The academic program at Answers Academy is grounded in Proverbs 9:10, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” All subjects must start with the Bible as God is the author of all creation. It is the role of every Christian educator to shape the worldview of their students using the Bible as the authoritative guide. The teachers at Answers Academy teach all subjects from a biblical-worldview perspective and challenge students to think critically and biblically about every academic subject. The curriculum for Answers Academy is carefully chosen to ensure that it is grounded in Scripture, apologetically sound, and academically rigorous so that it will equip the students with skills and knowledge to be ready for whatever the Lord has called for them to do after high school. No matter the direction, the students will have a solid foundation in order to defend their faith, become good stewards of God’s earth, and be bold witnesses for Christ.
Many of the textbooks used at Answers Academy are published by BJU Press. We appreciate the emphasis placed on academic rigor, critical thinking skills, and a biblical worldview stance.
Academic rigor is not holding a standard so high that it is frustrating to reach. Academic rigor is a learning experience that motivates the student at their academic level and pushes them to their potential. A big part of rigor is taking the student past literal interpretation/rote memory and challenging them to the highest levels on Bloom’s taxonomy to analyze, evaluate, and create. This type of learning develops incredible critical thinking skills and understanding the why behind what they are learning. We also incorporate logic classes within middle school and high school to help teach the students how to think instead of what to think and to spot errant thinking. We also hold the academic expectations high in the classroom and the student must be responsible and put forth work and effort in order to be successful.
The textbooks are consistent to look at each subject based on a biblical worldview. These textbooks repeatedly look at subject material like literature, science, history, and so forth from a biblical viewpoint especially in light of the Creation Mandate, the Fall, and Redemption. This is especially important regarding science and history where the world is constantly attacking children with the false humanistic history of big bang, millions of years, evolution, abortion, gender confusion, etc. Answers Academy also uses Answers in Genesis and Master Books material which take a strong stance on the authority of Scripture.
As students learn the true history of what happened according to God's Word, they are better able to spot these common false claims and discern why they are wrong. These textbooks will also give students a chance to understand the nature of God and to have a deeper understanding of the world God designed for us that has unfortunately been marred by sin and a worldwide flood.
Let’s take a look at some subject…
Mathematics is predicated on God who is the authority on all matters—including math. Because of God’s nature, his creation mimics him. Math is no different. Math existed in the nature of who God is, three persons, yet one God for instance (hence, the triune God). Also, God’s nature and power is eternal and infinite.
God’s design of the world can be expressed in numbers and relationships as simple as pi or as intricate as fractals. This shows that math is conceptual, abstract, and universal and yet transcends to explain and be used to represent entities in the natural created realm. Consider Creation Week when God created one day, then the second day, and so on and even commanded creatures to multiply. Math was used since the creation!
Everything in our physical world has features that can be measured and studied. When we isolate one or a few features for study, we see a reflection of God's nature: consistent, orderly, and logical. Only by the absolute standard of God do we have a basis to do mathematics. Because we are made in God’s image, we have the ability to do math so that we may better understand God and His creation and to obey His command to have dominion.
Science only works because God is upholding all things in a particular way and promises to continue to do so as long as the earth endures (e.g., Genesis 8:22). This is what makes observable and repeatable science possible.
With God’s Word we can understand geology in light of the Flood, astronomy in light of Genesis 1, biology in light of God’s created kinds, etc.
We also use science and the Bible to help us understand evidence. Everyone has the same evidence...the same earth, rocks, stars, DNA, etc., but the difference is the interpretation of that evidence. There are only 2 choices: God or man. A biblical worldview is where you start with God and His Word to understand the evidence (i.e., the worldwide Flood caused most fossils and rock layers).
If you reject God, then you are relying on man’s fallible, sinful ideas and using that as the basis for looking at the evidence. This worldview is hostile to God, and is actively trying to explain the world without God—this is also called the religion of humanism which is sadly taught in the public school system today.
History starts in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Therefore, there is no such thing as “prehistoric”! The Bible’s record of history is inerrantly revealed to us by a perfect God who doesn’t make mistakes.
God made everything perfectly. Man fell into sin and the world fell under a curse—including animals. Death came into the world. A global Flood rearranged continents and laid down most of the rock layers that contained fossils in year-long Flood.
People spoke the same language until their rebellion soon after the Flood at Babel. And people scattered, losing different technologies in different places, splitting up the gene pool so people look a little different in various places, and languages families continue to vary around the world. This is the basic history of the first two thousand years after creation!
The Bible, often dubbed “the history book of the universe”, is the absolute truth and when the world’s secular, rewritten, error-prone history deviates from God’s Word, then it is that alleged history that is wrong.
We oppose the false views of history that is being articulated in our culture. False history like molecules-to-man evolution, millions of years (geological evolution), evolved from ape-like creatures in an “out-of-Africa” model, and big bang are challenged with the truth of history that uses God’s Word as the foundation.
As students learn the true history of what happened according to God's Word, they are better able to spot these common false claims and discern why they are wrong.
English - Where do languages come from? Language was created by an all-knowing God initially for Adam and Eve to communicate with Him and each other. Now, we have a diversity of languages because of what happened at the Tower of Babel like the Germanic language family or the Romance language family (i.e., languages similar to Roman Latin).
Language families left Babel with various family groups being put to written script, whether pictorial, alphabetic, etc. Then languages continue to change—adding words, losing words, changing definitions, language mixing and borrowing, changing grammar, tonal adjustments, etc., to arrive at the various languages we have today (just under 7,000 of them).
English, is a unique language in that it is really a mixture of two languages and many borrowed words from other languages (e.g., Greek, Welsh, Ancient Briton, Celtic, for instance). English is considered part of the Germanic language family (with High and Low German, Austrian, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, etc.) and partially from the Romance language family (with Latin, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and Italian).
These languages merged when the French Norman speakers conquered England (who were largely German tribes of the Angles, Saxons, and some Jutes). The language simply mixed together over time—this is why there are many exceptions to rules in English and many “silent” letters that are no longer pronounced.
Logic - We are made in the image of a logical God who cannot deny Himself (e.g., 2 Timothy 2:13) and His creation is upheld up in a logical way so this helps us be able to properly reason in every area.
Logic is a tool and is predicated on the existence of the biblical God. But because we are in a sin-cursed and broken world, people mess up proper thought. Correct reasoning avoids logical fallacies, propaganda, mere opinions, arbitrariness, and false propositions. This is why it is important to know how to spot incorrect reasoning and avoid inconsistencies.
The study of logic, an immaterial concept which nonetheless governs the physical world, cannot exist in the atheistic, materialistic, worldview—they must borrow logic and reason from a biblical worldview.
Fine Arts is grounded in the fact that we are created in the image of a creative and artistic God. When we do art, we are mimicking, in a small sense, what God did at creation.
Art should still be done tasteful and God-honoring focusing on the good that God has called us to. We should do all things heartily as unto the Lord and art is no exception. Musical arts and skilled craftsmen were often employed in the Bible, so take heart—God clearly recognizes the effort and talents he bestows on those who diligently master their art.
Health/PE – God created mankind perfect - our genetics were perfect and we had perfect knowledge for what we needed. Sin ruined and seperated man from a perfect relationship with God and left us in a sin-cursed and broken-world. Because of that, we’ve had over 6000 years of a mutational load in our genetics that cause a lot of issues in the human population, whether diseases, deformities, or even the fact that we die now.
But God gaves us minds that are able to fight against aspects and elements of the curse (medicine, cleanliness, etc.) and He’s given us His Word which has numerous passages discussing the health of a person throughout Scripture. As our bodies are the Temple of the Holy Spirit (I Corinthians 6:19), we need to take care of bodies, inside and out. Because God sent His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh (Romans 8:3) to save us from sin and death, Christians can look forward to eternity with Him one day in perfection.
