The Scriptorium Daily

Category: Blog

  • Medieval Gazing and Eating

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    Greg Peters
    in

    A couple of weekends ago my wife and I took our kids up to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The opportunity to visit the Getty at will is certainly one of the perks of living in southern California. We were invited to go to the Getty with one of my students and her significant…

  • Welcome to the Humean Race

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    David Hume (1711-1776) was a real gadfly of a philosopher. As skeptics go, he was one of the champion doubters of all time. Reading his work can be bracing, because he knows more variations on “Oh, really?” and “How do you know that?” than anybody between Montaigne and Foucault (You can use that line to…

  • Making Comics with Scott McCloud

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    Cartooning is an art form that communicates with great immediacy. We don’t rely on comics for the best literary writing of all, and we don’t look to cartoonists to be the greatest visual artists. Good as the writing and art may be in a comic, we usually look for the highest achievements of word and…

  • F. B. Meyer Talks to His Lamp

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    F. B. Meyer (1847 – 1929) was a great Baptist pastor and commentator about a hundred years ago. In his commentary on Zechariah (The Prophet of Hope: Studies in Zechariah; Fleming Revell, 1900), Meyer pondered one of Zechariah’s visions, the vision of a seven-pronged lampstand which was constantly supplied with oil by pipes that ran…

  • The Heresy of Cool

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    Matt Jenson
    in ,

    Coolness is heretical. Or at least the pursuit of it is. This is because an inverse relationship exists between our attempts at being cool and our faith in Jesus Christ. The one struts, confident in his ability to do and say all the right things. The other limps, just as confident in his ineptitude, his…

  • On ECUSA’s House of Bishops Statement (II)

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    Greg Peters
    in

    Read Part 1 here. Here I examine the second half of the ECUSA House of Bishops statement. It reads: 5. We support the Presiding Bishop in seeking communion-wide consultation in a manner that is in accord with our Constitution and Canons. 6. We call for increasing implementation of the listening process across the Communion and…

  • Sola Scriptura: “Only Such Objections as May Rather Be Turned Into Cautions”

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    The wise William Burt Pope, asking about whether it is right to confess sola scriptura: Q: What objections may be urged against the general principle that the Bible is the sole rule of faith? A: Only such objections as may rather be turned into cautions; such as the differences in the confessions of the churches,…

  • On ECUSA’s House of Bishops Statement (I)

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    Greg Peters
    in

    Read Part 2 here. As an Episcopalian, I have a vested interest in what is going on in the Episcopal Church USA (ECUSA) and take great interest in the statement issued by the House of Bishops on September 25, 2007. This statement is the bishops’ response to a request by the Primates of the Anglican…

  • Dante’s Ante-Purgatory

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    Greg Peters
    in

    For many Protestant Christians today the doctrine of Purgatory (especially in its medieval articulation) is blatantly wrong. The need for such a place is mainly the result of the medieval concepts of debt, penalty and merit (of Christ and the saints). To a medieval theologian Purgatory was necessary, even desirable. Thus, when Dante Alighieri went…

  • How the Trinity Freed the Slaves (part II)

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    (Part I was here) A friend sends this photo from the west African country of Benin. The Benin coast is known as a slave coast, and has a fearsome monument known as The Gate of No Return marking the point of departure. A different monument, this one commemorates the coming of Christianity to Africa. I…

  • Horsemobile

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    An enormous horse carries seven people in comfortable seats with cushy backs. He is led by a helpful cowboy (note the hat and spurs) whose expressive lasso guides the beast and covers the vehicle. The people inside have a range of emotional responses.

  • Refuse to Choose

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    Are you a heart Christian or a head Christian? Do you think the essence of Christianity is in holding to the right doctrines, or in feeling the right affections? Should we devote ourselves to defending the truth, or to reaching an experience of God’s presence that requires language of mysticism to describe? What’s more important,…