Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Remarkable Connections

Saturday, September 4th, 2010

Yesterday I handed in my first assignment (in this latest incarnation of the theology degree) which was on the marks of the church. The marks of the church are the four adjectives mentioned in the Nicene Creed: one, holy, catholic and apostolic. There have been other marks of ...

Love, Joy and Peace

Thursday, August 19th, 2010

By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also ...

How to Read Like a Pro

Monday, August 16th, 2010

Things have been quiet on the blog, mainly because every spare moment I get I've been trying to catch up and keep up with the readings for my two courses. In week 1, I got behind because of work commitments and then I just couldn't get through the material fast ...

Funerals

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

As some friends of mine have recently had a death in the family (a pet guinea pig but a family member none the less), I thought I'd share an assignment I wrote about funeral liturgies when I studied liturgy in 2008. The assignment task was to compare two different traditions approaches ...

Why Church?

Saturday, July 24th, 2010

I've been reading for my two theology subjects pretty steadily this week after a week away for work which was timed so that I've immediately fallen behind in my study. Tonights reading ("George Tavard":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Tavard) looked at questions of how the church justifies its own existence. Interestingly, the church can't look to ...

The Changing Landscape of Theology in Australia

Friday, July 23rd, 2010

Encounter ran a program last week on theological education in Australia which was a great listen. It started with a run down of the history of theological education in Australia starting with the rejection of theology by mainstream universities necessitating the creation of independent training colleges run by churches through ...

Church and Other Catastrophes

Sunday, July 11th, 2010

I'm reading Sanks, T.H. 'From Kingdom of God to City of God: Jesus to Augustine' for my Being Church subject. It opens with a quote from "Alfred Loisy":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Loisy : "Jesus preached the kingdom, but what came was the church". It traces the development of the church from loosely ...

Reading the New Testament

Saturday, July 10th, 2010

I've started doing some of my reading for the New Testament subject I'm doing this semester. The introductory chapter talks about the significance of the New Testament in three ways: as literature, history and religious text. As literature the NT forms part of the background to most literature and art ...

New Beginning

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

I just opened the box in which arrived my New Testament studies textbook. This semester (session 2) is to be that and _Being the Church_. The New Testament stuff will be a deeper look at what I've already done in Introduction to Scriptures and _Being the Church_ is related ...

Re-enrolled

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

So after many months of not doing anything scholarly, I concluded that I do indeed need to enroll in a degree if I'm ever going to learn anything ever again. So I've re-enrolled in theology, this time through CSU as an external student. I have quite a few anxieties about ...