The Ology

Title: The Ology
Author: Marty Machowski
Major Themes: Theology, Bible Stories, Bible Studies
Synopsis: The entire sweep of the Bible story and the story of God’s work with mankind is broken down into theological articles on a child’s level.

For the past year, I have been reading The Ology: Ancient Truths Ever New to my eight-year-old daughter as part of her schoolwork. This has been her Bible teaching this year. This is an attractive, square hardcover book, with quite interesting pictures on every page.

In The Ology, Marty Machowski takes children through the entire Bible, and the entire sweep of human history. He has divided this study into 11 sections, each titled The Ology of something. These include the ology, or the study of, God, people, sin, the promise and the law, Christ, the Holy Spirit, adoption into God’s family, change, the church, the end times, and God’s Word. Within each section are several lessons. Each lesson contains one or two pages of explanation about the topic, a couple of Bible verses written out, and more references scattered around a picture, illustrating the topic. We read the lesson on one day, and then the scripture references the next day.

This book begins with several chapters about Who God is, and what He is like. Then, there is a section about how God created man perfectly, and then man sinned and was separated from God. God made a promise, He gave a law, but because man cannot keep the law, God sent Jesus to be the sacrifice for our sins. Then, the book talks about how we are adopted into God’s family and how we become new people. More chapters talk about what the church is and should be, and what is coming for God’s people. The book is wrapped up with several chapters about the Bible, how God wrote it, and what it does for us. 

I found this book very thorough in explaining theological concepts to children, although probably 10-12-year-olds would understand it better than my 8-year-old. She understood a lot, and would probably get more out of it if we go through it again in a few years. I found The Ology doctrinally sound, although it definitely has a Reformed/Calvinistic slant; there were one or two pages that were a lot stronger about some details of doctrine than we would be on that particular doctrine. I had no problem reading it all to her, though. One friend of mine mentioned that her young daughter was quite disturbed about one picture, though; it shows worms coming out of an ice cream cone, as an illustration of what sin is like.

No warnings!

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