Author: Fred Sanders

(For the sermon that this is an excerpt from, go here.) God communicates. He speaks loudly sometimes, taking solemn oaths. He hints sometimes, giving us just enough information to draw us in. But what about God’s silence? What about the silent parts all mixed in with what he says? We want to learn to hear…

(For the sermon that this is an excerpt from, go here.) The book of Hebrews is a work that trains us to hear the voice of God when we read Scripture. And it not only trains us to hear God’s voice, it trains us to focus especially on what God himself emphasizes, and one way…

(For the sermon that this is an excerpt from, go here) Here’s our last baby step in learning to hear God speak: We’ve overheard God. We’ve overheard the Trinity speaking in OT QUOTES. We know it’s about salvation. The last step is to recognize that when God takes an oath, he really, really means it.…

(For the sermon that this is an excerpt from, go here) We can learn to read the Bible so well that we overhear in it what the Father and Son say to each other. Does that sound too mystical? Learning to overhear the Trinity’s conversation? Don’t worry: It’s very high, but it’s not mystical. Mystical…

This is a section from a sermon I preached at my home church, Grace Evangelical Free Church in La Mirada, as we work our way through the book of Hebrews. I got to do chapter 7, on Melchizedek, and I presented it as an opportunity to learn how to heard God’s word. I think that’s one…

What would it take to lose your salvation? Sometimes I think the fact that we can pose that question in such a short sentence, with so few words, is part of the problem of talking about the question well. The brevity of the formulation (“Lose your salvation? Yes or no.”) lends itself to taking the…

In his remarkable book The Divine Name(s) and the Holy Trinity, Kendall Soulen pays very close attention to the way the revealed name of God (the Tetragrammaton) functions in the Bible and in Christian theology. If you’re reading the Old Testament in an English translation of the Bible, you’ll see the four-letter name of God…

In Thomas Aquinas’ commentary on Boethius’ De Trinitate, Thomas brings his favorite Aristotelian categories to bear on book reviewing.  While explaining Boethius’ preface, Thomas says that Boethius “sets forth… the four causes of his work.” Those four causes are the famous four causes from Aristotle’s Physics, where the philosopher declares that “we do not have…

I got invited to preach on Trinity Sunday (May 26, 2013) at Redeemer Church of La Mirada, a church just down the road a bit,  where a lot of my friends and colleagues attend. The sermon is available for download at their website for the time being, and I’ll see if I can figure out…

For twelve years, the Torrey Honors Institute has organized the G. Campbell Morgan Theology Lectures, a ten-hour overview of the major doctrines of systematic theology. It’s designed for Torrey freshmen and sophomores who have been immersed in primary texts from the history of theology: Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, and even a few authors whose names…

A prayer given at Torrey graduation, May 24, 2013. It includes a little unfootnoted Calvin, a little Barth, a little Lincoln, a little Psalm 98, and is based on a prayer I prayed ten years ago for another graduating class. O Sovereign God, your story is bigger than ours. We come to you today with…