Utilizing the Internet for Theological Research

By

Jason Pointer

Just like when you learned how to ride a bike or drive a car – and even first learned how to use a computer – using the internet may seem difficult or intimidating at first but will pay big dividends in your life over time. When used effectively it can be an extremely valuable tool in your ministry and related studies. Once you learn how to navigate the Internet or "surf the web" you will wonder how you ever got along without it.

You can access information over the Internet that would take you literally thousands of dollars to purchase and, in the doing, save untold hundreds of hours of time in gathering the materials together. Imagine being able to walk into the world’s biggest seminary libraries and how awesome that would be. Now imagine those same libraries – many times over – at your fingertips through the use of computer and Internet technologies of today.

Granted, there is a lot of information available on the Internet that we are simply not interested in or completely object to. For example, the easy access to pornography is a scourge in our society today. However, you can purchase software programs that effectively block out objectionable material from coming into your home, which is a real concern for those of you who may have children. Some Christian bookstores will even occasionally give these types of programs to customers.

Just as Thiessen says about "reason" as an endowment of man, it is not the use of it that is wrong but the abuse. So it is with the wonderful advancement of media technology -- it is what you make of it.

To obtain access to the Internet, you must have a provider such as AOL, Yahoo or Juno, which provide service nationwide. There are local providers everywhere such as Risecom in Jacksonville and Cox Internet (formerly Internet Tyler) in Tyler. Normally, Internet service comes with free e-mail and space for your own web site. Additionally, some services, such as Microsoft’s Hotmail, provide free e-mail in order to maintain brand awareness in the marketplace. Some Internet providers charge a fee to subscribe and some are free. The free providers usually run an advertising banner while you are on-line and your connection speeds are typically slower.

Ideally, you would like to have a dedicated phone line for your Internet use but for most people this is not practical. To avoid missing calls while on-line, there are several options. For example, GTE offers a voice mail service that acts like an answering machine and picks up your calls while you are on-line. Also available are Internet answering services, which send you an e-mail when a call comes in. Most Internet access takes place over traditional telephone lines (which vary greatly in quality and speed); however, there are an increasing number of high-speed connection possibilities, which include connecting through your cable television outlet.

There are many services available on the Internet that can meet the various needs you may have besides study and research. Related to your studies are the various newsletters and publications you can subscribe to and specific discussion groups you can choose to participate in on a "drop in" basis or closed group basis. In addition to Internet access, e-mail and web site hosting, you can set up phone service to make and take long distance calls, send and receive faxes on your computer, pay your bills and bank on-line and, of course, shop. Shopping has taken on a life of its own today with the ability to bid on-line against other shoppers for items as well as place bids directly with companies for products and services. You can even place items for sale on-line that others will bid for.

If you know the address for a particular web site you want to visit, you can store it in your "bookmarks" or "favorites" section. This is like the speed-dial on your telephone; just point and click and you are there (as

fast as your telephone connection can take you). For the novice and expert alike, search engines provide the most efficient way to find related sites on a specific topic. You may want to "bookmark" a few search

engines so that your research network will be larger and provide more matches for the topics you search for. You search for these sites by typing in "key words" and asking the engine to "search" the Internet for sites that contain the same words.

Since most Internet sites are text-oriented, they contain "key words" which are often found in the name of the business, organization, or in the header that describes what kind of site it is. For example, people might find our Seminary by searching for "Seminary" or "Theological Seminary". They might eventually find it using the word "Baptist" but there are considerably more occurrences of the word "Baptist" than "Seminary". These "key words" allow the search engines to "recognize" or "pick up on" which sites are "matches".

Once the search engine has gathered a group of sites based on the "key word" or "words" you entered, you simply point and click on any of the "links" provided, which usually appears in a different color than the normal text. One note: when using more than one word in your search, such as "Systematic Theology", place the words in quotation marks. This tells the search engine to look for those words in that order. If you forget the quotation marks, you will be basically asking the engine to search for two separate words and will get a variety of results.

You will eventually wind up in one of two places; at either a home page or a link from a home page. Sometimes, the home page is a stand-alone page that contains the topic you searched for only in that "cover page". Most of the time however, the home page will present a menu of choices in the form of links. Simply point and click to your desired destination. For example, the BMA Seminary home page (cover page, main page, front page) has more than 20 links ranging from the faculty to class schedules to a salvation message.

It is always wise to try to find out if the page you happen to be on is a link and is being hosted by an organization that may not be easily identified, except that you navigate back to the home page. Obviously, when doing research, you always want to find out who you are dealing with theologically or scripturally and philosophically.

One of the interesting aspects of the Internet is the domains that host the sites, such as "com" and "net". You can look at this as just part of the address such as a zip code. "Com" stands for commerce, "net" stands for network, "org" stands for organization (often non-profits will be an "org" address), "edu" is educational, "gov" is government, and you will see other domains such as "cc" and "us". Other countries have domain designations as well, such as "tw" for Taiwan, "uk" for United Kingdom, and "pr" for Puerto Rico.

There are a wonderful variety of software packages that are available for use for bible and related studies. Some Internet sites will allow you to download software for free and for under $20 you can get a cd-rom that has several versions of the bible on it from which you can read and copy and paste for message preparation. On the other end of the spectrum there are packages, which may cost several hundred dollars but contain several thousand dollars worth of commentaries and bible study aids and which may also provide Internet access to protected sites for "members" only (or basically those who bought the software). You can go as basic or elaborate as your needs, budget and computing abilities will take you.

Examples of software programs recommended by other students include PC Study Bible, Bible Companion Series-Gramcord, Expositors Study Bible, and Hermenuetica. At least three Internet sites offer free software that can downloaded very easily:

The proper way to cite electronic media (physical entities such as cd-rom’s and on-line sources) is outlined in the 6^th edition of Turabian on pages 158-159.