Author: Fred Sanders
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Cotton Mather, the Cistern of Nature, and Pressing After Piety
Cotton Mather, American Puritan, was born yesterday and died today. That is, he was born on February 12 in the year 1663, and died February 13 in the year 1728. Mather kept a voluminous diary which would be worth reading just for its historical value, since he was on the scene for so many important…
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Lawrence of the Resurrection on Practicing the Presence
Today (February 12) is the day in 1691 that Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection died. He is remembered for the spiritual writings which have been published as The Practice of the Presence of God, and he is famous for describing how to commune intimately with God while working hard in the kitchen. He was born…
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Ryrie The Communicator
The name Charles Caldwell Ryrie calls to mind a very conservative theologian who has specialized in dispensationalism, insisted on inerrancy, and gotten involved in theological dust-ups like the one between “lordship salvation” vs. “free grace.” One could easily get the image of hard-headed fundamentalist fighter. I’ve never met Ryrie, and don’t know anything about his…
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Yourself and the Air Around You
Charles C. Ryrie has a hundred object lessons for teaching the young. No, really, a hundred. They’re all good for making doctrinal points clear to kids, and Ryrie tells you exactly what object to show the kids in each case: a chair, a comb, a sealed letter, a map, etc. But when he tries to…
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Found Poem: Wrong Way — Right Way
Wrong Way — Right Way Air An Invitation A Paycheck Hell Sinners All The World What Death Is Rejecting Ignoring A Stopped Watch All-Seeing “Be Ye Ready” Heaven No Savior Substitute An Anchor My Glasses Dark Glasses A Grade Book A Love Letter Mosquito Bites The Shadow How To Eat Necessary Parts Safe Keeping Clean…
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What are We Preparing For? (Lessons from Justin Key)
Here at the beginning of a new academic semester, all the students and professors are full of big plans. We’re going to cover so much material, learn so many new skills, and develop so many relationships. We’ve got a long semester ahead of us, and since it’s a Spring semester, there’s a big graduation at…
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Three Reasons to Write Out Your Ideas Now
Three authors who knew a lot more when they were older, but were glad they had written their books when they were younger: John Wesley: “Nay, I know not that I can write a better on The Circumcision of the Heart than I did five and forty years ago.” C. H. Dodd in 1958: “I have…
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Plato for Pleasure
Hey, everybody, Plato is fun! Everybody ought to read him! Yay Plato! That, at least, is the argument of Adam Fox in his 1945 book Plato for Pleasure (revised edtion 1962). “The works of Plato have generally been in the hands of philosophers and scholars when they ought to have been in the hands of…
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Menand: Uncommonly Successful in Keeping the Felicities of Prose
I just finished a very fast read-through (with permission to skip some sections) of Louis Menand’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2001 book The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America. It’s a 500-page book about one school of American philosophy. I picked it up used and have had it on the shelf for a few years,…
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Making the Most of The Shack
How should a theologian respond to a popular book that includes unsound teaching? The popular book I’m thinking of is The Shack, by William P. Young. After getting dozens of questions about The Shack, I wrote a review of it in early 2009. Actually, I wrote five reviews of it, in five different voices, partly…
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Sleep Talkin’ Theologian 4: “Translucent in Honor, Suspended in Dignity.”
And here is the epic conclusion to my sleep-talking adventures from graduate school. (Click here for installments 1, 2, and 3.) I’m sure I still talk in my sleep, but probably not as much as back in the day. During the time my wife took these notes, I was reading assigned theology all day every…
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Sleep Talkin’ Theologian 3: “Like a Light Beam In A Hallway.”
Installment 3 of 4 in this series of transcripts of my sleep-talking adventures from the late 90s. No, I cannot explain most of these. *** Something about a surgeon Getting ready to cut something out of someone [who?] Part of the time it was me. Part of the time it was some guy I didn’t…