The Scriptorium Daily

Category: Blog

  • Stop Using the F-Word

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    Matt Jenson
    in

    As we careen at breakneck speed towards the legalization of gay marriage, as people yell and stamp and scream and justify and demonize, consider this moving, quiet, patient, eloquent plea (with a follow-up) by an anonymous writer to just stop using words that freeze, reduce, diminish and thrash gays and lesbians.  I was attracted to comic…

  • In the Garden Alone

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    Fred Sanders
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    My church hosted a great event last week, an Easter walk with a multi-station dramatic telling of the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection. It helped set up our congregational experience of Holy Week, and the church also produced and handed out two small devotional booklets for daily readings to do through the week. One…

  • Change: Looking Back and Looking Forward

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    Robert Llizo
    in

    I am waxing a bit nostalgic at the moment. Fifteen years have gone by since I first faced a class of eighteen eager and thoughtful young people, wondering who this strange guy in tweed playing second fiddle to the charismatic, magic-producing founder of the Torrey Honors Institute was. In the weeks before my very first…

  • What Rob Bells Talks About When He Talks About God

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    Matt Jenson
    in ,

    Rob Bell’s new book just came out. In its title, borrowed from one of Raymond Carver’s short story collections, Bell promises to lay bare What We Talk About When We Talk About God. Carver’s quietly aching scenes of love, or perhaps more of the reality of failed and blocked and misconstrued gestures towards intimacy that pass…

  • Celebrating in the Desert

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    Janelle Aijian
    in

    One thing I learned late, growing up in my evangelical Christian community, was the rhythm of the church calendar. It always struck me as a little odd, when I was a kid, that we would interrupt our regularly scheduled sermon series on a Pauline epistle for a three-day celebration of our Lord’s death and resurrection.…

  • Theological Atomic Physicists and their Simplifiers

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    This is a cartoon that was circulated in grad school. I’ve seen it published a few times but don’t know who to credit it to. The captions sound like some sort of Teutonic Latin: “Theologischer Atomphysiker” means “theological atomic physicist,” while “multiplikatoren” and “simplifikatoren” are “multipliers” and “simplifiers.” Then the punch line is in English:…

  • St. Patrick Comics & Stories!

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    Fred Sanders
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    The cartoon adventures of St. Patrick, from a 1947 comic book called Treasure Chest of Fun & Fact. This four-page adventure by George F. Foley tells the saint’s story in a way designed to hold the interest of a young Roman Catholic audience in the USA at midcentury. Treasure Chest is on my list of Top…

  • Quoth Francis & Francis: Speak Up!

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    In his first mass as Roman pontiff, Pope Francis delivered a short sermon in the Sistine Chapel in the presence of the cardinals. The sermon was in Italian rather than Latin, and even the Italian was kind of chatty in places (“non parliamo di Croce. Questo non c’entra,” he has the hapless Peter say: “Let’s not…

  • Getting Back to the (Dating) Basics

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    Greg Peters
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    I spend most of my time working with undergraduate students, directing them academically through the Torrey Honors Institute or offering life and/or pastoral advice as they learn to navigate the oftentimes difficult and uncertain terrain of adulthood. I love what I do and I would not trade it for any other job. What I have…

  • Razumikhin Haddock

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    Fred Sanders
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    The character Razumikhin in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment is one of the most personable figures in the book. Intelligent, loyal, resourceful, and generally pleasant, he’s one of the few people you can imagine looking forward to spending a few days with in St. Petersburg. But when he gets mad, he swears like Captain Haddock from…

  • Hebrews: The Mind-blowing Finale

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    Joe Henderson
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    The book of Hebrews is the grand finale of the first semester in the Torrey Honors Institute. After the freshman fall, the curriculums for Torrey’s two houses take their separate ways: the Morgan House following a roughly chronological path to bring them up to the twentieth century in senior spring and the Johnson House dwelling…

  • George Steiner Learns to Read Greek

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    Just a few pages into George Steiner’s 1999 autobiographical work Errata: An Examined Life, he tells a story about how he started learning Greek at age 5. No, “Greek at 5” isn’t the amazing part. The amazing part, to me, is that he grew up knowing French, German, and English equally well. “I have no…