The Scriptorium Daily

Author: Fred Sanders

  • Already: The Enthronement of the LORD

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    Fred Sanders
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    A theological performance well worth the price of admission is watching the mature Karl Barth (1886-1968), trying to sort out the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament, or the relative continuity and discontinuity between the covenants. In Church Dogmatics IV/3.1, in par. 69, the sub-section on Jesus as “the light of life,”…

  • Monod’s Farewell

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    Fred Sanders
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    Adolphe Monod (1802 – 1856), delivered a sermon on the Trinity from his sickbed as he came within the month of his death. His text was Romans 8:12-17, and two most arresting paragraphs for me are these: Holy Scripture is wise, even in its silence. You would look in vain therein for the word Trinity,…

  • “Inhabited by that Sacred Impression”

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    Fred Sanders
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    Here is something which I suspect I have said before. But when John Henry Newman (1801-1890) says something, it always sounds a lot better than when anybody else says it. I found it on the last page of Andrew Louth’s odd little book Discerning the Mystery (1983), and Louth’s footnote places it in Newman’s Sermons,…

  • Salvation Belongs In Our God

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    Fred Sanders
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    Baptist theologian John Gill (1697 – 1771), in his Body of Doctrinal Divinity, has an especially clear presentation of human salvation as grounded in the eternal God. This is a topic I have been trying to learn more about by studying Thomas Goodwin (1600-1679), but right now I find that Goodwin’s writing gives off too…

  • Like Birds, But God

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    Fred Sanders
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    Claude Beaufort Moss (whose birth and death dates I cannot find) was a 20th-century Anglican theologian whose textbook, THE CHRISTIAN FAITH: AN INTRODUCTION TO DOGMATIC THEOLOGY, has been frequently reprinted. I’m nominating this book for Worst Opening Sentences Of A Systematic Theology Book Ever. Here he goes: What is Theology? It is the science of…

  • Preaching the Trinity: Brian Edgar’s New Book

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    Fred Sanders
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    Gerald Bray once noted the sad situation that although evangelicals are doctrinally correct on the Trinity, the doctrine “has not played a very central part in their thinking.” Going way back to the period following the Reformation, Bray points out that although refuting Unitarianism was easy enough, evangelical arguments always “smacked more of defensiveness than…

  • Psalm 27: One Thing

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    Fred Sanders
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    Psalm 27 is strikingly parallel to the famous 23rd Psalm: a testimony of personal trust in Yahweh, launched by a very direct metaphor and a possessive: “Yahweh is my light,” but then extended differently: “and my salvation… my strength.” The 15th-century illuminated manuscript called The Visconti Hours illustrates this Psalm with a picture of King…

  • Definition Part 3: Disjectamembra

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    Fred Sanders
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    See the other posts in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. George Muller (1805-1898) was a 19th-century pastor famous for trusting God to meet his daily needs, even when his daily needs grew to include caring for thousand of orphans. His life story has been told many times, but the classic version, approved…

  • Definition Part 2: Disjectamembra

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    Fred Sanders
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    See the other posts in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. For penetrating insight into the character of Old Testament revelation, there are few scholars of the caliber of Alfred Edersheim (1825-1889). Edersheim was a Viennese-born Jew who converted to Christianity under the ministry of Scottish Presbyterian missionaries, and he turned that unique…