The Torrey Honors College is Biola University’s Great Books General Education College for Honors Undergraduates
Tagged: Featured
Essay / Theology
Readings in Luther and Calvin
October 2017 marks the 500th anniversary of the Reformation’s symbolic beginning: Luther’s posting of his 95 theses on the door of the Wittenberg castle church. To celebrate, three Torrey theologians are co-teaching an upper-division elective seminar on the Reformation. Matt Jenson, Greg Peters and I
Essay / Theology
The Distinct God of the Book of Job
Robert Sokolowski has said that The Christian God is presented as being so transcendent to the world that he could be, in undiminished goodness and greatness, even if the world were not. The Christian God can be distinguished from the world in this radical way.
Essay / Theology
When Bad Books do Good Things
It was while he was a student at Yale that R.A. Torrey (1856-1928) became a Christian. He describes it as a time when he was “leading a very reckless life” which involved, among other things, drinking heavily as a seventeen-year-old college kid. By his own
Essay / Theology
Eusebius on Christ: “The Great Martyr”
Martyrdom Martyrdom is a matter of finding oneself caught between an absolute and unyielding monotheism on the one hand (15, 39, 100), and an absolute and demonic claim to the contrary on the other. It is where we find ourselves forced to confess God at
Essay / Blog
Authority in Mentoring
A concerned student recently asked me to use my authority over a friend of theirs (also a student and mentee of mine) to help get them on the right track, for this friend was involved in quite destructive behavior. As we were talking, I was
Essay / Education
Friends with Aristotle and Each Other
Here’s an episode of The Common Room, the periodic vidcast of the Torrey Honors Institute, made possible by OpenBiola. What we try to capture and share in Common Room conversations is a little bit of the ongoing dialogue that makes up the daily life of
Essay / Literature
Doctrine Leaping Out of Its Chains: Review of Young’s “Construing the Cross”
Young, Frances M. Construing the Cross: Type, Sign, Symbol, Word, Action. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2015. Frances M. Young’s Construing the Cross is no mere exercise by a young scholar with an idea, research leave and a bibliography. Rather, this is the product of a
Essay / Culture
Love the Perpetrator as the Survivor? Correspondence with a Friend about Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself
A friend and I had a conversation about a situation of systemic and personal abuse she was suffering, which turned into correspondence between us. With permission, I have polished up my exchange with Lori (a pseudonym), as a reflection on what it means for a
Essay / Literature
Silent No More: CS Lewis’ Cosmological Theory of the Atonement
According to C.S. Lewis’ Ransom Trilogy, our home is “Thulcandra—the silent planet,” for “it alone is outside the heaven, and no message comes from it.” That is to say, no message came from our planet, until Ransom was kidnapped, and brought to Malacandra (or Mars). At
Essay / Culture
The Hunting Grounds
A recent documentary, The Hunting Ground, explores the tragedy of sexual assault on university and college campuses across the nation. Directed by Oscar-nominated Kirby Dick, maker of The Invisible War, which discusses the epidemic of rape within the military, The Hunting Ground serves as Dick’s
Essay / Culture
Black Lives Matter at Biola, 1957
I recently learned that the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, through its monthly magazine The King’s Business, took a stand against racial segregation in 1957. This 1957 broadcasting of Biola’s institutional position was neither so early as to be cutting-edge, nor so late as to be