The Scriptorium Daily

Author: Fred Sanders

  • Contour of Two-Fisted Gun Monger with Knife Breath

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    Fred Sanders
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    Since the violence-drenched, action-soaked, gore-marinated trailer, there has been much debate about the details of Two-Fisted Gun Monger with Knife Breath. What does his costume look like? How many guns does he mong? How do the knives come out on his breath? Here is a clearer drawing of him. For this image, Freddy Age Ten…

  • The King's Business Requires Haste

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    Fred Sanders
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    Several years ago, I headed up a project that put ten years of the old Biola journal The King’s Business online. That means that anybody interested in Biola’s early history (1910-1920), or conservative Protestantism, or California religion, can read these otherwise hard to find issues firsthand. The site has been down for a while, but…

  • Two-Fisted Gun Monger with Knife Breath!!!

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    Fred Sanders
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    Sure, movies are violent these days. But in between the violent bits, there’s always a bunch of dialogue and character development and stuff. What we really need is a movie designed for pure violence. What we need is a character who is designed for nothing but sheer violent mayhem. What we need is a hero…

  • Strong Medicine, Eventually: Boethius

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    Fred Sanders
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    My favorite fifth grader recently read the classic book Where the Red Fern Grows, and had the homework assignment of writing a letter to the main character, consoling him for the death of his beloved hound. (Oh, by the way, retroactive spoiler alert there; my bad.) The first draft said something like this: Dear Billy,…

  • Orchestral Evangelists

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    Fred Sanders
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    In a class on Matthew’s gospel, my students are learning how to hear the voice of Matthew the evangelist, to understand how he structures his arguments, how he tells his stories, and what his particular theological concerns are as he reports the words and actions of Jesus. After the initial rush of excitement about how…

  • The Good Book Blog

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    Fred Sanders
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    Talbot School of Theology recently launched a faculty team blog called The Good Book Blog. It’s a well-designed site with more than thirty contributors. That list includes a few Big Important Names, accomplished scholars you didn’t think would ever condescend to appear in the tohuwabohu of the blogosphere. It also includes some profs whose names…

  • The Structure of Matthew’s Gospel

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    Fred Sanders
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    The Gospel According to Matthew is intricately structured. A simple outline can capture the basic shape of the book well enough to assist a good reading, but a little more attention shows that this book has several layers of order, all helpful. Consider some of the layers of organization in Matthew, starting with the simplest…

  • Reading Habits at the Gospel Coalition

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    Fred Sanders
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    This week John Starke at The Gospel Coalition Blog ran a series of brief interviews about reading habits. They asked Carl Trueman, Bradley Green, and me to say a few words about what we read, how we pick books, what we’re reading, and so on. Here’s my key advice: The most important advice I can…

  • A Theology of California? (Call for Papers)

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    Fred Sanders
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    Is there such a thing as a theology of California? I have long suspected that there is, or at least that Christians living in California need to be equipped with a functional theological account of what this state is and what it means for the human spirit. I don’t imagine that every state rises to…

  • What Happened in Thessalonica

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    Fred Sanders
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    The New Testament gives two different accounts of what happened when Paul and Silas preached the gospel in Thessalonica. One tells the external events, but the other gives the spiritual and theological meaning. Acts 17 has a fairly brief report (sandwiched in between the longer reports on the work in Philippi and Athens): Paul went…

  • The Trinitarian Theology of Bill Bright

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    Fred Sanders
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    I have argued that “evangelical Christians have been in reality the most thoroughly Trinitarian Christians in the history of the church.” It’s a cheeky thing to say (the review in Christianity Today called the claim “a strong one, but… not capricious”), I suppose, since it doesn’t map onto current evangelical self-understanding. But I tried to…

  • Think Bigger: There's Not a "Trinity Verse" –and That's a Good Thing

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    Fred Sanders
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    In the current (Winter 2011) issue of Biola Magazine, I’ve got a brief article that describes the Biblical case for the doctrine of the Trinity. Here’s the intro: The Trinity is a biblical doctrine, but let’s admit it: There’s something annoying about how hard it is to put your finger on a verse that states…