Category: Misc.

Can a merely unitarian God answer prayer? Andrew Murray said no. In the 17th chapter of With Christ in the School of Prayer: Thoughts on our Training in the Ministry of Intercession, Murray considers “Prayer in Harmony with the Being of God,” and poses these questions: One of the secret difficulties with regard to prayer,—one…

“When matters of great moment are inquired into by men of little ability, they usually make them men of great ability.” — Augustine, Contra Academicus I.ii.6 (trans. by Denis J. Kavanagh as “Answers to Skeptics” in Writings of St. Augustine, volume 1, in the series Fathers of the Church: A New Translation (NY: Cima Publishing,…

The hardest questions I ever get about the Trinity are from kids. From “where is Jesus and why can’t we see him?” to “are God and Jesus the same person?”, I have learned to fear the kid questions more than anything the graduate students can muster. So I’m grateful for any help I can get…

On Monday Feb 20, Rudy Carrasco spoke at Biola about his ministry of Christian community development. We actually invited him to speak on the wide-open topic of “social justice,” but he immediately confessed that that term carries too much baggage. Carrasco, who attended Biola for two years in the 8o’s, spent much of the time…

Richard Alleine wrote a little book in 1665 called Heaven Opened: or, A Brief and Plain Discovery of the Riches of God’s Covenant of Grace. It is high on my list of current favorites. Just look at this opening gambit: Good news from heaven! the day-spring from on high hath visited this undone world! After…

Paul Molnar’s book Divine Freedom and the Doctrine of the Immanent Trinity is now available in paperback. I just wrote a review of it for Cultural Encounters: A Journal for the Theology of Culture. If you haven’t seen this journal, check it out: it’s new, so ask your school library to pick it up. Editor…

On Thursday Feb 16, Dr. Vigen Guroian spoke twice at Biola. At 5pm he spoke on “The Office of the Child,” and presented a reading of Carlo Collodi’s Pinnocchio that emphasized, in a touching way, the theme of filiality. “Child,” on this account, is not equivalent to “young person,” but carries the whole relational weight…

Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, spent a few days at Biola University last week. He spoke in chapel a few times, and he also shared at a luncheon for faculty, hosted by Biola president Clyde Cook. I don’t think I’m giving away any secrets from his inevitable next book if I…

Grace is trinitarian: not only because it is the grace of God who is the Trinity, but also because it works in a correspondingly trinitarian way. God’s method of being gracious is to be toward us what he is in himself: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This strikes some Christians as a new idea these…

Isaac Watts versifies the lines, “with you is the fountain of life; in your light shall we see light:” Life, like a fountain rich and free, Springs from the presence of the Lord; And in thy light our souls shall see The glories promised in thy word.

In a class on Chaucer yesterday, a group of Torrey sophomores (hi, Lewis group!) examined Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales with an eye on the theme of marriage. Chaucer scholars disagree about the order and coherence of the Tales, but only a pretty obtuse reader would miss the fact that these Canterbury pilgrims are having an extended…

Psalm 36:9, “With you is the fountain of life; In your light do we see light,” is a strange line. I looked it up in three books: a modern commentary, a summary of medieval Christian commentaries, and the medieval midrash on the Psalms. A modern critical commentary: Peter C. Craigie, in volume 19 of the…