The Scriptorium Daily

Author: Fred Sanders

  • John Hick (1922-2012), Philosopher of Religion

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    Fred Sanders
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    John Hick, a major philosopher of religion, has died at age 90. Friends and students had just brought out a festschrift in his honor weeks before his death. Hick’s theological conclusions were decidedly on the liberal side of the spectrum, and his intellectual legacy will be the greatest among those who are least concerned about…

  • Stick Figure Theology: Annie Vallotton

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    Fred Sanders
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    Imagine being an artist commissioned to illustrate the entire Bible. From the epic stories to the pithy proverbs, from psalms of praise to prophets of doom, from the life of Jesus to his parables, you were supposed to produce pictures for everything. Now imagine that you were limited to the most minimal of visual means…

  • Not Your Old New Trinitarianism, A New New Trinitarianism

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    Fred Sanders
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    “Remythologizing” is a mouthful of a word, and it may scare people a few away from Kevin Vanhoozer’s fascinating book Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion, and Authorship (2010: Cambridge University Press). Vanhoozer explains in great detail what he means by it, and I won’t rehearse that here. But one of the reasons he picked the…

  • Close Attention to How God Says What He Says

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    Fred Sanders
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    Vanhoozer says “My wager is that this brief detour into the dispute over the meaning of Dostoevsky’s authorship will yield theological dividends for understanding God’s communicative relation to the world.” (p. 311) Indeed it does, in two ways. First, it sharpens the meaning of divine authorship in a way that clarifies the God-world relationship. “God…

  • Whatever God Makes Humans FLIRSH

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    Fred Sanders
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    Reading in modern liberal theology, you begin to notice some recurring themes. Especially when liberal theologians get around to describing God, they tend to emphasize a few characteristics. You find these pervasive patterns of thought: that God is deeply mysterious, but is always opposed to oppression; that God is intimately and immanently near to us,…

  • God who Writes Like Dostoevsky

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    Fred Sanders
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    English metaphysical poet Thomas Traherne (1636-1674) insisted that in spiritual matters, “the manner is always more excellent than the thing.” This has great implications for the idea of God as author. When Kevin Vanhoozer presents God’s relationship to the world as a relation of authorship, his point is never simply that God is an author.…

  • Communicative Theism

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    Fred Sanders
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    A short post here before plunging into the next major topic in Kevin Vanhoozer’s 2010 book Remythologizing Theology (coming out in paperback this year, they say). That next major topic is how God speaks. But first a word about how Vanhoozer speaks. Remythologizing Theology is a book about the doctrine of God, but it also…

  • John 3:16

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    Fred Sanders
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    It’s one of the most famous verses in the Bible, the hit single everybody knows even if they don’t listen to the rest of the album. You can wave it on a banner, paint it in your eyeblack, or print it underneath your In-N-Out cup; John 3:16. No matter how often I see it, no…

  • A Couple of Christology Resources

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    Fred Sanders
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    Here are two books I recommended when I was talking Christology on the Frank Pastore show on Jan 12. The single best book on the deity of Christ is Putting Jesus in His Place (Kregel, 2007). The authors, Bowman and Komoszewski, work through all the best arguments and even provide a handy mnemonic device, HANDS:…

  • Getting our Anthropomorphisms in Order

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    Fred Sanders
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    Does God speak? Does he have a mouth that words come out of? Does God suffer? How does he feel the feelings he feels? Does God do things? Does he have hands that reach out and accomplish his will? Do we have a personal relationship with God? Is God somebody in particular, a center of…

  • Subverting that Theism, Conserving this Theism

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    Fred Sanders
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    Cultural critic Neil Postman wrote two books whose titles picked a fight with each other: Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1971), and Teaching as Conserving Activity (1982). Well, which is it, teacher, are you subverting or conserving? I ask because I’m coming to terms with Kevin Vanhoozer’s Remythologizing Theology, which similarly looks in two directions…

  • More than Merely Method

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    Fred Sanders
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    Kevin Vanhoozer has developed a reputation for reflecting deeply and at length on theological and hermeneutical prolegomena; perhaps too much at length. In the Preface to Remythologizing Theology, he admits that he has been “as guilty as anyone of procrastinating in the prolegomenal fields,” but with this text he has succeeded in moving on from…