Category: Blog
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The Christian Studying (Bickersteth/Watts)
Edward Bickersteth (1786-1850) wrote a book called The Christian Student which, according to its subtitle, was “designed to assist Christians in general in acquiring religious knowledge.” It’s a big, rambling scrapbook of a volume, which Bickersteth stuffed with quotations from his wide reading and festooned with his own incisive observations. Bickersteth was a world-class worrier, and…
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Sometimes a Light Surprises: Songs of Grace
My home church, Grace EvFree, maketh music. Yea verily, we make music most plentifully, and every now and then it overflows our own local church’s culture and takes the form of albums that can be shared more widely. The musicians at Grace have just released their fourth album, Sometimes a Light Surprises. Click through to…
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Faithful Remembering: A Baccalaureate Reflection
I had the pleasure of speaking last week at Biola University’s Baccalaureate service. Graduating seniors and their friends and families gathered for a worship service, and I offered them them the following words for reflection: As we gather tonight, I hope to help you reflect on what it might mean for you to remember this…
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Journal of Inductive Biblical Studies
I’m intrigued and encouraged to see the first issue of the Journal of Inductive Biblical Studies, a new journal scheduled to appear twice a year and devoted to promote the hermeneutical approach to the study of the Scriptures generally known as Inductive Biblical Studies. By Inductive Biblical Study (IBS) we mean the hermeneutical movement initiated…
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Call for Papers: Locating Atonement (LATC 2015)
The call for papers is now open for the 2015 Los Angeles Theology Conference, and will be open until July 15. This year’s theme is “Locating Atonement,” and the plenary speakers are Michael Horton, Matthew Levering, Bruce McCormack, Ben Myers, and Eleonore Stump. In addition to those five presentations, we are seeking nine shorter papers to…
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A Graduation Speech for the Torrey Honors Institute
On Friday, we watched as the Class of 2014 in the Torrey Honors Institute graduated. Most of the students I have worked closely with in the last four years graduated, and I got the chance to speak to them. How do you give a graduation speech without turning into Polonius? In his parting words to…
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Thinking an Unsectarian Thought
Imagine you are vexed by the divisions among Christian churches. You’re on the Protestant side of one the great divides, and you think the divide itself is a problem. But here’s the catch. You also are pretty sure you’re right about your principled, Reformational theology. At least if you’re wrong about it, you are unable…
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“I Give Myself, Becoming Man, the Spirit”
Athanasius of Alexandria occasionally put his own words in Christ’s mouth. But I think it was okay. Athanasius was an interpreter of Scripture who understood that responsible theological exegesis means asserting that it is possible to know what God means by a given passage of Scripture. On a few occasions, he went a step further…
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Torrey Talks on Chesterton, Tolkien, & Sayers
This past semester, four profs from the Torrey Honors Institute presented brief lunch talks for Biola faculty on some authors who are role models in thinking about the world in a way that is fully informed by their Christian commitments. These authors (G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Dorothy L. Sayers, and C.S. Lewis) are all…
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Neuroscience Talk May Be Literally Re-Wiring Your Brain
Brain-talk is everywhere these days. And while I love a good functional MRI as much as the next citizen, lately I’ve become alert to the way all of this brain-and-neuron rhetoric functions. It has a conjuring power, giving an aura of sciencey power to absolutely any topic. Reporters still bug their eyes out of their head…
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Why George MacDonald Hated Adoption
The doctrine of salvation can hardly be unfolded more grandly or clearly than in the terms of adoption: that God pays the price of accepting sinners into the life of sonship; that becoming like Christ means having his Father as our Father, his Spirit of sonship as the Spirit of our sonship; that the eternal…
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On Being Faithful Citizens
The last of Torrey’s 2013-14 distinguished lectures has just become available online, so it seems appropriate to take a look back at the series and consider what our speakers had to teach us about the theme, faithful citizenship. There’s much that could be said; all of the speakers were excellent and stimulated a lot of…