Author: Fred Sanders
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The Formative Reading of Scripture
The Journal of Spiritual Formation & Soul Care is a twice-yearly journal from Biola’s Institute for Spiritual Formation. Now in its fourth year of publication, it has a nice track record of publishing interesting, peer-reviewed articles. When the journal was launched, some observers wondered if a journal headquartered at a distinctively Protestant evangelical place like…
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Loving God, and Saying So in the Bible
When you love God, it seems altogether natural to say so: to God (“I love you, Lord”) and to others (“I love the Lord”). But OT scholar Daniel Block claims that it’s just not an Old Testament thing to do. Block has made this claim in a few places. I just saw it again in…
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"The Divine Grip:" Ralph Del Colle (1954-2012)
Theologian Ralph Del Colle has passed away this week from cancer. When an accomplished thinker of his stature dies before age sixty, it is almost inevitable that he will have left some promising projects uncompleted. I think Ralph was working on a christology book, for instance, though I don’t know how far along the manuscript…
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Torrey Cambridge 2012
Every July, a group of students from Biola’s Torrey Honors Institute goes to Cambridge, England, for an intensive three-week class. If you know the Torrey program, you can imagine what it would be like to experience it in an environment as rich and stimulating as Cambridge. Students read classic texts from various disciplines, discuss them…
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Summertime in England: It Ain't Why (It Just Is)
Probably just because I’m spending the summertime in England, I’ve been listening to Van Morrison’s song by that name lately. This is not the song I’d send somebody to if they wanted to understand what some people find so fascinating about Van Morrison; there are too many problems with it. But if it catches you,…
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Dr. Johnson's Cat
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the literary giant behind Rasselas and the first truly great English dictionary, had a cat. He actually had several cats over the course of his life, actually, but the only one we have information about is a black cat named Hodge. Johnson’s biographer, Boswell, hated cats, but grudgingly reported on Johnson’s fondness…
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Readings on the Trinity (Class Outline)
This is the book list, with short annotations, for a class I teach on the Trinity from time to time here at Biola. There’s more to a class than just the book list, of course: our classroom work is all Socratic discussion, and during the semester we spend some time on supplementary topics like the…
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The Trinity: Yes, A Doctrine About God
Today was Trinity Sunday, as observed by churches who follow the western liturgical calendar. There wasn’t always a Trinity Sunday, and even when (well into the middle ages) it was proposed, some popes argued against it on the grounds that (a) feast days are supposed to commemorate events, not doctrines, and (b) every Sunday…
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When You Hear "Mystery"
When you hear the word “mystery” in a sermon or in the Bible, what do you do? What do you expect to happen next? In a sermon on 1 Timothy 3:16 (“great is the mystery of Godliness”), John Calvin said that we should have two responses: When we hear this word, mystery, let us remember two…
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Sanctification: Two Meanings
First you’re justified, then you become sanctified, and finally you’ll be glorified. To make progress as a disciple is to grow in sanctification. Right? Yes, this is how we talk. And when we talk this way, we know what we’re talking about. The word “sanctification” points to a process of development, a growing “in the…
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Prayer for the Class of 2012
(For Torrey graduation, May 25, 2012) Father God, we bring these seniors, this class of 2012, to you today. We lift them up before you, and call their names in your presence, and call on your name in their presence. Because this is the moment of the handoff. We are passing them on to you.…
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What John Mark Founded
Today Biola held a special farewell reception for John Mark Reynolds, who is becoming provost of Houston Baptist University after 18 years as director of the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola. The Dean of Humanities emceed the university-wide event, at which the president gave Reynolds a genuine Jim Rice homerun baseball that he caught himself…