upcoming courses
TTC:
Course 1 (1001CI)
World Religions: “Understanding People of Other Faiths”
Instructor: Dr Tony Chi
Date: 6 January – 3 March, 2010 (8 Wednesday Evenings)
Time: 7:30 pm to 9:30 pm
Venue: St. Andrew Cathedral, Prayer Hall
Course 2 (1001CM)
Spiritual Mentoring
Instructor: Rev Dr Tan Soo Inn
Date: 7 January – 4 March, 2010 (8 Thursdays Evenings)
Time: 7:30 pm to 9:30 pm
Venue: Trinity Theological College, Lecture Room 2, Level 3
SBC:
11 Jan – 26 Feb, 2010
Mondays
NT02 (K): New Testament Survey II, by Rev. Hwang Jae Myeong
TH04: Anthropology: The Doctrine of Salvation, by Rev. Dr. John Massey
Tuesdays
OT01: Old Testament Survey I, by Rev. Dr. Rick Griffith
CM11: Children and Spiritual Formation, by Mr. David Leong and team
Wednesdays
DM01: Biblical Basis of Multiplication & Spiritual Parenting, by Navigators Staff
NT03: Ephesians (God’s Wonderful Plan), by Rev. Chris Chia
Thursdays
MS03: Culture and Contextualization, by OMF Staff
CE01: Introduction to OT Ethics (lecturer yet to be confirmed)
BGST:
let us eat drink and be merry
All around the world in four days.
0. On Thursday I had a dinner with some ISCF friends from my batch (particularly those who are still wandering around NTU) in Ayam Penyet Ria and a Hong Kong dessert stall (I forgot its name) in Jurong Point. Ming initiated the event by sending an email to all of us, but in the end we settled everything through text messages (!). Really blessed by the conversation during dinner and dessert.
1. I went to NUS-ISCF fellowship on Friday to speak to the first year students. It’s my first time being there, and it means I’ve gone to NTU-, NUS-, and SMU-ISCF fellowship, each having their own uniqueness. SMU’s is small and sweet and the students really like to talk, NUS’s is bigger yet I can’t say much for now, and NTU’s is large — but it’s still sweet (bias alert!). There were around 25 students who came to the fellowship, and all of us sat in a huge circle (it was reminiscent of NTU prayer meeting).
the household codes
1. Col 3.18-4.1 (and its parallel Eph 5.22-6.9) is usually called the household codes, as it indicated how members of a household (wife, husband, children, parents, slaves, master) should behave toward each other.
2. Aturan rumah tangga ini oleh Paulus ditulis dengan berpasang-pasangan, sebanyak tiga pasang:
Hai isteri-isteri,
tunduklah kepada suamimu,
sebagaimana seharusnya di dalam Tuhan.
—–Hai suami-suami,
—–kasihilah isterimu,
—–dan janganlah berlaku kasar terhadap dia.
gereja bagai bahtera
Really liked this song, sung yesterday at the young adults fellowship. It was translated from a German song, “Ein Schiff das sich Gemeinde nennt.”
Gereja Bagai Bahtera (NKB 111)
Gereja bagai bahtera di laut yang seram
Mengarahkan haluannya ke pantai seberang
Mengamuklah samudera dan badai menderu
Gelombang zaman menghempas, yang sulit ditempuh
Penumpang pun bertanyalah selagi berjerih
Betapa jauh, dimanakah labuhan abadi?
Reff:
Tuhan tolonglah!
Tuhan tolonglah!
Tanpa Dikau semua binasa kelak
Ya Tuhan tolonglah!
nos fecisti ad te
Nos fecisti ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te. “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” (Confessions, 1.1) Indeed, the opening sentence of Confessions, Augustine’s autobiography, pretty much summed up his whole life. He had tried various ways to find fulfilment in his life. He tried sex (‘cauldron of unholy loves’); he tried Manichaeism; he glorified rhetoric. Nevertheless, he was still restless, until he went to Milan and listened to Ambrose, the bishop there who impressed him so much with (his rhetoric in) his preaching and at last fulfilled his quest. At last, now his heart could rest. Fecisti nos ad te, Deus. You have made us for yourself.
on significance
Sometimes, a small thing can make a huge impact. Luther had never thought that his 95 theses would change the whole Western church. Neither did Augustine, whose incapability of Greek language (!) was perhaps significant in the development of Western theology (which primary theological language was Latin) in contrast to Eastern theology (Greek). What would happen if Augustine was good in Greek?
(this post is not to be used as an excuse for those who are studying Greek right now!)
faith of our fathers materials
Lecture 2: Apostolic Fathers — The Martyrs
Lecture 3: Ante-Nicene Fathers — The Apologists
Reading: The Young Church
Lecture 4: Nicene Fathers I — Athanasius and the Nicene Orthodoxy
Lecture 5: Nicene Fathers II — The Cappadocian Fathers
Reading: Christian Rome
Lecture 6: Desert Fathers — Monasticism
Lecture 7: Post-Nicene Fathers — Augustine
The files are quite large, it might take a while to download them.
ad insaniam convertunt
It’s official now. I need to continue my phd whatever it takes.
A drug company just joined my project.
Multae te litterae ad insaniam convertunt! Great learning is driving you out of your mind! (Acts 26.24)
evangelicals and catholics together statements
1994: Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millenium
1997: On justification – The Gift of Salvation
2002: On Holy Scriptures – Your Word is Truth
2003: On the communion of saints – The Communion of Saints
2005: On holiness – The Call to Holiness
2006: On human life – That They May Have Life
2009: On Mary – Do Whatever He Tells You: The Blessed Virgin Mary in Christian Faith and Life
the old and the new testaments
And the answer to the question is Tertullian:
“But we now advance a step further on, and challenge (as we promised to do) the very Gospel of Marcion, with the intention of thus proving that it has been adulterated. For it is certain that the whole aim at which he has strenuously laboured even in the drawing up of his Antitheses, centres in this, that he may establish a diversity between the Old and the New Testaments, so that his own Christ may be separate from the Creator, as belonging to this rival god, and as alien from the law and the prophets. It is certain, also, that with this view he has erased everything that was contrary to his own opinion and made for the Creator, as if it had been interpolated by His advocates, whilst everything which agreed with his own opinion he has retained.” (Against Marcion, IV.6)
Indeed, it was in a polemical writing against the heterodox teaching of Marcion of Sinope, who taught that the god who was revealed in the Old Testament is different from the god who was revealed in the New Testament. And it was written around 208 AD. To think of it, we should ‘thank’ Marcion for a lot of things. Thanks to him, the church started to think about what books constituted the Christian Scriptures (Marcion was the first person to formulate the canon in 144 AD: Luk, Rom, 1 Cor, 2 Cor, Gal, Eph, Phil, Col, 1 Thess, 2 Thess, Phlm — that’s all; if we’re following Marcion’s canon now, our Bible will be very thin). And, indirectly because of him also, now we called the first part of our Scripture to be the Old Testament and the second part to be the New Testament.
richard middleton’s articles
Some of them which are available online:
1. The Liberating Image? Interpreting the Imago Dei in Context, Christian Scholar’s Review 24/1 (1994):8-25.
2. Is Creation Theology Inherently Conservative? A Dialogue with Walter Brueggemann, Harvard Theological Review 87/3 (1994): 257-77.
Check out also a review of The Liberating Image by Nathan Macdonald in the Review of Biblical Literature.
