The Scriptorium Daily

Author: Fred Sanders

  • F. F. Bruce’s Birthday

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    Fred Sanders
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    Today (October 12) is the birthday of Frederick Fyvie Bruce (1910-1990), a great Bible scholar who described himself as an “unhyphenated evangelical.” A collection of Bruce’s shorter writings bears the title A Mind for What Matters, and the phrase fits him well. In fact, it can be downright intimidating to read Bruce and to see…

  • Arminius the Calvinist

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    Fred Sanders
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    Today (October 10) is the birthday of Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609), the Dutch theologian whose given name was Jakob Harmenszoon. If he had been American, we’d have called him Jimmy Harmenson. But he wrote theology in Latin, and for some reason it has been the latinized version of his name that caught on. We don’t call…

  • Gratitude for the Council of Chalcedon

    Gratitude for the Council of Chalcedon

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    Fred Sanders
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    Today (October 8 ) is the day that the Fourth Ecumenical Council, the Council of Chalcedon, began in 451. In a 2007 blog post about Chalcedon, I said Chalcedon means classic christology. Of course Chalcedon was a city near Constantinople, but the theological meeting held there in 451 was so important and influential that for…

  • Tyndale’s Achievement

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    Fred Sanders
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    Today (October 6) is the day the martyrdom of William Tyndale in 1536 is commemorated. Tyndale changed the world with a revolutionary Bible translation that moved straight from the original languages into English with no Latin middle-man. The very words of Scripture were thus unleashed to conduct their own sovereign interrogation of the sixteenth-century church.…

  • The Trinitarian Theology of Nicky Cruz

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    Nicky Cruz is not famous for his trinitarian theology. He is famous for having been the “warlord” of a violent street gang called the Mau-Maus in New York City in the 1950s, and for the dramatic story of his 1958 conversion to Christianity. At the center of his conversion story was a confrontation between this…

  • The Secret of Marriage (for Paul and Charity)

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    Fred Sanders
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    If the old-fairy-tale ending “They lived happily ever after” is taken to mean “They felt for the next fifty years exactly as they felt the day before they were married,” then it says what probably never was nor ever would be true, and would be highly undesirable if it were. Who could bear to live…

  • “Preach the Gospel at All Times; When Necessary, Use Stigmata”

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    One of the most famous things St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) never said was, Preach the Gospel at All Times. When Necessary, Use Words. It certainly sounds like the kind of thing Francis would have said, and you can buy it on plaques and bumper stickers to your heart’s content. But he never actually said…

  • Dante Smelled of Smoke, They Say

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    Today (September 14) is the day Dante Alighieri (ca. 1265 – 1321) died. Dante, author of the three-part Divine Comedy, was proud to be Italian: he wrote about the politics of Italy, chronicled his love-hate relationship with Florence, and perhaps most significantly, he wrote his masterpiece in Italian. That was a major decision in the…

  • A Gigantic Conspiracy of Misdirection

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    Fred Sanders
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    We have been brought to the point where we both can and must get our life’s priorities straight. From current Christian publications you might think that the most vital issue for any real or would-be Christian in the world today is church union, or social witness, or dialogue with other Christians and other faiths, or…

  • Happy Birthday, Peter Martyr Vermigli

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    Fred Sanders
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    Today (September 8) is the birthday of Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499-1562), a Protestant Reformer born and trained in Italy, later active in England and Switzerland. Though he was forced to move from city to city and was sometimes in danger, Peter did not in fact become a martyr. “Martyr” was not a title, but was…

  • What’s a Nice Christian Girl Like You Doing Reading Homer?

    What’s a Nice Christian Girl Like You Doing Reading Homer?

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    Fred Sanders
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    Two sisters sit at home, talking. The younger sister does needlework and arranges flowers picked from the garden, as she passes the time until her boyfriend comes to visit. The older sister, on the other hand, is trying to make some kind of sense out of her wasted life, having an emotional crisis brought on…

  • Henry More on Creation

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    Fred Sanders
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    Today (September 1) is the day Henry More (1614 – 1687), one of the Cambridge Platonists, died. More wrote a lot of very difficult theology, some of it in extended poetic form. He was a strange mix of rationalist and mystic. He was an important interpreter of Descartes, and probably a major influence on Newton.…