The Scriptorium Daily

Category: Theology

  • Cowboy Psalm: Turn ’em ta Tumbleweeds

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    Fred Sanders
    in ,

    Psalm 83 depicts a dreadful scene: the enemies of God’s people devising schemes to wipe them out of existence. Against this background, the Psalmist prays for deliverance, asking God to do to these enemies the kind of things he did through champions in the book of Judges. One line is especially striking. I grew up…

  • Why We Should Read Lesser-Known Books, or, the Anselm I Never Knew

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    Greg Peters
    in

    Anselm was born in 1033 in Aosta, Italy and while young was put under the tutelage of a relative who was a professional teacher. This man kept Anselm confined to the house so that he would study more diligently so that when Anselm returned home he was frightened by both his family and neighbors to…

  • F. B. Meyer Talks to His Lamp

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    by

    Fred Sanders
    in

    F. B. Meyer (1847 – 1929) was a great Baptist pastor and commentator about a hundred years ago. In his commentary on Zechariah (The Prophet of Hope: Studies in Zechariah; Fleming Revell, 1900), Meyer pondered one of Zechariah’s visions, the vision of a seven-pronged lampstand which was constantly supplied with oil by pipes that ran…

  • The Heresy of Cool

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    Matt Jenson
    in ,

    Coolness is heretical. Or at least the pursuit of it is. This is because an inverse relationship exists between our attempts at being cool and our faith in Jesus Christ. The one struts, confident in his ability to do and say all the right things. The other limps, just as confident in his ineptitude, his…

  • Sola Scriptura: “Only Such Objections as May Rather Be Turned Into Cautions”

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    The wise William Burt Pope, asking about whether it is right to confess sola scriptura: Q: What objections may be urged against the general principle that the Bible is the sole rule of faith? A: Only such objections as may rather be turned into cautions; such as the differences in the confessions of the churches,…

  • Dante’s Ante-Purgatory

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    Greg Peters
    in

    For many Protestant Christians today the doctrine of Purgatory (especially in its medieval articulation) is blatantly wrong. The need for such a place is mainly the result of the medieval concepts of debt, penalty and merit (of Christ and the saints). To a medieval theologian Purgatory was necessary, even desirable. Thus, when Dante Alighieri went…

  • Refuse to Choose

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    Are you a heart Christian or a head Christian? Do you think the essence of Christianity is in holding to the right doctrines, or in feeling the right affections? Should we devote ourselves to defending the truth, or to reaching an experience of God’s presence that requires language of mysticism to describe? What’s more important,…

  • Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    Hot off the presses from Broadman & Holman Publishing is my book Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective: An Introductory Christology. In this book, Klaus Issler and I bring together six chapters by six authors who argue that “the savior who died on the cross and rose from the dead is the eternal second person of the…

  • Thank God for Dopamine

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    Paul Spears
    in ,

    As adults we realize that it is not socially acceptable to loudly complain. Parents realize that if they have a child who is constantly complaining their parental fitness will be called into question. Of course, parents want to look like they have their own house under control (yeah right) so they teach their children the…

  • God’s Glory, Triunity, and Attributes: After the Atonement

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    William Burt Pope (1822-1903) was a great British Methodist theologian of the 19th century. I’ve written an introduction to his thought and sung his praises here. One of Pope’s strengths as a theologian is that he pondered so thoroughly the way each doctrine relates to all the others. This man thought through his theology backwards…

  • Quoth the Raven: Peace!

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    Fred Sanders
    in ,

    Just after three pm on February 3, 1691, a little boy was whittling on a piece of wood outside his house, when a raven landed on the steeple of the nearby church and said to him, “Look into Colossians 3:15.” The raven said this three times. So the boy, obedient lad that he was, went…

  • The Fifth Council: Trinitarian Christology

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    Chalcedonian christology is hard enough: one person, two natures, three strikes you’re out. But post-chalcedonian christology? Who has time for that kind of thought project? Once you’ve decided that the theology of the early church can help you think through a biblical doctrine of who Jesus Christ is, you might be persuaded to study the…