Category: Blog
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Call for Papers: Los Angeles Theology Conference 2014, Advancing Trinitarian Theology
In mid-January of 2014, Fuller Theological Seminary will host the second annual Los Angeles Theology Conference. Last year’s inaugural conference at Biola was a great success. In fact, the book version of that conference is just about to appear in print from Zondervan. The topic for the 2014 conference is “Advancing Trinitarian Theology,” and we have…
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Made Ready by Conversation (Johnson)
What good is sitting around talking about books? This is a rather urgent question for the faculty of the Torrey Honors Institute as we start into another academic year, because we are leading our students once again into an extended season of exactly that. At Torrey, the professors assign classic texts, reserve classrooms, and show…
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Who Wants to Know? (The End of Our Exploring)
I’m so glad to see this new book by Matt Anderson: The End of Our Exploring: A Book About Questioning and the Confidence of Faith. Anderson may be most in his element as a frontline blogger, elevating the discourse in his corner of the internet with astute writing and exceptional judgement about which topics to…
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Barth & the Bible in Yosemite
Last week my family got to spend a few days in Yosemite, artfully dodging the summer crowds and hiking as hard as a clan of young not-especially-hikers can. It was great. Along with the Bible and the writings of John Muir, I took along a little Karl Barth: not one of his big half-dome tomes,…
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A Mind Curved in on Itself
“So, what are you working on?” she might ask. This is how these grad school parties go. “Sin,” I would invariably reply—sometimes saying a bit more, to make the pill go down smooth. Other times I’d utter just the one word, knowing the potential for a good, awkward laugh. Though at one point I thought…
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Ashes and Life
This summer a neighbor of mine died. I had gotten to know Jim and his wife, Teresa, during the last ten years I’ve lived on their street. I had the privilege of offering a tribute at his memorial service. The service was unlike any I’d ever been part of because instead of burying his body,…
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How to Read John Wesley's Sermons
John Wesley is an author we go out of our way to read In the Torrey Honors Institute’s great books sequence. In most great books curricula, you wouldn’t likely find Wesley’s name ranked alongside Homer, Plato, Augustine, and Dante, but because of our evangelical identity at Biola, it is crucial that we interact with the…
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"A Needed Doctrinal Synthesis"
The back pages of the June 2013 issue of JETS contain some very helpful book reviews. As usual, reviewers alerted me to a couple of books I need to read, and tipped me off to a number of books I should definitely skip. In some cases, just reading the review was enough to fill me in on…
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How Do I Learn From Experience If I Don’t Have Any?
Earlier this summer, I got an email from John Buchanan, a current student in the Torrey Honors Institute: Hello, Dr. Jenson. As you may be told from time to time, you are the mentor that seemed sensible to talk to regarding the subject of this email…Probably because you are a younger male but who knows for certain.…
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Time
We are all past, present, and future. While our lives may be bound in the present, what constitutes our “who” has come before, and will be. I am myself, my mother’s child, my child’s mother. The intricacy and interdependency of human lives and human relationships are as complex as time itself, and authors who manage…
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Théologal Existence Today
On page one of his 1996 book Christian Faith & the Theological Life, Dominican Romanus Cessario makes a distinction. “To acquire knowledge about God is one thing; to commit oneself to him is another.” The two ought to be related, one would hope: it’s hard to say which spectacle is more sorry, a person who…
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Endorsements for Wesley on the Christian Life
My new book, Wesley on the Christian Life: The Heart Renewed in Love (Crossway, 2013) is scheduled for August release, and is already available for pre-order (hint, hint). The book has received generous recommendations and endorsements from a number of scholars who I sent the final draft to. Of course I can’t help feeling gratified when…