Category: Misc.

  • The Lord’s Prayer in the Heidelberg Catechism

    Any good catechism includes the Lord’s Prayer, broken up line by line and explained. The Heidelberg Catechism includes such a commentary on the Lord’s Prayer in its final ten questions (120-129), and it is excellent. Click through to read the full discussion in question and answer format. From that discussion, I culled the basic interpretation…

  • Re-Heat Your Chicken; This Dead Chicken

    Reading hundreds of pages of theology every day, I was in a small group of friends in graduate school who helped each other study. We didn’t have much in common except for the looming doctoral exams, and some overlap in our reading assignments. Tired of saying “the group” is getting together, we named ourselves The…

  • In High Esteem

    Mark Hopson, 2008. When I graduated from Biola and got my picture taken with Dr. Cook, I found myself at a loss for words on how best to thank him for his ministry in my life. Did I thank him for presiding so effectively over a school that has shaped nearly every aspect of my…

  • Putting Things Together Helps You Think

    People who work mainly with intangible things —ideas, interpretations, theories, reviews, explanations— are exposed to a unique kind of danger. Ideas usually don’t kick back at you in a way that forces you to notice. If you make a mistake in interpretation, usually nothing explodes or catches fire. If an academic has a wrong idea…

  • Torrey Students Share Their Memories of Clyde Cook

    Dr. Clyde Cook was a great man who was much beloved by his students at Biola University. Several students at the Torrey Honors Institute submitted short reflections in honor of this wonderful man of God. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his wife Anna Belle and the entire Cook family. —————————————————————————————————————— A year ago…

  • Four Views of Clyde Cook

    This brief note may not be 36 Views of Mount Fuji, but Dr. Clyde Cook was a mountain of a man: he was tall, for one thing –only 6 foot 3, but he acted so much taller. And his life and legacy repay examination from many angles. Here are the ones that come to mind…

  • If Jane Austen Wrote The Office

    If Jane Austen wrote The Office, it would be a comedy of manners in which several characters were obvious buffoons, and the wittier characters were constantly inviting us to join them as they saw through the silly people with whom they were forced to interact. It would take place inside of a social and economic…

  • Ten Books that Influenced C.S. Lewis

    The Christian Century, that venerable old journal of what Christianity looks like from the mainline denominations, asked C.S. Lewis in 1962 for a top ten list of books that had exerted a formative influence on him. I’m currently re-reading Wordsworth’s Prelude, and had a vague memory that it was on Lewis’ list. So I looked…

  • Undergrad Conference on Good & Evil at Biola

    One interesting sign of intelligent life in American colleges is the proliferation of academic conferences by, of, and for undergraduates. These undergrad conferences, where college students present arguments and research to each other, are popping up in more and more disciplines these days. Biola University’s student government, Associated Students, is calling for papers NOW for…

  • The Bible Women

    The story of Biola’s founding is easily told as the story of Big Men doing Big Things for their Big God. I’ve told the story that way myself, because it’s true: Biola’s three most important founders were a civil war veteran oil tycoon (Stewart), a highly-educated world-traveling evangelist (Torrey), and an urban pastor who could…