what is scriptorium?
The medieval scriptoria were Bible-copying chambers and repositories of Christian knowledge; they were often fundamental to monasteries wherein they supported the training of ministers and missionaries. Under God, their libraries were a key means of guarding the knowledge of God in Europe over many centuries.
We're really glad you've made it to this particular place of writing. While the medium has changed, we pray this 'scriptorium' serves you, here and now, in the same way the scriptoria did for God's people there and then.
now, dimly; then: face-to-face
We aim to remember that knowledge without love is arrogance (1 Corinthians 8:1-3), and that it is love, not arrogance, that maintains the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12-31). The apostle Paul models this very knowledge in his own ministry (1 Corinthians 9), embodying love as his ethic for action even as he sought the glory of God in everything (1 Corinthians 10:23-33).
We pray to imitate his example, which is Christ's first anyway (1 Corinthians 11:1). Within this frame of love-not-arrogance and God's-glory-not-our-own, we recognise that knowledge and teaching take on a particular hue: humility and hope.
This is reflected in our theme, which comes from 1 Corinthians 13:12. In this age we only know and see in part: our hope is for the day when we know fully. Knowledge and teaching must be fundamentally telic (trajecting towards a future goal). If we hold this truly, then we are freed from arrogance so as to love, and we are freed from pursuing our own glory so as to seek God's instead.
why these topics?
Continuing in our 1 Corinthians 8-14 theme, we recognise that we're part of Christ's body, not all of it! Our topics simply reflect the people God has made us to be, without trying to delve into areas of which we know nothing, nor presume to know anything more than something in those areas we do. From the outside, the choices may seem eclectic, but from within the circle of our own particular vocation (embodiedness, situatedness) before God, it makes all the sense in the world.
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.