into and why. They really seemed to be much more comfortable with this. One person even commented that they had never given these things this kind of thought before and it was opening up a whole new way of looking at the things we believe as Christians. My response was to encourage the entire group to begin taking the things they believe and discovereing if they are correct or not and why or why not.
Things got much more personal when I handed out copies of the “How certain are you,” page from the workbook. I had drawn the Chart of Certainty on a dry erase board and briefly explained it. W=Each person when through and scored the questions on their own, and then we discussed each one in turn as a group.
There was a lot of variation om some of these. Undersstand, some of these people have been sitting under my teaching for several years. I was pretty sure I knew where most of them would fall on these things. I was really surprised by several of them.
An example of that would be two of the group who had been around when I taught expositionally through the book of Genesis several years ago. They had several of the creation questions in the 6 to 8 range. I had been pretty certain they would have been 9’s or 10’s. When I had them explain their scores, they both mentioned other teachings they have heard since our study together and how those other teachings had raised doubts in their minds.
We ended uop spending over an hour just on these three activities for the evening. What was the greatest blessing to witness was the graciousness they interacted with when they disagreed on things like, whether or not God wanted them to completely trust Him to keep them safe from physical harm. One person had scored that a minus-10, while the rest of the group had scored that one between an 8 and a 10 on the “plus” side.
That one person was able to sway the whole group be taking the question apart and making it personal for each person in the group. It was quite wel done, really, The whole group changed their answers to minus-10 by the time the discussion of that question was over. And, of course, that caused them to modify their answers to the following two questions.
Clarifying, at least briefly, what they felt was essential for salvation was a very good start. They saw how important much of the other things were, yet they were able to grasp in a very personal way how critical it is for all believers to be in agreement with at least the core elements of the Christian faith. They also saw how important it is to have the elements of orthodoxy in common.
Doing the case study this way was great fun for me because I love teaching and this was a brand new way to present this information to people, the result of which was they went away better informed, more motivated to analyze their faith, and excited about how these things wil now be a part of how we do theology around here.
My thanks to Michael and Rhome and all who have contributed to the development of the program. And, of course, my thanks and praise to God for being in control of the whole process.
November 10th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
I sat down with my wife and went through the second Case Study with her.
I began by showing and explaining the Quadrant of Certainty to her. We discussed all of the example circles in each of the four quadrants, and she did not have any difficulty understanding the chart or how the different subjects fit into each quadrant. I then asked her the questions on the following page. Her initial reaction to the doctrine of the Trinity was to put it in the Essential Objectivity category, but after further thought and discussion she changed it to Non-Essential Objectivity. She felt that smoking and eating healthy/exercising should fall into the Situational Relativity category, because though these things are generally bad (smoking) or good (health), there are situations where it would be ok to do or not do them. She further explained that coming from a faith which put these in the objective category made her realize that doing so could lead to a very strict and guilt-ridden legalism. Intoxication fell into Non-Essential Objectivity, as drunkenness is spoken against in scripture and never good, and using anti-depressants was placed into Autonomous Relativity, as she felt that it was different for everyone.
Next I explained the Concentric Circle of Importance, and particularly emphasized the difference between Essential for Salvation and Essential for Orthodoxy. We had a discussion about the difference between the two and the importance and difficulty of deciding which issues fit into which circle.
Finally I explained the Chart of Certainty to her, and had her rank the list of issues on the following page. We then compared our results. She ended up with more 10’s than I had on my list, but we did in the end come to agreement on many of those. They were generally the ones that had to do with God or with Christ and simply stated the main tenants of our faith, such as the existence of God and that God created the earth, or that Christ rose from the grave. We both had less certainty in the more controversial issues, such as the historical accuracy of the Bible, the gift of tongues, or whether some other books should be included in the Canon. In general she ranked the issues that had to do with Genesis higher than I did, as she has more confidence in its literal interpretation and I have heard many different views on it, especially in relation to how it works together with modern science. We both ranked negatively the two questions about God protecting us from all physical and emotional harm.
At the conclusion she said that it had been a very interesting study and made her think about and helped her understand more clearly how to separate truth in relation to her faith.
November 11th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Case Study 2: Essential and Non-Essentials
Kwesi Williams
My subject for this Case study was my wife, Tania. We’ve been having many discussion based on the course and I figured it would be appropriate. My wife is a Christian for the record.
With the aid of the class materials we discussed the essentials and non essentials. Tania had a great grip on what she believed to be essential and why. She has been listening! LOL
Walking through the quadrant of Objectivity was fun and made sense for Tania. Her comments were that she would definitely remember “the Quad”.
Upon viewing the concentric circle of importance, she interrupted me and said this is self explanatory. So, there was not much discussion there.
Finally, we discussed the chart of certainty and had a lot of fun with that. When we started many items on the list she claimed to be a 10 on. I pressed her and explained the question was not do you believe? Or how much do you believe? Refocusing on the certainty of her beliefs then yielded a very different result.
There was great discussion about the Garden of Eden and Adam and eve, the afterlife and the literal 7 day creation.
Tania was appreciative of the information, especially “the quad”. She really liked that a lot.
November 21st, 2008 at 9:49 pm
For Case Study #2, I thought it would be interested to ask my mother, especially since we just went through talking about Tradition and how many people just take the same religion as their parents.
We first went through the Quadrant of Objectivity. Her answers actually surprised me with regard to where she placed them between Situational Reality and Non-essential objectivity. For the Trinity (no surprise here) she placed it under Essential Objectivity. She mentioned that you may not know about the Trinity the moment you trust Christ, but as you learn/grow in knowlege, the concept is there. Also Christ has to be who He claimed to be (God), Revelation passage “I am the Alpha and Omega”, etc. The old testament teaches of the Son (hidden message) but then it becomes a reality. With regard to smoking, she placed that under situational because it is of a lower issues of importance. She also placed eating healthy/exercising, getting intoxicated and using anti-depressants under situational.
We then went through the Concentric Circle of Importance and the only thing I really needed to clarify here was the Essential for Orthodoxy, everything else was very easy for her to understand.
Finally, after explaining the Chart of Certainty, I asked her the questions that went along with the chart. No big surprises here, as I know where she stands on almost every issue. A lot of 10’s (either plus or minus depending on the question) and an 8 for the Tribulation question and a 9 for the question on tongues.
I found it interesting how we were the same on most questions. The two questions that she did not answer 10 to, I didn’t answer a 10 on either, but my level of certainty on those two were a 3 and 1 as opposed to her 8 and 9. I think prior to taking this course I would have probably answered an 8 and 9 on those 2 questions also.
November 22nd, 2008 at 1:06 am
I used my wife for Case Study #2. I was planning on using someone else (since I also used her for Case Study #1) but she was just TOO convenient! It was a very good conversation though. She hasn’t done much studying of theological method so it really got her “wheels turning”.
I told her that this Case Study was about the essentials and non-essentials of the Christian faith. Before deciding if a given truth is essential for Christian faith, it helps to know what “kind” of truth it is: relative or objective. So I introduced her to the Quadrant of Objectivity.
The categories of the QoO were pretty intuitive so we quickly passed on to the ‘classification’ questions. These were fun – she had some colorful examples! Belief in the Trinity was ‘non-essential objective’ because there were Christians before this doctrine was crystallized. The remaining 3 were situationally relative. If you were stuck on a desert island and your friend had to pull your rotten toothand getting intoxicated is the only anesthetic you had then getting hammered is a great thing! It would’ve taken me awhile to come up with that one… =)
The ‘Quad Categories’ definitely helped when trying to determine ‘levels of certainty’, using the Chart of Certainty, for the questions in the next section.
These were fun too! Of course, 10s on all the easy ones that you need to know before you’d meaningfully call yourself a Christian – “There is a God”, “Christ rose from the grave’, “God loves you”, etc. We found much less certainty on doctrines pulled from Genesis or Revelation. The fact that the Roman Catholic Bible has 15 more books than the Protestant Bible blew her mind! “What?! Are you serious?! NO WAY!! Where did they get them? Why don’t WE have them? Do the Mormons have a point?!” I did what I could to ease her mind a bit but I’m certainly looking forward to the Bibliology class so I can give her more tools to work through this issue! I hope Michael is happy – his trouble-making has a blast radius. =)
The following exchange was pretty enlightening too!
“Should ‘3 John’ be included in Scripture… I don’t know… IS there a third John?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“Right after the first 2”
“Really?!”
Someone really needs to slap the ’spiritual leader’ of this family for negligence! Oh wait, that’s me… =)
She found all of this material VERY interesting. She can’t wait to be exposed to more of it. Neither can I!
Have a Happy Thanksgiving and a Merry Christmas, Guys! See ya next year!
November 22nd, 2008 at 9:49 pm
Case Study 2: Essentials and Non-Essentials
For this case study, I interviewed two very different people – one very studied person (George) and one who occasionally goes to church (Ringo). I have known both for a very long time and believe they meet the criteria for the study. There were obvious outcomes – like confidence (or lack of) in their answers, but there were some surprising ones as well.
George of course sailed through the level of certainty questions with great confidence. When I challenged him on a few points, he changed his mind…only by one point though. I would not have thought to challenge him on those specific points had my thinking not been challenged in the class. The quadrants didn’t seem to relate well to him, but the concentric circles and the degrees of certainty did.
Ringo on the other had was somewhat confused by most of what was asked. He hadn’t really considered what might or might not be essential for salvation or for orthodoxy. Didn’t really understand what it meant to be orthodox…frankly neither did I until this class. The session was really meaningful with Ringo because it led him to consider exactly what he does think about things and realize that his faith is somewhat shallow. I hope that he at least continues to consider the 20 questions and pursues understanding.
December 28th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Mitch Epstein - Case Study 2
I spoke with a new member of our church, Chad, who is a strong Believer. What I found most interesting is that whenever we came across an issue regarding Scripture, he was always a complete 10 for many logical and scientific reasons. He referenced a study that was done that mathmatically proved that all 66 books of the Bible were inerrant due to the numbering of the letters, whereas removing even one would throw off the entire book. Interesting, and I am not familiar with it, nor did I look it up. I am sure that we will discuss it further in the next class “B&H.” This research that he has done placed him on a higher level of certainty than I with regard to important and essential theological issues. He was also a strong continuationist and is completely certain that the gift of tongues did not cease in the first century. I am a soft continuationist, so I don’t doubt his belief, but I am more skeptical and believe that these gifts are rare and for specific purposes only–such as evangelizing or glorifying God. (Sola deo gloria)
This class has been a real eye-opener for me and a pleasure to be able to learn these important topics in a convenient way!