Teaching Kids Theology Part 13
TLDR: The Bible is an amazing gift from God that helps us learn about Him and come to know Him through Jesus. The starting point for this journey is learning the basics of this wonderful book.
The study of the Bible, an area of theology called bibliology, is somewhat unique from the other areas of theology in that it looks toward the Bible to understand what it says about itself.1 Some people would see this as circular reasoning and thus conclude it’s problematic. After all, how reliable can what the Bible says about itself be? But this would only be a problem if the Bible were a normal book. That, it most surely is not.
The word bible means book, but the Bible isn’t like any other book; it’s in a class by itself. And the primary reason for that is because of who wrote the Bible: God. The Bible was given to us by God, who used human authors to record exactly what he wanted written down and preserved. And because God is faithful and true, and because he cannot lie or make a mistake, that requires that the Bible be faithful and true and without any lies or mistakes. A perfect God cannot make something imperfect. This is why we can trust what the Bible says about itself. Ultimately, it isn’t the Bible saying what is true about the Bible; it’s God saying what is true about the Bible.
As you teach about the Bible, start broad and basic. Help your child understand the basics of the Bible that you might take for granted that they know and understand. The Bible is one book made up of sixty-six individual books, which were written by about forty human authors over a span of about 1,500 years—from about 1,400 BC to about AD 100.
The books are organized into two Testaments—the Old Testament describing everything before Jesus and the New Testament describing the life of Jesus and start of the early church. The books within those two Testaments—39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament—are organized by genre, or type. The Old Testament begins with the Pentateuch, or five books of the Law. Those are followed by the books of history, the writings, and then the prophets—the major and minor. The terms major and minor don’t speak to these books’ importance, but rather their length.
The New Testament begins with four Gospels, each looking at the life of Jesus from a slightly different perspective. Those are followed by a book of history and then the epistles. The epistles are often divided into the Pauline Epistles—those written by Paul—and the General Epistles—those written by others. The New Testament concludes with a book of apocalypse, the New Testament’s version of the Old Testament prophets.
Beyond this, help your child learn how chapters and verses work, and then other common features in a printed Bible, such as cross-references, translator notes, a table of contents, and concordances. While using a digital Bible is increasingly common, it is always helpful to understand how to navigate a printed Bible. This also might mean helping your child learn the order of the Bible books, a task greatly aided by using some memorization songs.
Even as you cover these basics, don’t lose sight of the ultimate goal of teaching our children about the Bible—it’s not so they learn about this special book as much as it’s so they learn about the special Author of the book. To know the Bible is to know God. And to know God is to know Jesus. And to know Jesus is to know how we can be saved and be in a relationship with Him.
If you are looking for a resource to help you grow as a theologian and to help you teach your children theology, Faith Foundations is for you. These ninety-nine devotions use an ancient tool called a catechism to teach the core doctrines of the faith. Each devotion features a Bible reading, a devotion, several engaging questions, a Jesus connection, and a suggested family activity. Faith Foundations is now available for purchase.
- The first two paragraphs of this blog post is a slightly adapted excerpt from Faith Foundations. (Brian Dembowczyk, Faith Foundations: 99 Devotions to Help Your Family Know, Love, & Act Like Jesus. Downers Grove: IVP, 2025.) ↩︎
brian dembowczyk 