Author: Fred Sanders
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Victor Davis Hanson at Biola: Thucydides
Victor Davis Hanson spoke twice at Biola University on October 8. His afternoon lecture was on one of his specialties, the History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. Reading Thucydides has been a standard assignment for students in the Torrey Honors Institute for a long time. But it’s a rare student who feels love at…
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Three Birds, No Perspective
Phoebe Age Six has drawn three birds flying. She depicts each bird with a severe simplicity: Four ovals, two lines, and dot. The first bird gets a bit of special treatment: the two lines of his beak are expanded to be flattened ovals themselves. Each bird has its own minor distinctions, and the rapid loops…
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A New Type of Christianity is Coming, is Here
Something new is coming, or perhaps is already here. It’s a new type of Christianity. It is still taking shape all around us, so it’s hard to describe. Labels won’t be any help. But one thing’s for sure. It Is The Future. Everything changes, and everything has to be left wide open to new developments.…
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Let Us Now Praise Study Bibles
The ESV Study Bible is soon to be released, and from the plentiful pre-release materials that I’ve seen online, this promises to be a great resource. The editors seem to have crammed a lot of helpful things into a single volume, including background info, maps where you need them, and essays that I wouldn’t normally…
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Lost Dogs at the End of the Road
My favorite band, The Lost Dogs, just finished up a Route 66 road trip with a beach party concert in Santa Monica. It may not quite count as The American Dream, but winding from Chicago to L.A. on what is now the nostalgic back road of the nation is pretty cool. The Lost Dogs did…
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Forgives Your Iniquities, Heals Your Diseases (Psalm 103)
The 103rd Psalm comes pretty close to perfect praise. It seems to be built around the quotation of God’s own self-description from Exodus 34, The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but…
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Such Pride is Praise: Spenser’s Amoretti #5
RVDELY thou wrongest my deare harts desire, In finding fault with her too portly pride: the thing which I doo most in her admire, is of the world vnworthy most enuide. For in those lofty lookes is close implide, scorn of base things, & sdeigne of foule dishonor: thretning rash eies which gaze on her…
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Even More Means, Even More Grace
When teaching about the means of grace, John Wesley habitually listed three things: prayer, Bible study, and the Lord’s supper. Those are the three in his best exposition of the doctrine of the means, and in many other places: GOD hath in Scripture ordained prayer, reading or hearing, and the receiving the Lord’s supper, as…
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Charles Wesley on Means of Grace
John Wesley preached the classic sermon on the Means of Grace, but his brother Charles decided that this was a doctrine that could be sung. So he wrote a very didactic hymn on the subject. Every line of thought in John’s sermon finds poetic expression somewhere in this 23-stanza hymn. Hymn No. 83, “The Means…
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Wait in the Means of Grace (John Wesley)
John Wesley was a great theologian of the grace of God, and he knew that grace is an invisible movement in which God sovereignly invades the heart of a believer. You can call it experiental or individualist or pietistic or emotional or whatever else you want to call it, but in all his preaching, Wesley…
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New Love to Entertain (Spenser’s Amoretti #4)
NEW yeare forth looking out of Ianus gate, Doth seeme to promise hope of new delight: and bidding th’ old Adieu, his passed date bids all old thoughts to die in dumpish spright. And calling forth out of sad Winters night, fresh loue, that long hath slept in cheerlesse bower: wils him awake, and soone…