Fred is a systematic theologian with an emphasis on the doctrine of the Trinity. He and his wife Susan have two adult children and are members of Grace Evangelical Free Church. Read more about Fred here.
Essay / Education
There’s an Augustine quote, widely available on all of the “Swell Quotations” websites, that just seems too good to be true. Here it is: “Really great things, when discussed by little men, can usually make such men grow big.” When a quote is extremely quotable,
This summer a group of Torrey Honors College students will be travelling to Cambridge, England for a three-week course in Great Books by local authors. One such local author on our list is Christopher Smart (1722-1771; Pembroke College BA 1744). We’ll read and discuss his
Essay / Education
This was the commencement address I gave to Torrey Honors College’s class of 2023. Torrey is a Socratic Great Books program, where the pedagogical coin of the realm is questions. So I put together an appropriate commencement talk. It’s for a very specific audience, has
Everybody should read Augustine’s City of God. (Go ahead; I’ll wait. All done? Great.) To do our part toward that end, we assign it as mandatory first-year reading in the Torrey Honors College. But “vast is the work, and arduous,” as its author noted, so
The first book we read in Torrey Honors College is Homer’s Iliad. Incoming students have to read it before the first day of class, before they’ve met their professors or their cohort. Here are five strategies for reading the book well, understanding it deeply, and
Here’s a fun list from some profs in the Torrey Honors College: Books we love so much we would each include them in our regular curriculum (if we could all agree on them and on what to cut to make room for them). This list
Essay / Literature
Not long ago, the Torrey Honors College added Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun to our regular curriculum. Any time you drop a twentieth-century text into a Great Books curriculum, you’re taking a gamble: No matter how well the book is regarded, it’s only
Essay / Literature
A pilgrim and his poet-guide, side by side, gaze up at the gates and read the weather-beaten inscription: I am the way out of the city of woeI am the way to a prosperous peopleI am the way from eternal sorrow If you know your
Essay / Literature
The curriculum of Torrey Honors College starts out with Homer’s Iliad. This means the book has a special place in the life of our program: students we have admitted into the program but haven’t met in person yet mostly read it in advance over the
Essay / Theology
“When the people in the pew ask the pastor to explain the Trinity, they do not want clever analogies or carefully worded creeds. They want to know what Scripture says about the Trinity.” Carl Beckwith says this in his book The Holy Trinity (Luther Academy,
Essay / Theology
Luke 3:21-22, the baptism of Christ: “the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove…” Brothers and sisters, we are reading here about the Holy Spirit, so what is there for me to say? Lift up your
Essay / Theology
Luke 3:21: “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying…” Picture the scene: There was a big crowd at the river, and people were getting dunked in the water by John, who was so good at