The Scriptorium Daily

Month: May 2008

  • Human Persons and the Self

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    by

    Scriptorium Admin
    in

    Throughout its history, the Judeo-Christian tradition has been interpreted as giving an affirmative answer to questions about the reality of the three great topics of Western philosophy, viz., God, the soul, and life everlasting. For two thousand years, the vast majority of Christian thinkers have believed in the souls of men and beasts as it…

  • Prayer for the Class of 2008

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    by

    Fred Sanders
    in ,

    Father in heaven, We bring these graduating seniors of the Torrey Honors Institute before you today with thankfulness, joy, and relief. We present them to you with their Torrey educations completed. And in this sweet moment of successful accomplishment, we admit to you that we do not completely understand the meaning of what we have…

  • The Antics of Aimee

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    by

    Fred Sanders
    in

    PBS’s American Experience did a show last year on Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944), the Pentecostal evangelist so archetypal that her whole life read like a movie script. The PBS documentary movie was surprisingly good, featuring interviews with most of the leading scholars responsible for major publications on McPherson in the past decade (Edith Blumhofer, Anthea…

  • Theological Saint-Watching

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    Advice to anybody who wants to think well about theology: Find a holy person and watch them closely. Good theologians are good saint-watchers. They pay attention to the believers they know, and devote time to describing what they see taking place in the lives of the people around them who are conspicuously Christ-like. They should…

  • “If a Noisome Dunghill May Covenant with a Being Most Holy:” Fletcher of Madeley

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    by

    Fred Sanders
    in

    John Wesley, who everybody’s heard of, had this to say about John Fletcher of Madeley, who is now mostly forgotten: “An obedience discovered itself in Fletcher of Madeley, which I wish I could describe or imitate.” John William Fletcher (1729-1785), or, to use the French name he was given at birth, Jean Guillaume de la…

  • Just How Great Are Wesley’s Hymns?

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    Jesus is God, but did he know during his earthly ministry that he was God? Was he, as a human, aware of his divinity? I think it is necessary, for biblical and logical reasons, to answer yes to this question, but I freely admit that doing so raises further difficult questions and forces us to…

  • Ephesians as Promised Land

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    Henri Rossier, a nineteenth century Plymouth Brethren writer, begins his Meditations on the Book of Joshua with an arresting comparison: The Book of Joshua gives us, in type, the subject of the Epistle to the Ephesians. The journey across the desert had come to an end, and the children of Israel had now to cross…

  • Michael Ward Has Found the Secret of Narnia

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    by

    Fred Sanders
    in

    George MacDonald once wrote, “It is not the things we see the most clearly that influence us the most powerfully; undefined, yet vivid visions of something beyond, something which eye has not seen nor ear heard, have far more influence than any logical sequences whereby the same things may be demonstrated to the intellect. It…

  • To Judge the Quick and the Dead

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    Melissa Schubert
    in

    I usually keep quiet my liking for musical theater. But this summer I discovered that what I took to be my uniquely under-refined taste is actually common in my eccentric community. On a sailboat moored along the Turkish Coast of the Aegean Sea, I sang along to the Wicked soundtrack with nearly twenty students who…

  • Planet Narnia Author Michael Ward to Speak at Biola

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    by

    Paul Spears
    in ,

    The Torrey Honors Institute of Biola University is honored to have Cambridge’s own Dr. Michael Ward speaking for us this Monday evening on his new piece of C.S. Lewis scholarship. Through medieval cosmology, Planet Narnia claims to provide the imaginative key to understanding the Chronicles of Narnia. This work is already launching Dr. Ward to…

  • Making Meaning in a Meaningless World: Five Ways that Won’t Work

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    Trapped in a world that has no meaning? Wondering what to do with your time if there’s no point to it all? Eking out a futile existence on the shreds and shards of disappointment and despair? Well, there’s no need to re-invent the wheel (why add inefficiency to futility?) Here are the five most popular…

  • Was Job wrong?

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    Greg Peters
    in

    So began a session yesterday on the book of Job in the Torrey Honors Institute. The question, posed by myself and my colleague Matt Jenson, was intended to start a discussion on Job’s interactions with his friends, especially Elihu. It may seem like an odd, off the mark question given that Job was “blameless and…