Author: Fred Sanders
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Contemplata Aliis Tradere: Aquinas according to Bauerschmidt
(From a paper I read at ETS 2013 in Baltimore, as part of a panel responding to “Hillbilly Thomist” Fritz Bauerschmidt’s new book on Thomas Aquinas.) The Oxford University Press series Christian Theology in Context promises to situate theologians in their cultures and histories, to “understand how theologies are themselves cultural products” and how theological…
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The Praise of Perelandra
Excerpt from a chapel on the stories of C.S. Lewis, at Biola on Dec. 2, 2013. I want to read to you a passage from the second book of Lewis’ Space Trilogy, from the book Perelandra. Though it’s from the final pages of the book, you don’t need any spoiler alert, and there’s no need…
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First Lines of Theology Books
Joan Didion once said that the first line of a book is the decisive part. “What’s so hard about that first sentence is that you’re stuck with it. Everything else is going to flow out of that sentence. And by the time you’ve laid down the first two sentences, your options are all gone.” Didion was talking…
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The Dazzling Dusk
There are a few lines from a poem by Coventry Patmore that stick in my mind for their remarkable, evocative power. I first read them in a 1939 anthology by Walter de la Mare called Behold This Dreamer, a rambling collection of prose and poetry about “Reverie, Night, Sleep, Dream, Love-Dreams, Nightmare, Death, the Unconscious, the…
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God Went Bowling
There’s a little song called God Went Bowling by a band called the Swirling Eddies. It was on their 1994 album Zoom Daddy, and it features an oompah beat driven by accordion. Over it all is the snide vocal of Terry Scott Taylor, the songwriter whose mad genius has found outlet via at least three…
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Hiding A Few Words
When I published The Deep Things of God in 2010, I made a mental note to myself that I should eventually use this blog to let readers in on a fun little bit of extra information about the book. Then I lost the mental note somewhere on the mental desktop of my mental office. Now…
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Mysteries to Themselves
The fallen angels in Paradise Lost are of course shockingly wrongheaded in their estimation of God: Lucifer and company, while in heaven, thought they could beat God in a fight, and some of them continue to think so even after they find themselves greatly diminished and in hell. It’s hard to imagine what metric they could…
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Glad Protestantism
Last Friday, the estimable Peter Leithart posted a little manifesto in his column space at First Things,. declaring “The End of Protestantism.” I didn’t like the piece at all. In fact, for a moment I entertained the theory that somebody had hacked his account and posted a satire. Leithart is after all one of a…
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A Class on Trinitarian Theology
The 2014 Los Angeles Theology Conference, “Advancing Trinitarian Theology,” will be on January 16 and 17 at Fuller Theological Seminary. The conference is designed so that it can easily be used as a content delivery system for a class on trinitarian theology. Registration is already open, and the early-bird rate is in effect until November…
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9 Papers on the Trinity at LATC 2014
The second annual Los Angeles Theology Conference, entitled “Advancing Trinitarian Theology,” will happen this January at Fuller Theological Seminary. We have invited five plenary speakers distinguished for recent contributions to the doctrine of the Trinity: Lewis Ayres, Stephen Holmes, Karen Kilby, Thomas McCall, and Fred Sanders. Registration is open. Earlier this year Oliver Crisp and I…
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Christology Ancient & Modern: The Book!
Christology Ancient & Modern: Explorations in Constructive Dogmatics is the first volume in a series of books that will make the proceedings of the annual Los Angeles Theology Conference available to a wider audience. Only a lucky few hundred people were at the annual conference in January 2013, but this 200-page paperback from Zondervan collects…
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Dig Here Said the Angel
“I sell records worldwide now that I’ve died,” boasts the singer in one of the tracks on the new Daniel Amos album, Dig Here Said the Angel. The character is a musician, obviously, but postmortem, and somehow (As a ghost? In a dream?) he’s assuring his still-living spouse that everything’s great for him since his…