Thinking Things Through with Ron Choong

What if the real story isn’t  science versus faith —but how faith helped give rise to modern science? That question sits at the heart of this episode of  Thinking Things Through .  Rather than rehearsing familiar culture-war arguments, we invite you to rethink the relationship between science and Christianity from a historical, philosophical, and deeply human perspective. Ron makes the provocative...

What makes some Beliefs credible and others, not?  In its 2000-year history, Christianity revised some interpretations of the Bible in light of new discoveries.  To help us unpack that, Dr Ron Choong, whose life and work span cultures and continents converses with philosophical theologian, Dr Andre Ong. In this podcast, Ron shows that where possible, Christian beliefs that stand the tests of geogr...

The “Hidden Christians” or Kakure Kirishitan went underground in the 17 th  century when the Tokugawa shogunate repressed Christianity from 1638 until the ban was lifted in 1873. In response, many Christian believers modified their spiritual practices to resemble Buddhist ones on a surface level, but which held hidden Christian meaning. Depictions of the Virgin Mary modeled on the Buddhist deity K...

I have heard of Malta but knew very little about this speck of rock between Europe and Africa. Until I visited this crossroads of Afro-Euro maritime civilization. Western civilization is inextricably linked to Christianity. Although Jesus never left Israel and did not leave us any writings, Paul wrote half of the New Testament and traveled across the Roman Empire covering three sides of the Medite...

This episode features a tribute to one of Ron’s mentors,  Samuel H. Moffett  of Princeton. Moffett was born inPyongyang, Korea to a missionary family. He was a pioneer in documenting the story of Christianity east of Jerusalem, in Asia. Sam passed away in 2015 at the age of 99. This 10-minute episode captures Sam Moffett’s influence on Ron’s thought.

This episode features a tribute to one of Ron's teachers, Lamin Sanneh of Yale. Prof. Sanneh was born into a Muslim family in West Africa, converted to Christianity and spent his entire academic life investigating Christian-Muslim relations. Ron was among his students at Yale from 2000-2002. He died suddenly in 2019. This 10-minute episode recalls Sanneh’s deep influence of Ron's thinking.

In this podcast, Ron traced the history of Egypt alongside the biblical accounts of five men, all of whom spent some time living in Egypt. From Abraham to Jesus, the deep connections between Egypt and Christianity show us the God behind religions we are familiar with. The 1700-year interval between Abraham to Jesus shows why learning geohistorical contexts that span their lifetimes clarifies the d...

Join Ron on this trip report to the land of pyramids and mummies, where he explored how ancient Egypt’s beliefs about Judgement Day, Resurrection, and being Born Again into the Afterlife, shaped their beliefs about God. The archaeological, historical, and scientific discoveries show that Egypt influenced the Hebrew, Greek and Roman cultures, forming the bedrock of modern Christianity. 

Thinking is based on Claims, Knowledge + Belief (CKB). Claims inform our knowledge, knowledge shapes our beliefs, and beliefs influence our what we think. What we think about God have real consequences for our lives. In this episode, Dr. Ron Choong shares his reflections of a recent trip to the biblical land of Midian in Saudi Arabia. This is where, according to the Bible, Moses met his wife and h...

The Bible is often seen as a Jewish book from Israel. In fact, its origins have as much to do with the Ancient Near East. The Bible would not exist without the emergence of writing, a signal achievement of the Babylonians. In this episode, Ron introduces his latest book, Ancient Near East in the Bible: Treasures from the Metropolitan Museum with Danny Lee and Christine Leong. In the book, he conne...

Science is knowledge, which influences our beliefs about God.  Geohistory refers to the where and when of our lives, the economic, political and religious circumstances of our birth.  For every event that ever took place, for every religion, for every one of us and for every belief we hold about God, there was a time when it was not.  In this episode, Ron Choong will share the connection between S...

Who actually wrote the Bible? What is the world’s oldest Bible? What are the Dead Sea Scrolls? If these are some of your questions, you have come to the right place. In this episode, Ron Choong will share what the Dead Sea Scrolls tell us about our Bible, based on his 2021 book,  World’s Oldest Bible - Science and the Discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls . He approaches the topic from an interdiscipl...

In this episode, I share my quest and discoveries from a lifetime of investigation and exploration.