The Scriptorium Daily

Author: Fred Sanders

  • The Baptism of Christ: 3. The Jordan River

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    Fred Sanders
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    The landscape in which the baptism of Christ is usually portrayed is a rocky wilderness, with craggy mountain peaks in the background and cliff-like stony river banks on either side of the Jordan. While Jesus stands in the middle of the river itself, John is always portrayed in the classic icons as standing up on…

  • The Baptism of Christ: 2. John the Baptist

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    Fred Sanders
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    Pictures of the baptism of Christ are visually busy, filled with characters and details. Since it’s a baptism, it makes sense to start with a close look at John the Baptist. John is an important New Testament character, and Christian artists have assigned him his own iconographic details. You can read all about it, and…

  • Mary Daly (1928-2010): Radical Feminist Theologian

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    Fred Sanders
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    The term “radical feminism” gets tossed around pretty loosely in theological circles, and usually means “feminism that goes farther than I’m comfortable with.” But there are such things as radical feminist theologians. Probably the most influential of them all, Mary Daly, died this week. This post (rather long, probably only of interest to theologians after…

  • The Baptism of Christ: 1. The Earliest Images

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    Fred Sanders
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    The baptism of Christ is among the earliest New Testament scenes selected for depiction in Christian art. Günter Ristow mentions this in Die Taufe Christi (Recklinghausen: Verlag Aurel Bongers, 1965, 12). It is found in the catacombs, on early christian sarcophagi, and in the very first christian monumental architecture. Given all the water imagery in…

  • The Baptism of Christ: Worth Pondering

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    Fred Sanders
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    Christmas is past, and in a church calendar that tracks with the life of Jesus, the season of epiphany is here. In some parts of the Christian tradition, that means it’s time to think about the wise men, who actually got to Bethlehem far too late to pose for the manger scene. In other parts…

  • The Church-Based University (Book Review)

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    Fred Sanders
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    Start with a secular social order, and the university system as it stands today, and then ask yourself, “How much would we have to trim our Christian convictions to fit a Christian university into that system?” Given that we absolutely must obey the liberal, democratic state and culture, how are we to build a Christian…

  • Palindrome Day

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    Fred Sanders
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    January 2, 2010, was an important date: If you write it in mm/dd/yyyy format, it’s 01/02/2010, which is the same sequence of numbers forwards or backwards: 01022010. A numerical palindrome. Who would notice something like this, or care? Plenty of people found it interesting. Because plenty of people walk among us, turning word and number…

  • Wedding Sermon: Apply Your Minds to Concord

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    Fred Sanders
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    Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today at the beginning of a new year to witness the creation of a new thing. The new thing is a new family, and the maker of this new thing is God almighty, maker of heaven and earth. Once upon a time, God made everything that is, from nothing,…

  • Wycliffe’s Day

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    Fred Sanders
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    Today (December 31) is the day that John Wycliffe died of natural causes in 1384. He was an all-around scholar, excelling in philosophy, theology, and languages. His doctrines and his agitations for the reform of the church got him in trouble with the authorities, but he was not actually killed for any of that. In…

  • When Earth's Last Picture is Painted

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    Fred Sanders
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    WHEN Earth’s last picture is painted, and the tubes are twisted and dried, When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died, We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it –lie down for an aeon or two, Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall set us to work anew! And…

  • Happy Birthday, Rudyard Kipling

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    Fred Sanders
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    Question: “Do you like Kipling?” Answer: “I don’t know, I’ve never kippled.” Today (December 30) is the birthday of Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), the enormously popular writer who was the first English author to win the Nobel Prize in literature (1907) in his early 40s. But aside from a couple of childrens’ stories (The Jungle Book…

  • The Unique Inwardness of the Psalms

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    Fred Sanders
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    Here is the best section of William Gladstone’s chapter on the Psalms, from pp. 184ff of The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture. No comment, except to point out that Gladstone’s reading of the Psalms is from the perspective of a person with deep immersion in the Greek classics since childhood. It is, I submit, the…