The Southeast Asian Lay Training Program at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary
(May 25-29,2015)
“The Songs of Ascent (Ps 120-134) and Pastoral Care”
Taught by Rev. Dr. Gregory Lee Cuéllar Assistant Professor of Old Testament
Dr. Cuéllar has a wide range of teaching experience, both as a professor and a pastor. As a scholar, he has had international exposure from Latin America to Europe. His research focuses on emerging theories of Biblical Interpretation. His most recent book is Voices of Marginality: Exile and Return in Second Isaiah 40-55 and the Mexican Immigrant Experience. His forthcoming book is Archival Criticism: The Interrogation of Contexts and Texts in Early Modern Biblical Criticism.
This course studies the historical, literary, and theological features of Psalms 120-134. In addition, the course presents pastoral strategies for applying these psalms to address issues of pain and suffering. An essential question for this course is the following: What do these psalms offer in the context of pastoral care?
"More than Metaphors: Rethinking the Strange Claims of our Faith"
Taught by Dr. Cynthia Rigby Professor of Theology
Cynthia Rigby has been teaching at Austin Seminary since 1995. An ordained minister in the PC(USA), she is the editor of Power, Powerlessness, and the Divine, co-editor of Blessed One: Protestant Perspectives on Mary, and author of The Promotion of Social Righteousness. A new book, Renewing Grace, is due to be published by Westminster John Knox Press in the fall of 2014.
Most of us are comfortable with the ideas that God loves us that we are saved by grace alone, and that Jesus is (in some way or another) our Savior and Lord. But what are we to do with some of the stranger claims of our faith, such as that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary? Or that he “descended into hell”? Or that he will come again to “judge”? What do we make of the idea that God uses even the awful things about us and this world for good? And why does it matter to our “real lives,” exactly, that we believe we will be “resurrected from the dead,” even as Christ was resurrected? In our time together, we will be honest about naming the things we are supposed to believe that seem annoying, wrong, or impossible. And we’ll explore what they have to offer that we may be missing.
