The Scriptorium Daily

Category: Education

  • Only the Lonely

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    Melissa Schubert
    in ,

    I happened to be re-reading Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment the same weekend that we hosted a recruiting event for the Torrey Honors Institute. As I spent time reflecting on my membership in this learning community, I noticed the stark contrast of the radical isolation that Raskolnikov suffers. Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov is an intellectual and an idealist,…

  • Free Stuff at Biola

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    Fred Sanders
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    The Winter 2013 issue of Biola Magazine is out (here for the website, here for the pdf), and its cover story is about the university’s new initiative to give away loads of educational content. Check out the Open Biola site to see how much they’ve managed to put online already: lectures, articles, and entire courses. I call Open…

  • Newman, Benedict, and Torrey

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    Over at the blog of the American Society of Church History, Torrey’s Dr. Greg Peters reflects on some lesser-known writings of John Henry Newman. Newman’s most famous book about learning was his Idea of a University, but he also explored the ideals of Benedictine monasticism as a model for meaningful education. Peters reports on some…

  • General Honors 1920 and Torrey Honors 2012

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    Joe Henderson
    in

    In the Torrey Honors Institute we read Western classics; then we sit in a circle and talk about them. This peculiar form of education (and the list of classic books) can be traced back to the General Honors course offered at Colombia University beginning in the fall semester of 1920. It’s remarkable how many of…

  • The Best Bible Institute in Los Angeles

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    Fred Sanders
    in ,

    I teach classes at the best Bible Institute in Los Angeles. I also work at Biola University, but that’s different. Biola was founded as a Bible Institute, way back in 1908. The founders of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles knew all about colleges (Lyman Stewart supported many colleges financially) and seminaries (R.A. Torrey was…

  • Rally and Radiate

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    Fred Sanders
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    Here’s a diagram (click through it to view a larger version) that the founders of Biola kept close at hand when they needed to explain the variety of activities the early Bible Institute was engaged in. It’s a scratchy copy, and the graphic design isn’t great even by 1910 standards. But the message is exactly…

  • STUDY at BIOLA (1941)

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    Fred Sanders
    in ,

    I don’t have an image of it, but here is the nifty text from an ad in Biola’s King’s Business magazine from August 1941, p. 307. The ad invites prospective students to come to the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, which had not yet started using the neologism “Biola” but occasionally did refer to itself…

  • Torrey Cambridge 2012

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    Fred Sanders
    in ,

    Every July, a group of students from Biola’s Torrey Honors Institute goes to Cambridge, England, for an intensive three-week class. If you know the Torrey program, you can imagine what it would be like to experience it in an environment as rich and stimulating as Cambridge. Students read classic texts from various disciplines, discuss them…

  • How to Discuss: Have Faith, Have Hope, Have Love.

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    Peter David Gross
    in

    Wheatstone’s summer conference just ended. We had a week of great seminars, workshops, cultural events, and (maybe most importantly) small group discussions. It’s incredible to walk around a conference campus and see clusters of students or educators discussing hard ideas with a Wheatstone mentor. Intent faces. Wild hand gestures. “But what does it mean to be…

  • A Noble Risk: The Making of a Wheatstone Conference Theme

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    Peter David Gross
    in , ,

    Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator.  1 Peter 4:19 No sensible man would insist that these things are as I have described them, but I think it is fitting for a man to risk…

  • What I learned from John Mark Reynolds

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    Robert Llizo
    in

    I can still recall the day, seventeen years ago. We were introduced one Sunday by a mutual mentor of ours, the late, much lamented Fr. Michael E. Trigg. After the morning liturgy, we three talked for quite an extended time in the parish hall during the coffee hour, talking books, ideas, and Socratic pedagogy. By…

  • What John Mark Founded

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    Fred Sanders
    in ,

    Today Biola held a special farewell reception for John Mark Reynolds, who is becoming provost of Houston Baptist University after 18 years as director of the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola. The Dean of Humanities emceed the university-wide event, at which the president gave Reynolds a genuine Jim Rice homerun baseball that he caught himself…