The Scriptorium Daily

Category: Blog

  • A Wedding Homily for Brian and Katie

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    Greg Peters
    in ,

    I was privileged this past weekend to give the homily for the wedding of Brian and Katie Manchester. Perhaps it will be of interest to others too. *** Brian and Katie, this day has been a long time in coming. Your parents have been thinking about it for years, your friends have watched it develop…

  • Vatican II

    Vatican II

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    Fred Sanders
    in ,

    Today (October 11) is the anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council in 1962. Vatican II meant a lot of things to Roman Catholics on the ground (from changes in practices of fasting, to rumors that everything was about to blow wide open), but here is a theological overview of this epochal Roman…

  • Decliration of DaddyLand

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    Here is a little glimpse of what an intense writing schedule apparently looks like to the fourth-grader who shares the home with the busy scholar. The thing on the (awesome retro-modernist) table is a small scroll containing the Decliration of DaddyLand. What Daddy has to declire is unclear, as is what LAND he will rule.…

  • Time for Church: Jesus We Look to Thee

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    Charles Wesley’s hymn “Jesus, We Look to Thee,” a lyric meditation on assembling in Jesus’ name. Jesus, we look to Thee, Thy promised presence claim; Thou in the midst of us shall be, Assembled in Thy Name. Thy Name salvation is, Which here we come to prove; Thy Name is life, and health, and peace,…

  • Tirso de Molina's Tragic Rake

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    Robert Llizo
    in ,

    Everyone has his or her notion of what constitutes a relaxing evening. For me, among other things, it is an occasional trip to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles to watch and experience an operatic performance. This weekend, neither time nor finances permitted such a venture, so I got a DVD version of Mozart’s…

  • "And Show Them to Thy Blood"

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    Psalm 68 is not just a run-of-the-mill imprecatory psalm. It combines “smite my enemy” prayers with the “God is a warrior” motif, and the result is a vision of God’s wrath and judgment that sounds more like Beowulf or Conan the Barbarian than any other part of the Bible. I say this advisedly, because back…

  • Reveryone & Sour Faith

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    I do love the ESV translation, and all its digital manifestations have helped it take over my Bible study. But here’s a tweak to recommend: the in-line references at the ESV website are too big and too dark. The extra letters keep catching my eye, resulting in the formation of crazy words. Sounds like Scooby…

  • Canon Within the Canon

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    No Christian should ever have a least favorite book of the Bible. All Scripture is God-breathed, and the whole Bible in all its parts is good for teaching, training, and equipping us. But it is perfectly permissible, and even desirable, to have a favorite book of the Bible. It could be the book that first…

  • Does God Have to…?

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    Matt Jenson
    in

    I’ve spent much of this week talking with students about Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man). We don’t lecture in the Torrey Honors Institute; we discuss. To start off a class, we try and develop a crafty question, one that immediately sets the students before an issue at the heart of the text…

  • See This Sculpture? The Sculptor Didn't.

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    The caption under it says “Violin Player by Clara Crampton (The artist has been blind since birth.) You need not rely on the eyes alone.” It’s an illustration on page 7 of The Natural Way to Draw by Kimon Nicolaides (first published 1941). Nicolaides’ Natural Way was nigh canonical at the college where I studied…

  • "Get to Work!" -Charles Wesley

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    Here is a hymn Charles Wesley wrote about work. Like nearly all Wesley hymns, it’s tightly woven together with Scripture-allusion. It has simpler diction than many of Wesley’s hymns, because it was written for children. Actually, it was written for the orphans in the orphanage founded by George Whitefield in Georgia, for them to sing…

  • Forgiven and Born Again: Two Things at Once

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    It’s one thing to be forgiven, and another thing to be born again. Both happen at once, but they are distinct from each other. They have to be distinguished clearly, in order to be united perfectly. It’s hard to know whether it’s more important to distinguish them, or to insist that they go together. John…