The Scriptorium Daily

Category: Theology

  • Worldview Anomalies, Recalcitrant Facts and the Image of God

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    Scriptorium Admin
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    Once upon a time there was a man who thought he was dead. His wife tried everything she could to convince him he was very much alive. But try as she may, he would not change his mind. After several weeks of this, she finally took him to the doctor who assured the man he…

  • Craig Hazen’s Five Sacred Crossings: Truly Novel

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    Fred Sanders
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    For sheer awkwardness, there’s not much to compare with the moment when a friend hands you a book and says, “Here, this is my first novel, I hope you enjoy it.” That happened to me this January. I was lucky, though: the friend was Craig Hazen, and the book was Five Sacred Crossings: A Novel…

  • Thrynnysse

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    Fred Sanders
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    The word “Trinity” is not in the Bible, true enough. But don’t let the fanciness of the word “Trinity” throw you, it just means “threeness.” I was looking around in some Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, Bible commentaries a while ago, and saw that the word “Trinity” showed up there just as “thrynnysse.” I was getting…

  • How to Sin With Money

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    Fred Sanders
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    A lot of people think the Bible says “Money is the root of all evil.” But it says something quite different: I Timothy 6:10 says “The love of money is a root of all sorts of evils.” There aren’t very many kinds of trouble that loving money can’t get you into. Misconstruing this verse could…

  • “Trinity, Schminity”

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    Fred Sanders
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    I have committed my life to helping people understand the doctrine of the Trinity, and especially to seeing how it is relevant to their spiritual experience. I think it is a profoundly biblical doctrine, a reasonable thing to believe, the solution to numerous theological difficulties, and a powerful boost to spiritual insight. But I don’t…

  • Five Sacred Crossings: I Wrote a Novel, What Was I Thinking?

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    Guest Contributor
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    Craig Hazen, 2008. Notice the question mark in the blog title. If I had ended with an exclamation point, this little essay would most likely be a warning for all of you never to try this. I did go through the “what was I thinking!” stage. But I am not there anymore. Indeed, I think…

  • Knowledge of God, Knowledge of Self (Calvin’s Institutes)

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    Fred Sanders
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    John Calvin’s masterpiece, the Institutes of the Christian Religion, has a classic opening statement. He wrote it for the first draft of the book when he was 26, and it stayed the same right through the much larger final edition of the book. Here it is: Nearly all the wisdom which we possess, that is…

  • Christianity Made Interesting: The Inklings

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    Fred Sanders
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    It’s hard to account for just how much influence continues to stream from that little group of writers called the Inklings. Never mind that the works of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien have survived into the twenty-first century in the unlikely form of Hollywood blockbusters trailing cash and merchandise as far as the eye can…

  • Go On, Agree with God

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    Fred Sanders
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    I’ve been describing “confession of sins” to my kids as agreeing with God about sin. Etymologically, that’s correct: greek homo (same) + logeo (say) = to say the same thing. Sometimes, of course, we just don’t want to say the same thing about sin as God does. He’s entitled to his opinions, of course, but…

  • Life, a Preparation for Death

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    Greg Peters
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    In January, I had the privilege of taking twenty Torrey Honors Institute students to Rome, Italy for two weeks. Not only was I impressed by these students’ attention, interest and appreciation for great art and architecture, but I was also impressed by their appreciation for an opportunity to travel and learn. Though there were many…

  • Death and Darkness Get You Packing

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    Fred Sanders
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    Death, and darkness get you packing, Nothing now to man is lacking, All your triumphs now are ended, And what Adam marr’d, is mended; Graves are beds now for the weary, Death a nap, to wake more merry; Youth now, full of pious duty, Seeks in thee for perfect beauty, The weak, and aged tir’d,…

  • You Didn’t Say a Word (Terry Taylor on the Passion of Christ)

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    Fred Sanders
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    About ten years ago, the GREATEST AND MOST OVERLOOKED LIVING SINGER-SONGWRITER Terry Scott Taylor released a CD entitled John Wayne. The whole CD was great, marking Terry Taylor’s umpteenth self-reinvention –this time as a kind of regionalist spiritual pundit, an alterna-pop Flannery O’Connor from Orange County. But a standout song that’s been on my mind…