The Scriptorium Daily

Category: Blog

  • What’s New?

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    At the beginning of January I got to preach at Grace Fellowship Church in Costa Mesa, CA. The sermon was on First Corinthians 2 and entitled “The Deep Things of God.” For the next few days, I’ll be posting sections of the sermon text as individual meditations. Today’s post is the silly part. I’ve always…

  • Oh Say What You See

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    Fred Sanders
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    National treasure Jacques Barzun with some good advice on “What Makes Writing Right.” Most people who coach you on writing better say things like “it’s not enough to express yourself; you have to think about your reader and strive to communicate.” Certainly there’s truth in that, and there’s even a kind of ethical demand on…

  • Martin Luther King, Jr: One Great Liberal Theologian

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    Fred Sanders
    in ,

    John Piper has the right idea about Martin Luther King Day: Don’t Waste It. In a timely memo, Piper exhorted all pastors and teachers who read his blog to “take note of the day and speak a word of exhortation to your people concerning their hearts in matters of race and ethnicity. … None of…

  • Catholicity, Race and Sunday Morning

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    Matt Jenson
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    For the last 1600 years, Christians have confessed belief in the ‘one holy catholic and apostolic church’. The ‘catholic’ bit of that confession makes many Protestants fidgety, but it need not. Its etymology renders it simply ‘according to the whole’. Catholicity gets at the universal character of the church, and it does so by two…

  • Anna Dennis: “Expert, Devoted, and Beloved”

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    Somebody recently asked me about The First Female Bible Professor at Biola, suggesting that the title must belong to a fairly recent hire. While I don’t have a comprehensive history of Bible teachers on Biola’s faculty, I do know a candidate for one of the first: Anna Dennis was recruited by R. A. Torrey in…

  • The Gospel of Gush (T. C. Horton)

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    The Gospel of Grace and the Gospel of Gush How wide is the distinction beween the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and that other gospel of which Paul speaks, and which is indeed no gospel. The real Gospel —the true Gospel— centers in “Jesus Christ ad Him crucified.” It has to do with lost…

  • Seriously, Homer?

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    Melissa Schubert
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    Every year our freshmen begin their college education reading Homer’s Iliad. And every year our freshmen stumble upon the same sophisticated “insights” about the ancient poem. They posit that Homer, or some poet before him, able neither to explain nor to master the wine-dark sea, deified the visible phenomena as Poseidon, Ocean, nymphs, and so…

  • Dallas Willard Carries a Big Stick

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    Paul Spears
    in ,

    We have all heard the famous quote by President Teddy Roosevelt, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Roosevelt was talking about his foreign policy when he made that famous quote. If you have ever heard Dallas Willard speak you have experienced the academic version of that saying. He speaks in modest tones, but his…

  • Everything is Interesting

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    Fred Sanders
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    Richard M. Weaver, a distinguished educator most famous for his visionary books like Ideas Have Consequences, also wrote a humble handbook of English composition: A Rhetoric and Handbook. It covers everything a college freshman could need to know about writing: from spelling and punctuation to the structure of arguments and the tone of an author’s…

  • Simply Crammed and Crammed

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    In 1917, R. A. Torrey preached a sermon to his congregation the Church of the Open Door in Los Angeles. His text was Psalm 1, and the sermon had the promising title: THE SECRET OF BLESSEDNESS IN HEART, BEAUTY IN CHARACTER, FRUITFULNESS IN SERVICE, AND PROSPERITY IN EVERYTHING. But despite the “How To Succeed” tone…

  • Setting Goals for the New Year

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    Scriptorium Admin
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    It’s the time of year when we set New Year’s resolutions. However, before you do, I offer you something to ponder. Suppose I invited you over to play a game of Monopoly. When you arrive I announce that the game is going to be a bit different. Before us is the Monopoly board, a set…

  • Paul AND Timothy (commentary by Richard Sibbes)

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    Puritan Richard Sibbes (1577-1635) wrote a commentary on the first chapter of Second Corinthians. I would call it an expansive or leisurely commentary, running to over 500 pages on 23 verses of Scripture. At that rate, Sibbes has to squeeze some meaning out of little words like “and” in the salutation “Paul and Timothy.” –Amazingly,…