Author: Fred Sanders

This will be weak, even for a blog post, but I wanted to jot down three questions that are lingering in my mind after about six months of reading and teaching the pastoral epistles. I find all three questions mildly unsettling, but not for the historical-critical reasons that are supposed to unsettle evangelicals. I take…

Here are a few more selections from the interesting little one-volume theology, Outlines of Christian Doctrine by H.C.G. Moule. When he begins discussing atonement, Moule quotes, without naming, some earlier thinker: It has been well said that Creation, relatively to God, is little, ‘a very little thing,’ but that Sin is not. Sin –shall we…

A prayer for the 2015 graduates of the Torrey Honors Institute, from the commencement service last week: Father, we rejoice with these students in the hard work they have done in Torrey, and we present them to you as exhibits of good work. Furthermore, this good work they have done is also their good works,…

Why have theologians in the classic tradition of trinitarian doctrine found it easy to confess that the external actions of the Trinity are undivided? One reason is that they started from a clear confession that the internal actions of the Trinity were not undivided. Or, to put it less double-negatively, the internal actions of the…

John Webster has been writing about the doctrine of creation recently, here an essay and there an essay. Much of this work will be gathered in God Without Measure, vol. 1, which should appear in hardcover early this summer and will be well worth the arm and leg it will cost. We count on Webster to…

Starting today and running through July 17 there is an open call for papers for the 2016 Los Angeles Theology Conference. The conference this year (to be held in mid January at Fuller Seminary) has the title “The Voice of God in the Text of Scripture,” and our plenary speakers will be William Abraham, John…

“The external works of the Trinity are undivided,” says a classic principle of trinitarian theology. Whatever God does outside of the divine essence, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit do as the one divine causal agent. This is great news for monotheism, because if three distinct divine agents were bringing about created effects by distinguishable…

There are several different things going on at the same time in the new book One God in Three Persons: Unity of Essence, Distinction of Persons, Implications for Life, (Crossway, 2015) edited by Bruce Ware and John Starke. It’s got a lot going on just because it’s a set of eleven essays by professors in…

I’m cleaning off my desk from another semester of teaching at Los Angeles Bible Training School (the best Bible Institute in Los Angeles), putting some books back on the shelf and returning others to the library. Here are some quick thoughts on the commentaries that proved most helpful to me this semester. Don’t confuse this…

Moody Publishers has just released my book How God Used R. A. Torrey: A Short Biography as Told Through His Sermons. Check out the keen cover design. It’s a very affordable paperback, and the digital edition is also nicely done. How God Used R.A. Torrey gathers 13 of his greatest sermons, according to me. About ten…