Essay / Theology

Polanus, Axioms 12 and 13 on the Trinity

by Fred Sanders on

These two axioms are very short, and fairly straightforward: Polanus wants to clarify that while the persons are distinguished by relations, this does not introduce composition in any way: the persons are not composed by relations, nor is God composed…

Essay / Best Books

Best Board Books for Brainy Babies

by Guest Contributor on

by Danielle Hitchen A child’s moral imagination is most often formed first by the books their parents read to them. From the basic counting primers to the garish yet calm Goodnight Moon to the emotional complexities of Llama Llama Red…

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Essay / Theology

Polanus: Axioms 10 and 11 on the Trinity

by Fred Sanders on

In these two axioms, Polanus teaches how to think about God in terms of essence and relation. One of the tricky parts of this is that essence and relation are two different ways of talking about the same thing in…

Essay / Theology

Polanus, Axioms 7, 8, and 9 on the Trinity

by Fred Sanders on

In this little set of axioms, Polanus wants to show that the persons of the Trinity are distinguished by real, opposed relations. He is aware that this is a packed phrase, which contains and summarizes quite a few judgments. So…

Essay / Theology

Polanus, Axiom 6b on the Trinity

by Fred Sanders on

Here's our next conversation about the Trinity, following Polanus' 18 Axioms. The main thing Polanus wants to clarify in this axiom is that when we speak of difference in God, it can never be difference in essence; it is instead…

Essay / Best Books

Best Books: Global Greats List

by Mark Makin on

While the Torrey Honors curriculum focuses on the Christian and Western great book traditions, there’s much goodness, truth, and beauty to be found beyond the Western tradition. Recently Torrey upperclassmen and faculty spent a semester reading and discussing great books…

Essay / Best Books

Seven Great Works by (Romantic) Authors Who Died Young

by Jane Kim on

John Keats’s Odes – Keats typifies the young romantic poet whose genius is tragically extinguished too soon.  Before his death at the age of 25, he wrote to Fanny Brawne, the woman he loved, “I have left no immortal work…

Essay / Theology

Polanus, Axiom 5 and 6a on the Trinity

by Fred Sanders on

Axiom 5 is very short, but Axiom 6 is very long. So even though this is organizationally strange, we're devoting one discussion to Axiom 5 and the first half of Axiom 6. But in our next discussion, we'll only cover…

Essay / Best Books

Ten Great Roman Works

by Laurie Wilson on

The Torrey Honors curriculum includes a number of the greatest Roman works such as Cicero’s On Duties, Virgil’s Aeneid, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Plutarch’s Lives, Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, and Augustine’s Confessions and City of God. For those who would like to expand…

Essay / Theology

Polanus, Axiom 4 on the Trinity

by Fred Sanders on

In his fourth axiom on the Trinity, Polanus clarifies how the persons of the Trinity are related to each other by clarifying how they are related to the divine nature. To make the point, he contrasts the right answer, homoousioi,…

Essay / Theology

Polanus, Axiom 3 on the Trinity

by Fred Sanders on

Is the Son like the Father, or unlike the Father? More precisely, are the Father and the Son similar in essence, or dissimilar? It's a trick question. "Similarity" is not a useful category for talking about God's essence. In his…