The Scriptorium Daily

Author: Fred Sanders

  • Sleep Talkin’ Theologian 2: “Looks Like Birds But It’s Really An Angel.”

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    Fred Sanders
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    Transcript 2 of 4 in the annals of the sleep-talkin’ theologian. These notes date from about 1997. My long-suffering wife, a morning person, asks me questions like “when do you want to wake up?” and “what are you dreaming about?” Still asleep, I answer her questions. Sometimes she interjects ideas into my dreams, and I…

  • Sleep Talkin’ Theologian: “How Long Will Ye Linger Between Two Cabinets?”

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    Fred Sanders
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    There’s a man in England, Adam Lennard, who talks in his sleep. He speaks very clearly, says truly bizarre things, and is recorded by his wife’s voice-activated digital recorder. His wife has begun blogging his nightly oracles, and their blog is suddenly the Next Big Thing: millions of readers, interviews on talk shows, merchandise, the…

  • Education for Human Flourishing

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    Fred Sanders
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    There’s no easier job in the world than being a bad teacher. It’s a cinch, with short hours and plenty of long vacations. The pay’s not always great, but as long as your standards are low, and all you’re looking for is an easy job, I recommend being a really rotten teacher. Be really awful.…

  • MLK: “To Go Forward, We’ve Got To Go Back.”

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    Fred Sanders
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    The greatest works of Martin Luther King, Jr. are the “I have a dream” sermon and the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” These are MLK at his best, when his preparation and his personal struggles lined up providentially with the turbulent events of the civil rights movement, and he found all the right words to…

  • The Baptism of Christ: 8, The Holy Spirit

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    Fred Sanders
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    In one sense, portraying the Holy Spirit in baptism icons is not a problem at all: the Spirit descended in the form of a dove. The iconographer does not need to try to get behind this simple assertion of the New Testament to ask “why a dove?” For the most part, painters just seem grateful…

  • Should the Earth This Moment Cleave

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    Fred Sanders
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    In 1750, after two earthquakes hit England, Charles Wesley wrote two small volumes of hymns on earthquakes. It is not too much to say that he developed a whole theology of earthquakes, in song. They answer the question, when a believer’s country is struck by such a disaster, what should that believer say, or sing,…

  • The Baptism of Christ: Part 7: The Son

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    Fred Sanders
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    Christ in icons of the baptism is identifiable just as he is in any painting or icon: his traditional bearded face, and a halo (nimbus) with a cross inscribed in it. Of course there are exceptions: the Arian baptistery in Ravenna featured a beardless Christ, and in the post-Renaissance West, halos fell out of popularity…

  • The Baptism of Christ: 6, The Father

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    Fred Sanders
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    In this leisurely exploration of the image of the baptism of Christ, we finally turn to a description of the three persons of the Trinity. They are linked in the center of the image by the vertical beam of light, running down from the Father through the Spirit to the Son. The question of representing…

  • A Terrible Little Stroll with C.S. Lewis

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    Fred Sanders
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    Who, I ask you, wouldn’t enjoy taking a walk around the Oxford countryside with C.S. Lewis? Surely, no matter what you wanted to talk about, that many-sided man, that generous soul and omnivorous reader would be able to engage you in illuminating conversation. Surely. But no. In second volume of The Collected Letters of C.…

  • The Baptism of Christ: 5. Light

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    Fred Sanders
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    The feast of Christ’s baptism is called “the Feast of Light,” linking baptism with illumination in a tradition too ancient to trace. The apocryphal literature surrounding the New Testament is full of Jordan light imagery. The Gospel of the Ebionites reports that simultaneous with the voice of the Father, “a great light shone around about.”…

  • “The praise of God by crafting concepts”

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    Fred Sanders
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    John Webster on how Christian theology can be helpful: …only by recalling itself to its proper calling, which is the praise of God by crafting concepts to turn the mind to the divine splendor. But deeply important as they are, concepts are only serviceable as the handmaids of spiritual apprehension. (from “Life in and of…

  • The Baptism of Christ: 4. Angels and People

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    Fred Sanders
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    Angels are not mentioned in the scriptural account of the baptism, but they are almost always presented in the iconography. Perhaps they are included because the baptism is read together with the temptation in the wilderness, which followed it immediately, and after which the gospels report that “the devil left Jesus, and suddenly angels came…