Romans 1:20 says something that should change the way we teach science in a Christian home: “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.”
In other words, God designed the physical world to reveal who He is. Biology isn’t just a subject; it’s a language He wrote into creation so we could understand Him better.
That’s the premise behind Devotional Biology, and it shapes everything about the course.
Dr. Kurt Wise is a young-earth creationist — someone who takes the history recorded in Genesis as the best explanation for what we actually observe in the world around us. The fossil record, the complexity of living systems, the diversity of species: he believes the biblical account explains these things more accurately than the evolutionary model does. He spent years at Harvard studying under one of the leading evolutionary scientists of the twentieth century and came away more convinced than ever that the secular framework, for all its sophistication, can’t account for what we see; the biblical one can.
When Kurt took his first teaching position at a Christian college, he went looking for a biology textbook built on that foundation. He couldn’t find one, so decided to write one himself.
Each of its fifteen chapters opens with an attribute of God, then asks: what did He build into creation to illustrate that attribute? Kurt then takes students on a wild ride through all the related biological evidence, often explaining concepts and ideas that have never been linked that way before. He then closes with what that aspect of biology means for students personally.
It is honestly the most extraordinary approach to biology ever imagined. And yes, it is unusual. But parents who have put their students through this course say it again and again: it doesn’t just teach biology; it transforms how they see the world.
“My 9th grade daughter tells me every single day how much she loves and looks forward to science now! This has NEVER happened before. My daughter is interested in apologetics and evangelism, and that is her favorite part of the class. Her faith is being bolstered, defended, and explained all through biology.”
Sandie Barrios
Table of Contents
- What Devotional Biology Is and How It Works
- What This Course Does for a Student
- The Real Problem With How Biology Is Usually Taught
- What to Look for in Any Biology Program
- How the Options Compare
- What a Lesson Looks Like in Practice
- The Learning Environment
- Specs and Transcript Guidance
- Frequently Asked Questions
- One More Year You Won’t Get Back
Here is Kurt explaining what the course is and why he built it.
1. What Devotional Biology Is and How It Works
Kurt has observed that most Christians engage the creation-versus-evolution question on the wrong terrain, responding to naturalistic claims on naturalistic terms. His view is that creation gives us far more powerful ground to stand on: the things we regularly experience in the biological world for which evolutionary models simply don’t have reasonable explanations. Beauty. Irreducible complexity. The staggering diversity of species. The mathematics of DNA. These aren’t defensive responses to evolutionary pressure; they’re observations about the world that make no sense unless you start with Genesis.
In Devotional Biology, he puts it this way: “God designed the universe specifically for man to be able to understand it.” The biological world isn’t just raw material for scientific study; it’s a gallery of evidence about the God who made it, arranged so that human beings with the right framework can read what’s there.
Each chapter opens with an attribute of God: that He is living, glorious, personal, a provider, a sustainer, one Being in three persons. Then it asks what He built into biology to illustrate that attribute, works through the biological evidence, and closes with what that means for the student personally. This three-part structure — theology, evidence, response — repeats in every chapter and adds up to something no other biology course offers.
The course is built around three components, each with a specific job.
The video lectures are Kurt teaching: 67 of them, averaging about 20 minutes each, 28 hours of instruction in total. Those who have watched Kurt teach in the field in East Tennessee, in caves and along creek beds, will recognize the same gift in the lectures; he makes complicated ideas accessible without softening them.
The textbook is a 522-page volume Kurt originally wrote for his college students. The recommendation is to read the chapter before the lecture, then read it again afterward. The two cover the same ground from different angles, and the combination lands the material in a way that either alone doesn’t.
The lab manual contains 13 guided exercises with accompanying instructional videos, each designed to take under two hours. Students are outside counting species, examining specimens, observing living systems rather than just watching videos about them.
The course is for students 14 and up and carries one full high school lab science credit.
“We are loving this course! What a great way to structure the content after God’s attributes he reveals to us through creation. Dr. Wise takes a ‘wholeness’ approach to studying biology. We don’t kill the rabbit to discover ‘rabbitness.’ What living differences do we see? How are we in creation together? This is a BEAUTIFUL and GOD HONORING course.”
Cheryl Floyd
Here is Kurt explaining why this course starts with God rather than with molecules, and why that structural choice matters more than it might initially seem.
→ Try free sample lessons from Devotional Biology
2. What This Course Does for a Student
After students finish Devotional Biology, the most common thing parents report is not that their student learned a lot of biology but that their student can’t look at a living thing the same way anymore. Children pause over insects, stop at tide pools, ask questions about things they used to walk past without noticing; it happens because the course gives students a reason to pay attention, not just content to memorize.
There are three things this course does that most biology programs don’t.
It gives students a framework that makes all of science coherent. When a student understands that God designed the physical world to reveal His invisible nature, every organism she studies becomes evidence in a case she’s helping build; that framework stays with her long after the course is over.
It prepares students to engage the toughest challenges to their faith. The course works through the anthropic principle, the fossil record, the problem of biodiversity, and the mathematics of the evolutionary timeline — arguments from biology and physics, not from Scripture alone. A student who has worked through them will recognize what a college professor is arguing and know how to respond.
It works for students who don’t think of themselves as science people. Devotional Biology is one of the few biology courses that a student who has always disliked science can genuinely love. The course doesn’t ask her to care about molecules because molecules are interesting; it asks her to look at creation because the Creator wants to be known. The reason it works isn’t because the course is easy but because it finally gives biology a purpose worth caring about.
“My son looks forward to biology, rather than experiencing stress. He pauses as he reads the textbook and tells me the interesting things he is reading, and we discuss them. He understands that the goal of studying biology is to understand and worship our Creator. What a difference it has made.”
Maria
Here is Kurt on the core idea behind the course: that God designed the biological world specifically so we could understand Him.
3. The Real Problem With How Biology Is Usually Taught
Most Christian biology curricula give students a creationist answer to the question of origins while leaving the naturalistic framework intact. They tell students what happened in Genesis while still teaching biology as a content-delivery exercise whose goal is exam readiness; the framework is still reductionist, the course still starts with molecules, and the Christian worldview is applied at the edges.
The result is students who know the correct position on creation and evolution but have no idea what biology is for, or why any of it connects to what they believe about God. Biology becomes a credit to survive rather than a subject to inhabit.
Devotional Biology was built from scratch to solve that problem. The theological framework isn’t applied on top; it is the structure the whole course is built around.
“Love, love, love this curriculum. All three of my high schoolers love this curriculum, even my oldest who up until this year said he hated Biology. Dr. Wise’s approach has planted in them a lifetime desire to get to know their Creator more through His Word and through His creation. This is exactly why I homeschool.”
Connie M.
4. What to Look for in Any Biology Program
When evaluating biology curricula, three questions are worth asking of any program under consideration.
Does this course give your student a reason to study biology, or just content to memorize? A student who understands why she’s studying something learns differently than one who is working toward a grade; any program worth the time should be able to answer “why does this matter?” in terms the student actually cares about.
Will your student be equipped to engage evolutionary arguments she encounters in college, or just equipped to state a position against them? Many Christian biology courses handle creation and evolution at the level of “here is what we believe,” while fewer train students to work through the actual scientific arguments on their merits. If college is in your student’s future, that difference matters.
Does the program treat the Christian worldview as the foundation of the science, or as a supplement added on top? There’s a real difference between a course organized around biblical theology and one that inserts biblical references into a secular framework. The first produces a student who thinks Christianly about biology; the second produces a student who can pass a biology exam and quote Genesis.
5. How the Options Compare
Cathy Duffy has reviewed Devotional Biology directly. You can read her full assessment at cathyduffyreviews.com, where she describes its unusual theological architecture and its origins as a college-level course. It’s worth reading before deciding.
Here is how Devotional Biology compares to the programs families most often consider.
Exploring Creation with Biology — Apologia
Apologia is the standard against which most Christian homeschool biology programs are measured, and for good reason. It’s conversational, textbook-based, rigorous, and explicitly creationist. The course covers the full range of content a student needs for college prep: cell biology, genetics, classification, ecology. Labs use household materials. Hundreds of thousands of homeschool families have used it, and it’s accepted everywhere as a legitimate high school lab science credit.
It is a thorough course written from a Christian worldview; it is not, however, organized around Christian theology. Its architecture is conventional: content first, worldview as context. It doesn’t ask what biology reveals about the character of God, or what a student’s responsibility to creation is.
Apologia is the right choice if your student needs a vocabulary-intensive, exam-ready course she can complete largely independently, and you want the most widely recognized Christian biology credential available; it’s particularly well-suited for students planning pre-med or science majors. Devotional Biology is the right choice if you want the biology itself to be theologically meaningful, not merely theologically compatible.
Exploring the World of Biology — Master Books
Master Books offers an accessible, affordable creationist biology text for a broad age range. The reading level is gentler than Apologia or Devotional Biology, and the content is solid and creation-based; it works well as a lower-intensity introduction to life science for younger students.
Master Books is a good fit for students in grades 7–9 or for a student who needs a gentler first pass before tackling something more demanding. Devotional Biology is for the student who is ready for genuine high school rigor and a full one-credit lab science.
Science Shepherd Biology
Science Shepherd is video-lecture-based, strongly biblical, with solid creation science content and designed for independent study. Cathy Duffy named it a Top Pick. The content sequence follows the standard biology curriculum map with creation perspectives woven throughout.
Science Shepherd is a good fit if your student learns well from lecture-based instruction and you want a creation-integrated course that follows a recognizable content sequence. Devotional Biology is worth considering if you want the theological framework to organize the science rather than accompany it; a course taught by a Christian and a course built around Christian theology are two different things.
BJU Press Biology
BJU Press offers a thorough, rigorous course designed for classroom instruction. The teacher’s edition is detailed, the labs are strong, and the content coverage is deep; it’s the most classroom-style option here and a natural fit for co-ops.
BJU Press is the right choice if you’re running a co-op or want the most academically rigorous traditional biology content in a Christian curriculum. Devotional Biology is worth considering if the traditional content model is what disengaged your student in the first place.
6. What a Lesson Looks Like in Practice
Here is a specific chapter to show how the course works.
Chapter 6 is called “God Is Person: Biological Uniqueness.” It opens with theology: God is a personal being, unique, active, intelligent, capable of will, emotion, self-awareness, and relationship. All of those attributes are invisible, so the question the chapter asks is: how did He illustrate them?
Kurt’s answer is that God scattered each attribute across the animal kingdom in a spectrum of perfection, building into the biological world a gallery of uniqueness, activity, intelligence, will, emotion, self-awareness, and relationship — so that we could look at living things and understand something about the God who made them.
The lecture then works through the evidence. A student’s DNA represents one combination out of 10 to the 600th possible human DNA sequences; if you packed the entire observable universe with human beings, you’d reach only 10 to the 120th people. Every student’s DNA has never existed before in all of human history, because God engineered infinite personal uniqueness into every human being as a reflection of His own.
Kurt also describes a study of large octopuses off the Washington coast. A marine biologist who dived regularly with a particular group of octopuses found that they recognized her specifically: they stayed in place when she arrived but disappeared when any other diver appeared, even one wearing identical gear. Octopuses had learned to identify an individual, because God put individual recognition into creation at every level as a picture of a God who knows each of us by name.
The chapter ends with what this means for the student: she is a creation priest, called to maintain, worship, and fill the world with the glory of its maker. She doesn’t just learn that octopuses are smart; she learns what octopus intelligence is for.
“My older daughter completed Devotional Biology as a freshman. She graduates next month. She has repeatedly said that it is the best course she has ever taken.”
Jennifer G.
Here is that classroom moment from Chapter 6. Watch how Kurt takes a fact about DNA and turns it into something a student won’t forget.
→ Try free sample lessons from Devotional Biology
7. The Learning Environment
Devotional Biology streams through the Compass Classroom platform with 18 months of access from purchase. The learning management system organizes each chapter as a unit: textbook reading, video lecture, lab exercise, and chapter test. Students can track their own progress, and parents have the same view; the teacher’s guide includes all test and lab answers, so no science background is required to oversee the course.
Lab materials are purchased separately through Cornerstone Educational Supply. The 13 instructional videos walk students through each exercise independently, so no preparation or subject expertise is required of the parent.
Free sample lessons are available at compassclassroom.com. Devotional Biology is also included in the Compass Classroom Membership, which gives access to more than 30 courses.
For students who want to continue the work this course begins, the Creation Science course is a natural next step. It covers the creation science case in depth, featuring Dr. Del Tackett and PhD scientists across geology, paleontology, biology, and astronomy, including Kurt Wise.
“The lessons that Dr. Kurt Wise gives are profound, well-thought, and should be required learning for every Christian.”
Rick S.
8. Specs and Transcript Guidance
| Instructor | Dr. Kurt Wise |
| Ages | 14+ |
| Credit | 1 high school lab science |
| Price | $220 |
| Access | 18 months streaming from purchase date |
| Video lectures | 67 lectures, approximately 20 minutes each, 28 hours total |
| Chapters | 15 |
| Labs | 13 lab exercises with 13 lab instructional videos |
| Included | 522-page textbook (hardcover or PDF), 122-page lab manual (PDF or printed), 86-page teacher’s guide with test and lab answers |
Transcript documentation: Document this as one full high school lab science credit. The course originated as an undergraduate offering taught at three Christian universities, including as a dual-enrollment course for high school students, who regularly matched or exceeded their college counterparts. It’s appropriate for grades 9–12 and is college-preparatory in its level of demand.
Dr. Kurt Wise holds a BA in geology from the University of Chicago and MA and PhD degrees in paleontology from Harvard University, where he studied under Stephen Jay Gould. He founded and directed the Center for Origins Research at Bryan College, directed the Center for Theology and Science at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and currently teaches biology at Truett McConnell University. His fieldwork has taken him from Death Valley to Wyoming to the mountains of East Tennessee. He is a contributor to Is Genesis History? and one of the most respected young-earth creation scientists working today.
9. Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best Christian homeschool biology curriculum?
For families who want biology taught from an explicitly Christian theological framework — not just a creationist one — Devotional Biology by Dr. Kurt Wise is the recommendation here. No other high school biology course is organized around the attributes of God, and no other instructor brings Kurt’s combination of Harvard credentials, decades of creation science research, and gift for making complex ideas accessible. If exam-ready content coverage is the priority, Apologia is the most widely used alternative. If you want the course itself to be an act of worship, Devotional Biology is what you’re looking for.
Is Devotional Biology rigorous enough for college prep?
Yes. The course was originally designed for undergraduate students and has been taught at three Christian universities for college credit, including as a dual-enrollment course for high school students. Kurt’s observation was that his high school students often matched or exceeded the college students. The textbook is 522 pages and the content is demanding; it’s a full lab science credit with serious academic expectations.
What grade level is Devotional Biology appropriate for?
The course is designed for students 14 and up, which typically means grades 9–12. Mature 8th graders have used it successfully, and it’s most commonly taken as a 9th or 10th grade biology credit.
How does Devotional Biology compare to Apologia?
Apologia covers more of the standard biology content sequence and is stronger preparation for a conventional college biology placement exam. Devotional Biology goes considerably deeper into theology, philosophy of science, and the creation science arguments. If it’s primarily a science credit, Apologia is the safer choice; if it’s primarily a formative experience, Devotional Biology is in a different category.
Does the course include labs?
Yes: 13 lab exercises with accompanying instructional videos. Lab materials are purchased separately through Cornerstone Educational Supply, and each lab is designed to take under two hours.
Can Devotional Biology be used in a co-op?
Yes. A group license is available for co-op and school use. The video lectures work well for group viewing, the textbook is available in hardcover, and the lab exercises can be adapted for group settings. Contact Compass Classroom for group licensing details.
How much parent involvement does the course require?
Less than most comparable courses. The video lectures are self-contained, the textbook is readable independently, and the teacher’s guide includes all test and lab answers. A parent with no science background can facilitate this course successfully; the recommended rhythm is: read the chapter, watch the lecture, read again, complete the lab.
Does Devotional Biology address evolution?
Yes, thoroughly. The course engages the evolutionary arguments on their merits across multiple chapters, working through the fossil record, the problem of biodiversity, the constraints of the evolutionary timeline, and the anthropic principle. Students who complete the course will understand the evolutionary arguments well enough to engage them, not just state a position against them.
10. A Transformative Course
Devotional Biology is not the right course for every family. It covers less of the standard biology content map than Apologia or BJU Press, and a student heading toward pre-med would be better served by a course that prioritizes content breadth. Kurt is honest about this in the course itself: this is a course organized around theology, not around the next exam.
For the student who has spent years dreading science class because no one told her what it was for, though, this course is something different. For the student who wants to defend her faith with actual science rather than just a position statement, it builds that foundation. For the family that wants biology to shape not just what a student knows but how she sees, there is nothing else like it.
Kurt Wise spent years believing he had to choose between science and the Bible. He chose the Bible, cried for three days, and then God gave him science back. He’s spent the rest of his career showing what it looks like when biology starts with God.
Here is Kurt making the case — in his own words — for why every believer should study biology.
→ Try free sample lessons from Devotional Biology
For students who want to go further after Devotional Biology, the Creation Science course takes the creation science arguments into greater depth across geology, paleontology, biology, and astronomy.
