Category: Uncategorized
-
Spiritual Manifestation of the Son of God
Fletcher of Madeley (1729-1785), one of the first Methodist theologians, wrote a small spiritual masterpiece called Six Letters on the Spiritual Manifestation of the Son of God. It gets republished now and then: In a 1968 printing, Martyn Lloyd-Jones called it “undoubtedly a spiritual classic” that “points us to the one thing that finally matters.”1…
-
Levy, Introducing Medieval Biblical Interpretation
Here’s a very short (350 words) review of Ian Christopher Levy’s book Introducing Medieval Biblical Interpretation (Baker, 2018). The review just came out in the Jan 2020 issue of Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology. My Torrey colleague Greg Peters endorsed the book with this back-cover blurb: “Levy has taken a vast amount of…
-
God was Always Ready for Christmas
Here’s a three-minute lesson I taught to the kids (ages 5-11) at church last week. This is a wrapped Christmas package. It takes some planning to put together a Christmas present like this. You have to think of what somebody wants or needs, then go get it, then find a box the right size, then…
-
Voice of the Father (Hugh of St. Victor)
In his work On the Three Days, Hugh of St. Victor considers some pretty profound trinitarian theology, giving special attention to how the Father loves the Son. It’s a complex meditation, and maybe all I need to say is that it is very Augustinian, and very invested in recognizing that since the Son is the…
-
The Torrey Honors College is Biola University’s Great Books General Education College for Honors Undergraduates
-
When Mercy Looks Like Justice
A friend of mine is involved in a lawsuit, alleging that she was sexually harassed at work. But she has “some extended family and close friends saying that she’s taking this too far and that justice and vengeance is for the Lord only.” She’s trying to figure out whether it is okay to sue someone –…
-
Lenten Reflections: The Temptation of Jesus
Day 24 – Friday, March 9 Scripture: Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led around by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And He ate nothing during those days, and when they had ended, He became hungry. And the devil said to…
-
Save Us, Sententious Johnson
One of the amazing things about Samuel Johnson’s writing style is his ability to reduce any idea to an aphorism, a fresh little proverb that arises perfectly from the situation in front of him but reaches up to the heaven of abstraction. Just about any page of Johnson will serve to illustrate this Johnsonian quality.…
-
Frederick Manning Sanders (1918-1945)
On Memorial Day, I just spent a few minutes scratching together some information on my paternal grandfather, who was the first Fred Sanders in my family line. There are four of us in the series, but all with different middle names. I have a few photos of him in an album somewhere, but of course…
-
T&T Clark Companion to the Atonement
This week, I submitted the manuscript for the T&T Clark Companion to the Atonement, an edited work with 18 major chapters and 85 shorter essays from scholars around the world, exploring the doctrine of the atonement from a variety of angles. The various essays explore the atonement in its relationship to different doctrines (e.g. atonement…
-
One, Holy, and Broken: Conflict In Christ’s Church
A church I attended suffered the pangs of conflict, and unfortunately, this was nothing new in my experience. As my wife and I moved around the country for graduate studies and then different teaching positions, four of the six churches we attended suffered deeply from conflict during the handful of years we were there (the…
-
“How Does One Get In On This Divine Secret?” [video]
The headquarters of Grace Communion International is here in Southern California, and I recently drove down and talked with them for a while. Mike Morrison interviewed me for their video series called You’re Included, and the first part of that interview is now available at their website. You may remember GCI as the worldwide set…