Author: Fred Sanders
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Biblical Fasting
Fasting is a biblical practice, but it’s biblical in a peculiar way. It’s presupposed on page after page, but never explained. “When you fast” is a typical beginning for a biblical sentence on the subject, and it leads modern readers to wonder if we missed a page somewhere back in the Old Testament —maybe in…
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Those Top Twelve Books, Online For Free
Last week I listed the books we use for our semester On Knowing God, which amount to a Top Twelve Theology Books list from the whole of Christian history. A reader sent me a follow-up note pointing out that all but one of the books is available online at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. While…
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On Knowing God: The Top Twelve Books
In the Torrey Honors Institute, we teach an 8-unit class called “On Knowing God.” Following our great books curriculum and a Socratic pedagogy, we give students a one-semester introduction to the classic Christian texts. In fact, when the faculty designed this intensely theological semester, we realized we had a chance to assign, along with the…
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Deep Calleth to Deep
Salvation, according to the Bible, comes from God’s self-giving. That’s pretty high-falutin’ theologizing, even if you leave the Trinitarian part out of it. But it’s also immediately relevant to our lives. There is an evangelical spirituality which corresponds to the deeply personal nature of God’s self-giving. It is a spirituality that focuses relentlessly on God…
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An Olympian Standard of Bible Study
In the preface to Bernard Knox’s book Oedipus at Thebes: Sophocles’ Tragic Hero and His Time, he tells this story: As an undergraduate at Cambridge I had been awestruck by a statement of Walter Headlam, a brilliant Cambridge scholar whose career was cut short by his early death at the age of forty-eight in 1908.…
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The Deep Things of God: The Gospel
Let’s go inside of the place Paul takes us in First Corinthians 2: secret wisdom only available through a Spirit who searches the deep things of God; a knowledge of God’s ways that is only possible if you have the mind of the Messiah. How far in to the deep things of God does this…
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The New Covenant: A Father, His Son, and Their Spirit
The gospel is good news because it is saving. Judgment day didn’t have to be good news, it could be very bad news for you. But it’s good because it brings three important things. Here’s a little Trinitarian sub-outline of the gospel: A. It brings God as our Father. Not just God as the creator,…
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Adam and Eve, “Outside” by Mark Jarman
I don’t read very much contemporary poetry; I admit that I like my poets dead and classic. But one poet I do try to keep up with is Mark Jarman, who teaches at Vanderbilt and is somehow associated with a movement called the New Formalism. I don’t know what’s New or Formal about it, or…
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Conference on Lewis, the Inklings, and Christian Community
On February 7-9, Azusa Pacific University is hosting a conference on the Inklings and Christian Community. Three plenary speakers are scheduled, and a selection of shorter papers will also be presented there, probably in parallel sessions. The website says it’s free, so if you’re near Azusa, come on by. Two members of the Scriptorium team…
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The New Testament: Final Answers to Rhetorical Questions
One of the most arresting things the New Testament does is give real answers to what the Old Testament had put forth as rhetorical questions. Have you ever noticed this? Rhetorical questions, which are not meant to be answered, are put in question form in order to make a point. Proverbs 30 is a good…
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What’s New?
At the beginning of January I got to preach at Grace Fellowship Church in Costa Mesa, CA. The sermon was on First Corinthians 2 and entitled “The Deep Things of God.” For the next few days, I’ll be posting sections of the sermon text as individual meditations. Today’s post is the silly part. I’ve always…