Credo Fellow Highlight: Fred Sanders

Credo is Latin for “I believe.” From the creeds of the Church Fathers to the confessions of the Reformation, Christians have been faithful to confess the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Credo retrieves this classical and reformational heritage in order to create and cultivate theological renewal today. By bridging the gap between church and academy, Credo helps churchgoers, pastors, and students alike learn theology and retrieve orthodoxy for the sake of Christian fidelity today.

However, a team effort is required if the church and academy alike are to remain faithful to this orthodox faith, a team that spans denominations and brings together some of today’s most outstanding theologians, pastors, and writers. I am pleased to welcome the Credo Fellows, each of which embodies the spirit of Credo in their own teaching and writing ministries. Each week, we are highlighting one of the new fellows, allowing you to hear more about their passions, from the halls of patristic and medieval history to the corridors of dogmatics and classical literature.

Matthew Barrett, executive editor

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Fred Sanders (Ph.D., Graduate Theological Union) is a systematic theologian who studies and teaches across the entire range of classic Christian doctrine, but with a special focus on the doctrine of the Trinity. He has taught in the Torrey Honors Institute since 1999 and is an amateur historian of Biola’s institutional history. He and his wife Susan live in La Mirada with their two children, Freddy and Phoebe. They are members of Grace Evangelical Free Church.

Books

The Triune God. A volume in the New Studies in Dogmatics series edited by Michael Allen and Scott Swain (Zondervan, 2016) 

The Triune God aims to secure our knowledge of the triune God by rightly ordering the theological language with which we praise him. It reaches its conclusions about how the doctrine should be handled on the basis of the way the Trinity was revealed. As such, it is a study that offers dogmatic principles for Trinitarian exegesis. Half of the volume establishes the biblical exposition and draws the doctrinal implications from it, showing that Trinitarianism is a gift of revelation before it is an achievement of the church. Sanders interacts with major voices from the history of doctrine, and his arguments are indebted to and informed by the great tradition of Trinitarianism. But the fitting way to retrieve the insights of the church fathers is not to pay more attention to them than to Scripture. The most patristic way to proceed toward a well-ordered doctrine of the Trinity is, after all, to study Scripture.

How God Used R.A. Torrey: A Short Biography as Told Through His Sermons (Moody Press, 2015)

Sermons to change you, a life to inspire you.

Scholar, expositor, storyteller, and evangelist, R. A. Torrey was a master-of-all-trades minister. Crowds worldwide called his preaching “that famous Torrey thing.”

And that famous Torrey thing won souls.

Inside are the most famous, influential, and characteristic of his sermons. Though nearly a century old, they challenge us anew from Scripture and are greatly instructive to any who preach.

Drawn from various periods of Torrey’s ministry, and prefaced with bibliographic commentary, these sermons paint a portrait of a man gripped by God. But even more they grip the reader. They take us into the great halls where God’s Word bellowed forth from Torrey and left his audiences hushed. It’s no wonder that Torrey caught the attention of the great evangelist D. L. Moody.

Be ready to be provoked. Like an archer who strikes with both accuracy and force, Torrey preached with clarity while cutting deep to the heart. Behind the bow you’ll see a man fully sold on the kingdom of God, and you’ll be inspired to follow suit.

The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything (Crossway, 2017).

The doctrine of the Trinity is taught and believed by all evangelicals, but rarely is it fully understood or celebrated. In The Deep Things of God, systematic theologian Fred Sanders shows why we ought to embrace the doctrine of the Trinity wholeheartedly as a central concern of evangelical theology. Sanders demonstrates, engagingly and accessibly, that the doctrine of the Trinity is grounded in the gospel itself. In this book, readers will understand that a robust doctrine of the Trinity has massive implications for their lives, restoring depth to prayer, worship, Bible study, missions, tradition, and understanding of Christianity’s fundamental doctrines. This new edition includes a study guide with discussion questions, action points, recommended reading, and more.

Podcasts

What Is Eternal Generation?

Videos