Featured Essay / Blog
A concerned student recently asked me to use my authority over a friend of theirs (also a student and mentee of mine) to help get them on the right track, for this friend was involved in quite destructive behavior. As we were talking, I was growing increasingly uncomfortable, but when…
Essay / Education
In celebration of the 25th anniversary of Torrey Honors College, we’re looking back at some important moments in our history. One of those is the expansion and division of the College (then known as an Institute) into two distinct houses. To get the fell and
Essay / Education
Here are four books that Torrey Honors officially recommends, and by “officially” I mean that we have built them into the heart of our great books program. So we will be cycling through them every year with students, because they are proven masterpieces that bear
Essay / Education
The cover story of the September issue of Christianity Today is about Christian homeschoolers who read classic books by pagan authors. Yay! It’s kind of a rambling article, but the author (Lou Markos of Houston Baptist University) has some fun with the irony, or at
Essay / Education
This is a brief talk I gave last week during orientation for Torrey Academy, our high school program. It addresses, for one particular, local audience, an issue with broader application: how should Christian teachers handle the Bible in a course of instruction that is Socratic?
Essay / Culture
Thucydides’ Revelation of Our Indebtedness Thucydides opens his “History of the Peloponnesian War” by tying the capability for a truly great war with the stable growth of a culture. He argues that the Peloponnesian was the greatest war because no cultures, to his knowledge, had
Essay / Education
If Western civilization as we know it were to collapse, I think I will last a week, month, or maybe even a year longer, simply for having read the Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Pa and Ma are simply amazing. I’ve learned
Essay / Education
“‘Till We Have Faces” is not the only myth Lewis retold. In fact, he loved retelling myths. And while you may have noted the conspicuous presence of Bacchus at the end of Prince Caspian and the amazing feast that follows, you may not have caught some of
Essay / Education
One year out of college, I was invited to return to Biola to work for John Mark Reynolds, the founder and then director of the Torrey Honors Institute. One of the unquestionable highlights of the three years which followed have to do with certain memories and experiences
Essay / Education
Check out this conversation on a Jane Austen novel: it’s a chat among two philosophers and an Old Testament prof, so it gets philosophical and theological (Aristotle and Proverbs are both invoked). But it’s also powerfully good reflection on a book that all three participants
Essay / Education
Last week during Holy Week, God called home one of his followers, Dennis Kinlaw (June 26, 1922—Monday, April 10). (Read the announcement here.) During the 1970’s and 80’s, Dr. Kinlaw served as the president of Asbury College, a Christian liberal arts school with roots in
Essay / Education
File this under “weird books I have encountered.” Erasmus Addlepate’s 1940 How to Read Two Books: It’s obviously a spoof of Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book. You can tell from Addlepate’s supposed other books like How to Get Up int he Morning that
Essay / Education
In his 1961 book An Experiment in Criticism, C.S. Lewis describes the difference between reading a book to encounter what is in it, and using a book for other reasons. There are lots of other reasons to use a book, some petty and some profound,