The Scriptorium Daily

Author: Fred Sanders

  • The Consummate Consumer (Gray Matters)

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    Fred Sanders
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    Brett McCracken’s new book Gray Matters: Navigating the Space Between Legalism & Liberty is a vade mecum for cultured Christians. It’s for Christians who are either up to date enough that they’d never say vade mecum, or who are way past up to date and are trying to bring vade mecum back. A vade mecum is…

  • Call for Papers: Los Angeles Theology Conference 2014, Advancing Trinitarian Theology

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    Fred Sanders
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    In mid-January of 2014, Fuller Theological Seminary will host the second annual Los Angeles Theology Conference. Last year’s inaugural conference at Biola was a great success. In fact, the book version of that conference is just about to appear in print from Zondervan. The topic for the 2014 conference is “Advancing Trinitarian Theology,” and we have…

  • Made Ready by Conversation (Johnson)

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    Fred Sanders
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    What good is sitting around talking about books? This is a rather urgent question for the faculty of the Torrey Honors Institute as we start into another academic year, because we are leading our students once again into an extended season of exactly that. At Torrey, the professors assign classic texts, reserve classrooms, and show…

  • Who Wants to Know? (The End of Our Exploring)

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    Fred Sanders
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    I’m so glad to see this new book by Matt Anderson: The End of Our Exploring: A Book About Questioning and the Confidence of Faith. Anderson may be most in his element as a frontline blogger, elevating the discourse in his corner of the internet with astute writing and exceptional judgement about which topics to…

  • Barth & the Bible in Yosemite

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    Fred Sanders
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    Last week my family got to spend a few days in Yosemite, artfully dodging the summer crowds and hiking as hard as a clan of young not-especially-hikers can. It was great. Along with the Bible and the writings of John Muir, I took along a little Karl Barth: not one of his big half-dome tomes,…

  • How to Read John Wesley's Sermons

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    John Wesley is an author we go out of our way to read In the Torrey Honors Institute’s great books sequence. In most great books curricula, you wouldn’t likely find Wesley’s name ranked alongside Homer, Plato, Augustine, and Dante, but because of our evangelical identity at Biola, it is crucial that we interact with the…

  • "A Needed Doctrinal Synthesis"

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    Fred Sanders
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    The back pages of the June 2013 issue of JETS contain some very helpful book reviews. As usual, reviewers alerted me to a couple of books I need to read, and tipped me off to a number of books I should definitely skip. In some cases, just reading the review was enough to fill me in on…

  • Théologal Existence Today

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    Fred Sanders
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    On page one of his 1996 book Christian Faith & the Theological Life, Dominican Romanus Cessario makes a distinction. “To acquire knowledge about God is one thing; to commit oneself to him is another.” The two ought to be related, one would hope:  it’s hard to say which spectacle is more sorry, a person who…

  • Endorsements for Wesley on the Christian Life

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    Fred Sanders
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    My new book, Wesley on the Christian Life: The Heart Renewed in Love (Crossway, 2013) is scheduled for August release, and is already available for pre-order (hint, hint). The book has received generous recommendations and endorsements from  a number of scholars who I sent the final draft to.  Of course I can’t help feeling gratified when…

  • Spiders, Comics, and Jonathan Edwards

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    Fred Sanders
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    Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is widely recognized as the greatest theologian America has yet produced. He wrote epochal books and preached sermons that still echo in our cultural memory from the Great Awakening. One of the least important things he ever wrote is a fun bit of juvenilia known as “Of Insects,” a descriptive essay about…

  • The Opening Question (Torrey 101)

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    Fred Sanders
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    At the Torrey Honors Institute, we teach by questioning. The professors in the program gather with students around a great text, and inquire into the text by interrogating the students. We call the professors “tutors” to signal the fact that they are co-learners along with the students; master-learners who know how to get into books.…

  • What God Says and Doesn't Say

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    Fred Sanders
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    (For the sermon that this is an excerpt from, go here.) God has spoken so well in Christ that even the silence around his word is eloquent, informative, communicative. We can learn from that silence in many ways, but here is one way: Because of what God has definitively said, we know there are certain…