10 Favorite Online Resources

Johnathan and David discuss some of their favorite online resources.

Johnathan’s list:

1. ccel.org — a wealth of free Christian books; allows you to make an account so that you can save notes and highlights
2. newadvent.org — especially newadvent.org/fathers, which has the full text of many patristic works
3. stepbible.org — Step Bible by Tyndale House, my favorite online Bible
4. wesley.nnu.edu — Wesley Center Online with the full text of Wesley’s sermons, Notes on the Bible, etc.
5. bestcommentaries.com — commentary recommendations on each book of the Bible
6. thevcs.org — Christian art in conversation with Scripture
7. bibleproject.com — a wealth of free Bible study resources (e.g., animated video overviews of each book of the Bible)
8. bcponline.org — the Book of Common Prayer online
9. lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu — the Revised Common Lectionary with readings and other liturgical resources
10. biblehub.com — some free commentaries (e.g., Calvin’s Commentary) in an easy-to-read format

David's list:

1. The Wesley Center Online (free)

• A database of Wesleyan and holiness materials created by Northwest Nazarene University.
• I like it because it has some hard-to-get resources.

2. Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL.org)

• Searchable
• Includes Schaff’s 38-volume Church Father’s series
• Calvin’s Commentaries
• Works of Arminius (3 Vol. Nichols ed.)
• No page numbers

3. NewAdvent.org (free)

• Similar to CCEL
• More readable in my opinion

4. The Revised Common Lectionary (lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu)

5. Papalencyclicals.net (free)

• Every important document ever put out by the Roman Catholic Church
• The search feature is difficult to use because titles are often only in Latin.

6. Perlego.com ($18/month)

• This would be in my top two or three if it still had the daily subscription option.
• Tons of contemporary books.

7. Wesley Scholar (wesleyscholar.com) (free)

• An independent collection of Wesleyan-Methodist and early Christian works. 
• Contains articles as well as original works.

8. Open Access Digital Theological Library (libguides.thedtl.org) 

• Contains some free material
• Contains PhD dissertations

9. Books.Google.com 

• Used to be able to download as PDFs.
• Gives all the information about a book including the nearest library or where to get it online.

10. Gutenberg.org (free)

• Over 70,000 of free ebooks
• Christian and secular books
• Several different formats including actual facsimiles of pages
• Everything is public domain
• Searchable

Honorable Mentions:

JSTOR.org (fee)

• Usually accessible through a student library account
• Not really affordable for individuals.

Academia.edu (fee and free)

• Up-to-date scholarship
• Pay by subscription or by item

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:01

You're listening to the Holy Joys Podcast, co-hosted by Jonathan Arnold and Dr. David Fry. Visit us at holyjoys.org and stay tuned for weekly discussions of theology and ministry practice, all for a holy, happy church.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

So last week we had a conversation about 10 books that should be in every pastor's library. And I really enjoyed that conversation. We didn't share our lists in advance, so we went back and forth, uh, starting with number 10, working all the way up to number one. Uh, and it kind of sparked the idea to have another episode on online resources and keeping that pretty broad, but thinking here especially of websites that I visit regularly that are good pastoral resources. Um, so our book conversation was about an hour and five minutes. So we're gonna try to knock this out, this one out pretty quick and just take turns sharing some things on our list, and then we won't mention them a second time uh if we both have them on our list.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Right. Yeah. So obviously, if uh this gets too long, people will just go to you know forward it to number one or whatever and work backwards from there.

SPEAKER_02 1:12

But all right.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

So let's uh do you have any caveats you want to share about your list? No, not really. Okay. Um I just I will mention I this is not a list from me. This is not a list of podcasts or YouTube channels. Uh I think that would be interesting some other time to do that list.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

And then I will comment that uh some of these, some of mine, I think most of mine are free. I think there were two on here that actually do cost some money. Um, maybe only one that actually made the top 10. But uh, and then of course, uh, we probably don't need to give this caveat, but this is uh English for English speakers, uh, my list. I uh as I was going through, I was thinking, okay, um, there are some good websites in Spanish as well, but I did not include uh anything like that on this list.

SPEAKER_02 2:07

All right, well, let's jump in. Uh I'll start at the top of my list. I have ccel.org, Christian Classics Ethereal Library. And this was the very first website that came to mind because it's one of the first Christian websites that I ever discovered, and it continues to be one of the most used um websites that are the websites that I use week by week. Um, so I don't, by the grace of God, I don't know how, I stumbled onto it and started reading um from the Reformers and Wesley and Arminius and just random works. I had no idea what they were or who it was that wrote them. Um, but I would just type in a topic and find something and start reading it. And so uh that was a huge blessing to me early on in my Christian life. And there are millions of pages uh on there. It's incredible. You can create an account, you can save your highlights, comments, um, really recommend taking advantage of that website.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Yeah, that's definitely on my list as well. In fact, it is uh my top three. Uh my top three are pretty much interchangeable. Um, and it's very near another website that's pretty similar to it. So the things I like about CCEL.org, uh it is searchable. Um, it does include a few of the works that I look at often, and that is uh uh Schoff's 38-volume, you know, Church Fathers, Antonicene and Postnicene Fathers uh series, and uh Calvin's Commentaries, uh the works of Arminius, uh among other things. So uh usually when I assign students reading on any of those from early church fathers, very often it's gonna be from C C E L. Uh the one thing I don't like about it is uh you don't get page numbers, so you can't it it's hard to reference. Of course, patristic material, you're you're not gonna reference it by page number anyway, so that's not a problem. Um, but for some of the later works where the addition, uh for instance, the the particular edition of Arminius's works or or writings here, there are a couple different possibilities there. So it's kind of important to know what edition you're using. So I don't like that about it, but uh I'll go ahead and mention the other one that's in my top three uh that's similar to it. And if you do a search for pretty much any church father, uh you know, for the any any patristic resource, one of these two websites, and probably both of them are gonna pop up, right? Uh CCEL and then newadvent.org. And uh everything that I've just said about CCL is pretty much true for newadvent.org. Uh both of them are free. Uh both of them, you know, the searchability is about the same. Um, I don't know. Do you know which database is larger?

SPEAKER_02 5:05

Oh, I think CCEL is is a lot larger, unless I'm mistaken. Maybe I haven't explored the scope of New Advent. I guess I've mostly used it for the church fathers. So if you go to newadvent.org forward slash fathers, newadvent.org forward slash fathers, there's a list of many church fathers followed by a bullet point list of works of their works. And I think most of that text is just taken from the chaff fathers of the church series.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Yeah, the 38. I that probably you're probably right because it does have the 38 volume you know church fathers series. So that that's huge right there. And now some of those are on New Advent as well. Now, I actually prefer reading from the just the page layout, I think, from New Advent, uh a little bit more than I do CCL, but um yeah, both of those are fantastic resources.

SPEAKER_02 6:01

Yeah, so New Advent is basically just text pages, it's like website pages of text. Um the nice thing about CCEL is that if you do create an account and it actually works pretty nicely on the phone, I think better than it used to, um, you can save your highlights in your comments. I don't think you can do that with new advent, so it depends on what kind of reading you're doing. Um, but you're right, it is the fonts smaller and it's cleaner and it's brighter. So it is kind of nice to read certain things on New Advent. Um, but yeah, it just depends on what you're trying to do. Yeah. Um, okay, so I have next on my list uh along a different line, steppible.org. And this is my go-to Bible for um basically whenever I'm studying scripture. This is where I go. I use Bible Gateway as well. I like there's a feature on Bible Gateway where when you look up a single verse, so if you type in like John 3.16, at the bottom it says John 3.16 in all English translations, and so it's like the fastest way to compare like 20 or 30 different translations. But most of the time I'll go to Step Bible, and that is a resource that's provided by Tyndale House, and you can type in a verse or a passage of scripture. There are quite a few translations that you can toggle, um, and it will pull up um those different translations side by side, and then um each word of the verse is uh like hyperlinked, so you just scroll over it uh and so I I just typed in John 3.16 and a couple translations. I scroll over the word whoever, and I see that in the HCSB, it's translated as everyone. In King James it's whosoever. So you can see how the word is translated, and then if you click on it, it will give you the Greek word, it will give you um a def uh definition, the range of meaning, it will give you uh other places in the New Testament where that same or the Bible where that word is is used. Um so it says this word occurs about 6,438 times. So you can click that and see every place in the Bible where that word is used. It's just an awesome resource. And for someone who like me who uh has been negligent with their languages, it is as long as you have like a basic knowledge of how the languages work, it is very valuable um for doing some basic word studies.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Good, good. Uh so my uh list is going to probably contain a little bit more like research-based uh you know, academic. That's what I would use it for more often. I don't actually do a lot of reading online, and I have a fairly large library, personal library, uh, myself. So um, but this would so these several sources here are probably more recommended for you know seminary students and may not be as useful for pastors. I wasn't thinking specifically pastors when I was putting this together. Uh, but let me make a couple of honorable mentions for those who are doing uh perhaps you're doing you know ongoing uh studies, working on a degree. Uh this is not on my top 10, but uh if you have access through your school library to JSTOR, uh you should definitely use that. That's a very valuable uh resource. Uh you know, it does cost and and it's it's not cheap and uh certainly not something that I would have as an as an individual, but can gain access through um through one of the schools that I'm connected with. Uh another one is academia.edu. That one's not quite as expensive, and you you can access uh pretty up-to-date scholarship. Um it's you know, people upload their papers, uh, you know, papers from the Evangelical Theological Society. Sometimes I've seen those uploaded there from other professional societies. Uh, you can pay uh either subscription or I I think you can still pay per item, uh academia.edu. I've used that as well. I I get notifications on my email when I'm uh if there are certain key ideas uh that someone uploads a paper on that, I'll get an email about it and then uh possibly gain access to it. Uh let me mention another one that I've used. This is a um this website is both Christian and secular books, uh but everything's in public domain, and that's gutenberg.org. And uh has over 70,000 free ebooks, uh, again, both Christian and non-Christian. Uh these are older books since it's public domain. Uh, but there are two things I like about it. It does have a search feature, but the thing I like about it is that it's actually, for the most part, at least, uh, facsimiles of actual pages. So you're getting if you're if you're wanting an addition that um that you're wanting to cite, uh it's it's really helpful for that. Uh you may see something, and maybe you're you're reading something in another source and they're citing something, and you're like, okay, that's old enough to be public domain, but I want to read more of the context. Uh you may be able to find it on gutenberg.org. Uh, I used it for some of my older Methodist uh research. Uh so that would be uh that's actually my my number 10 uh on my list.

SPEAKER_02 11:44

So I don't have this on my list, but I thought of uh Google Books, books.google.com. Um probably most people know about that, but it's unbelievable how many works are available for free. Uh even like old Methodist stuff. I can't believe some of the stuff I found on on Google Books. Um, so that's valuable as well. Um I have on my list Wesley.nnu.edu. Uh we talked about that in the last podcast, but you can find uh Wesley's notes and sermons and biographies of Wesley, uh plain account of Christian perfection, uh his journals, his letters, uh lots of Wesley's works there at the Wesley Center Online from Northwest Nazarene University. Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

Yep, that is on my list as well. And uh that is in my actually in my top three. So we've mentioned all the top three in my list. Uh I did have um books.google.com also is an honorable mention. Uh you mentioned that. Uh now it's not as good as it used to be. You used to be able to not only access it online, but you used to be able to download PDFs. They had a lot in PDFs. And so back when we could do that, I downloaded just a tremendous amount of material on PDF that is no longer accessible as PDF. So that's uh it's if you could still do that, that would be much higher on my list. Because I actually have a lot of Methodist stuff. I downloaded as much Methodist stuff as I could possibly find. I spent hours, days uh just searching every Methodist book I knew from the 19th century, and if it was on Google Books, I downloaded it. So thankfully I have those because you can't do that anymore. And uh along that line, let's see, it seemed like there was another um site. I'm looking at my list here. Um let me throw this one out. Uh it's open access digital theological library. Uh, I don't use it much, but it is a um really just a uh guide. So it has just, I don't know how many, but just tons and tons of links to other databases. And it's by you can search by by topic or um probably by author too, I can't remember. Um but there is a section there for like Wesleyan Methodist Studies, and there's you know a section for like church and state or uh politics in the church, that sort of thing. So you can uh and then you you go into there and um or you go you go into these databases. So I mean I'll have anything from like like Cambridge and whatever Cambridge University has online to you know some of the ones that we've mentioned, C C E L. I mean all of those are listed uh in there. And so it's a good place to start if you just don't know where to go and and you you're tired of the of searching page after page after page on a Google search, uh just go to it's it's um libguides.org. Uh so as as as in library guides, but live libguides plural dot thedl.org, and and then you can just find more links and databases from there.

SPEAKER_02 15:11

Yeah, so that uh goes along somewhat with my next uh resource, which is bestcommentaries.com. And that has um, well, they they call themselves the Rotten Tomatoes of Biblical Studies. So uh you can go onto that website, uh, say you're about to preach a sermon series through Romans, go to New Testament Romans, and it will give you the top three new and notable, uh, all commentaries, it'll have their their score out of five stars. Uh it will have certain tags, whether they're technical commentaries, devotional commentaries, uh, whatever. Um, one big caveat is that I think this is fairly recent, maybe within the last year or two. They are trying to expand beyond commentaries to books of theology in general. Right. And so there's like a section there, like theology. So they have all kinds of topics like Trinitarianism, sacraments, uh, whatever. I don't recognize I don't recommend using them for that because uh I've looked at some of the topics and the books they recommend high on the list, and I'm like, oh, wow, okay. Definitely would not want to start somebody there. Um, like, don't want to start somebody with Bruce Ware's book on the Trinity. Uh not the best place for Trinitarian studies to begin. So anyway, just um wouldn't recommend that until they get more established. And like some of the entries, like Prolegomena, they have like two entries, Herman Bavink and Norman Geisler. Uh so just be aware of that. I recommend it for commentaries, but not for books of theology in general, at least at this point.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

I I think that's like open source, isn't it? Because I have gone in and rated, and so it's kind of based on the ratings from from readers, if I understand correctly. Um I definitely use it for best commentaries or for the you know, to find the best commentaries. I like that they uh categorize the commentaries according to uh type, so uh technical, pastoral, um what's the there's a third category, I can't remember what it's called, but um uh like uh devotional, I think, something like that. Um and I find it pretty accurate with the commentaries. I've not used it at all for those theological topics or the systematics, uh, but as far as commentaries, I found it pretty cons pretty consistent and and useful. And I know it has a lot of um that's been around for a little while long enough that it has um I think pretty pretty good rankings there. Yeah, so the next one on my list is uh Wesleyscholar.com. And uh this is an independent collection of Wesleyan Methodist and also some early Christian works, uh, but it also contains some modern articles on both uh Wesley Methodist topics and uh on on early church fathers. Uh so it's a fairly small uh collection, but it does have some uh resources that you're not gonna find elsewhere. Uh and it's particularly Wesleyan.

SPEAKER_02 18:28

I'm actually not familiar with that, so I have to check that out. Um my next uh resource is the VCS.org, the visual commentary on scripture, vcs.org. Uh actually the vcs.org. Uh so anyway, you go there and you can choose New Testament, Old Testament, choose your book, and um, and then on many passages of scripture, they will have a display of three works of art. Um, some of them are older works, some of them are newer works, um, in a wide range of mediums. So, for example, uh, I'm preaching through John's gospel. So I just went to John and went to the woman at the well, John 4, 1 through 42, and it places scripture in conversation with famous works of art. So they have uh a mosaic of Christ and the Samaritan woman from the 6th century, they have a uh painting, oil and canvas of Christ and the Samaritan woman from the early 17th century, um, and then they have a more modern work from the early 20th century, which is the uh more abstract work of art. And then it has um it has basically an expert on art giving a commentary uh on scripture in relationship to these works of art individually, but then also how these works of art differ in what they're trying to capture about the passage. And I find that it what it does is it opens up my mind to creative ways about think of thinking about the passage and creative ways to present it. And I actually, one time on a Wednesday night leading up to Christmas during Advent season, um, took some works of art, put them up on the PowerPoint, and we just spent like 15, 20 minutes uh in our Wednesday night group talking about them, and people loved it, actually. I was surprised, but uh really enjoyed it. So it's just a beautiful and engaging way to uh to explore scripture in relationship to art.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

Uh yeah, it's great. I was not familiar with that one. I often do look at art, especially for my sermon series, so I will definitely check that out. Uh we're down to my last three here, and one of them is a uh subscription base, which it used to be you could actually pay per day. Now it I just checked it out again. It looks like it has to be uh monthly subscription. Uh, but it is Pro Lego.com. Uh you've ever been a student of mine, you know about this, but you can pay a single fee, used to be like 39 cents a day, and you could read as much as you wanted to from the website for that day. So it was like phenomenal. So uh I mean these are books like modern books that you know you would pay you know 20, 30, 40 dollars for uh if you had to buy them. So um now it's eighteen dollars a month. So that that dropped actually actually to number six on my on my list. It would have been in the top three, probably, uh if they still had the daily uh subscription, but it's not appearing on their pricing, but has tons of contemporary books and uh is a great option. Option for those of you that like to read digitally. I don't prefer that unless I'm just looking at a section of a book, then that's fine. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:09

I've never used that. I did have a subscription to scribed.com, and they actually have a lot of commentaries and theological works, but I just recently let my membership expire, actually last month, because I wasn't using it enough. Okay, next on my list is um a different kind of resource, but Bibleproject.com. And I put that on here mostly for the read scripture videos. Um I use them in our local church, use them in discipleship a lot. And so for every book of the Bible, they have an introduction video. Um they're extremely well done, very well funded, very well done. Um, you know, they get input from top-notch biblical scholars. And so basically, anytime you're reading a book or studying a book, um checking out that like seven-minute introduction video will give you a great overview. There's also theme videos, and then they have they're really expanding now. They have a podcast. Uh, I've listened to some episodes, it's pretty good. Uh, some pretty interesting stuff, always provocative, always interesting, even if you don't agree uh with what they're saying. Um, they have a classroom now where they do uh like uh basically 15-hour classes um on various books and themes. Um they have a uh app where you can do Bible studies and they teach you Bible study skills. It's very engaging. Um so just exploring the Bible project, uh highly recommend that.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

Good. Uh the last two, um, these are uh one of them is a this is the only Roman Catholic uh source on my list. Uh and that is Papal Encyclicals.net. Uh Papalencyclicals.net. It's free. It has every document ever officially ever put out by the Roman Catholic Church. Uh searching is a little difficult because a lot of the titles are in Latin, uh, but it's very readable. The thing that the Roman Catholic Church does well is they put out small pieces, like you know, short, short reads, uh, but they're packed with you know they're with meaning and significance. Um so I I do use that uh when I'm doing research in particular, wanting to do some reading on a particular topic. Um and uh that is I you know, I'm not not being Roman Catholic myself, I'm sure there are tons of other uh websites and and places to go, but this is this is one that uh if I'm looking for especially an encyclical, um say a document from the Second Vatican Council or something, like it's gonna be there and it's gonna be um you know not terribly difficult to to find. It's searchable in several different ways. Um I do uh I do use that occasionally.

SPEAKER_02 25:20

All right. I think I'm just gonna mention two more on my list. I had Bible Hub on there, but um I mostly just use that because I like to read Calvin's commentaries on that interface, and I've used Clark's commentary sometimes on Bible Hub as well. Um but last two I mentioned in the last podcast as well bcponline.org, I use all the time to refer to the BCP, and also lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu has the revised common lectionary. So if you're a pastor and you want to pull off readings, um, you know, for your weekly, weekly Bible readings in church, public reading scripture, great place to go, or even just if you're a ordinary Christian reading your Bible at home, they have daily readings, weekly readings. Um, so it's a great resource to explore.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

Yep. Uh I I use a hard copy of the BCP, but I definitely use Lectionary uh every every uh week. Uh the Vanderbilt has a great there are a lot of resources there, not only the lectionary, but they have a lot of other resources that support uh the liturgy that uh we may use.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

And uh you kind of pick and choose so great resources there. Thank you for listening to the Holy Joys Podcast. Email your questions to podcast at holyjoys.org, and they may be featured on a future episode. Our labors for a holy happy church are supported by generous listeners like you. Please pray about partnering with us at holyjoys.org forward slash donate.