Author: Fred Sanders
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The Abundant Style of Erasmus
I had heard that Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) wrote a book showing hundreds of ways to say “thanks for your letter,” so I went and looked it up, just to see what one of the Renaissance’s prime movers was thinking when he did that. The book in question –originally published as De duplici copia verborum…
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Theses on the Revelation of the Trinity
As I’ve been working on a large writing project on the doctrine of the Trinity (The Triune God in Zondervan’s New Studies in Dogmatics series), one of the things that has increasingly called for attention is the peculiarity of the way this doctrine was revealed. It’s simply not like other doctrines. I think the doctrine…
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The Voices of the Father and the Son
To interpret the Bible correctly, one of the skills you need to develop is the ability to discern the voices of God the Father and God the Son, speaking about each other and to each other, in the words of the Old Testament. Without this skill, a reader will fail to perceive many things, and will…
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A Push and Pull in Trinity & Christology (3,2,1)
Theologian Brian Daley points out a curious feature of what happens when the doctrines of the Trinity and christology are (as they ought to be) put together. Each doctrine exerts a pressure on the other, so that anything you do in one area tends to have some corresponding effects in the other. The more you…
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How’s Life Treatin’ Ya?
The eminent philosopher Bertram Wilberforce Wooster once wrote, I spent the afternoon musing on Life. If you come to think of it, what a queer thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don’t you know, if you see what I mean. And how right he was, don’t you know. Life is a word that presents…
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The Christian Studying (Bickersteth/Watts)
Edward Bickersteth (1786-1850) wrote a book called The Christian Student which, according to its subtitle, was “designed to assist Christians in general in acquiring religious knowledge.” It’s a big, rambling scrapbook of a volume, which Bickersteth stuffed with quotations from his wide reading and festooned with his own incisive observations. Bickersteth was a world-class worrier, and…
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Sometimes a Light Surprises: Songs of Grace
My home church, Grace EvFree, maketh music. Yea verily, we make music most plentifully, and every now and then it overflows our own local church’s culture and takes the form of albums that can be shared more widely. The musicians at Grace have just released their fourth album, Sometimes a Light Surprises. Click through to…
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Journal of Inductive Biblical Studies
I’m intrigued and encouraged to see the first issue of the Journal of Inductive Biblical Studies, a new journal scheduled to appear twice a year and devoted to promote the hermeneutical approach to the study of the Scriptures generally known as Inductive Biblical Studies. By Inductive Biblical Study (IBS) we mean the hermeneutical movement initiated…
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Call for Papers: Locating Atonement (LATC 2015)
The call for papers is now open for the 2015 Los Angeles Theology Conference, and will be open until July 15. This year’s theme is “Locating Atonement,” and the plenary speakers are Michael Horton, Matthew Levering, Bruce McCormack, Ben Myers, and Eleonore Stump. In addition to those five presentations, we are seeking nine shorter papers to…
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Thinking an Unsectarian Thought
Imagine you are vexed by the divisions among Christian churches. You’re on the Protestant side of one the great divides, and you think the divide itself is a problem. But here’s the catch. You also are pretty sure you’re right about your principled, Reformational theology. At least if you’re wrong about it, you are unable…
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“I Give Myself, Becoming Man, the Spirit”
Athanasius of Alexandria occasionally put his own words in Christ’s mouth. But I think it was okay. Athanasius was an interpreter of Scripture who understood that responsible theological exegesis means asserting that it is possible to know what God means by a given passage of Scripture. On a few occasions, he went a step further…
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Torrey Talks on Chesterton, Tolkien, & Sayers
This past semester, four profs from the Torrey Honors Institute presented brief lunch talks for Biola faculty on some authors who are role models in thinking about the world in a way that is fully informed by their Christian commitments. These authors (G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Dorothy L. Sayers, and C.S. Lewis) are all…