Tag: Featured
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Let Truth Sneak In: Tertullian’s Apology
Tertullian’s Apology is a magnificent work from around the year 197. In 50 short chapters, this legally-trained apologist from Roman North Africa lays out the case for the truth of the Christian faith, defends Christians against all sorts of bizarre urban-legendy slanders, and defies the injustice of the church’s imperial persecutors. He starts out with…
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The Full Armor of Achilles to Withstand Odysseus (Eph. 6)
In a well-written and fantastically-footnoted 2011 article, Jeffrey R. Asher of Georgetown College (KY) connects Homer to Ephesians 6 (“An Unworthy Foe: Heroic Ἔθη, Trickery, and an Insult in Ephesians 6:11,” in the Journal of Biblical Literature Vol. 130, No. 4; Winter 2011). Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are part of our regular reading rotation here at the Torrey…
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Theology of the Pastoral Epistles (Lecture)
Here is video of a lecture I gave last semester on the theology of the pastoral epistles. The time I spent studying Titus and 1 & 2 Timothy last year at Los Angeles Bible Training School was very productive theologically. It seems like there have always been plenty of reasons to neglect and marginalize these…
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The Bible and Divine Speaking
The doctrine of Scripture (bibliology, the doctrine that states what the Bible is and how it functions in the church) ought to be a doctrine about God’s speech. When the doctrine is handled with proper amplitude and attentiveness, it is a doctrine about God communicating verbally in a way that results in these prophetic and…
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Trinitarian Theology Pre-Holmes and Post-Holmes
So, it’s ridiculous to divide the history of trinitarian theology into the periods before and after Stephen R. Holmes published his book The Quest for the Trinity. For one thing, that was just 2012, so the the post-Holmes period isn’t big enough to say much about. For another thing, Holmes’ book wasn’t that radical of a…
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Watch “The Cost of Freedom”
The video for “The Cost of Freedom” event is now available. Cornel West and Robert George joined Rick Warren at Biola University for a discussion about disagreement, common ground, and justice. West and George are good friends, yet disagree on important issues. There is a lively discussion about halfway through as George talks about prudence and…
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“Behold, This Dreamer Cometh:” Joseph Typology
“It sure seems that the story of Joseph is a typological foreshadowing of the life of Jesus,” mused Peter Leithart recently, and I have to agree. It sure seems so! Leithart went on, in his post, to describe the kind of mental abstraction required to read the Joseph story that way; a “Proppian structural move…
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Christian Stoicism (Clement of Alexandria)
People who worry about the hellenization, or greekifying, of Christianity tend to worry about Platonism. But the interaction with Stoicism has been equally complex and interesting. Clement of Alexandria (ca 150-215)’s fascinating book Paedagogus is a great early example. The title is variously translated as Tutor, Educator, Instructor, or Teacher of Little Children. etc. It’s a…
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Conversation on Theology & California
Here’s a one-hour video about theology and California, or, more specifically, Theology and California, the book of essays that Jason Sexton and I edited (Ashgate, 2014). You can view it at Open Biola (which includes several video and audio options), or stream the embedded version here below. Jason and I were joined by Bob Covolo, author…
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Progress and Regress on the Trinity: The Book
Zondervan has published select proceedings of the 2014 Los Angeles Theology Conference in a volume bearing the same title as the conference: Advancing Trinitarian Theology, edited by Oliver Crisp and Fred Sanders. Slipping into advertising mode, I was going to say “Get the book, don’t wait for the movie!” But then I remembered that the…
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The Common Room: What did John Wesley Make of 1 John?
The Common Room: Dr. Matt Jenson and Dr. Fred Sanders discuss the topic, “What did John Wesley Make of 1 John?” Watch the video here:
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Leaf By Niggle: A Recommendation
Beauty, Eucatastrophe, and the Doctrine of Grace in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Leaf By Niggle In September 1944, J. R. R. Tolkien received a request from The Dublin Review for a story that would be “an effective expression of Catholic humanity.” In response, he sent Leaf By Niggle, a short story he had written a year or…