Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is playing on Broadway again. It has been revived a number of times since it was first produced in 1949, and by all accounts, this particular revival has been a success. It’s even expected to turn a neat little profit.

Over at the graying lady, however, Lee Siegel wonders “why the play was revived at all.” Willy believes, Siegel writes, that he can “attain dignity through his work,” but no one believes this anymore:

In our time of banker hustlers, real-estate hustlers and Internet hustlers, of suckers and “muppets,” it is unlikely that anyone associates happiness and dignity with working hard for a comfortable existence purchased with a modest income. Even what’s left of the middle class disdains a middle-class life. Everyone, rich, poor and in between, wants infinite pleasure and fabulous riches.

Siegel needs to read the play again. It’s not quite right that Willy believes he can attain dignity through hard work. Rather he believes he can attain it through success by force of personality alone. He has very little interest in hard work, as his refrain “He’s liked, but not well-liked,” his memories of Ben striking it rich in the jungle, and the foils of the hard-working (and successful) Charles and Bernard all show.

I’m no fan of Arthur Miller, but Death of a Salesman, despite its other excesses, calls into question the very yearning for “infinite pleasure and fabulous riches” that Siegel (also wrongly) sees everywhere.

The book of Revelation will the last class I teach in Torrey Friday. This is good since the first I taught over two thousand classes ago was Genesis.

It took me seventeen years to get through the Bible. Now I am moving to Houston to start again. Reading a book slowly again and again for years produces many opinions in a man. I moved from skeptical about Obadiah to loving Obadiah. Somethings did not change: I still am tempted to skim big chunks of Numbers. When even Fred Sanders cannot help you “get” a book, you are probably invincibly exegetically ignorant, but I refuse to give up.

Some opinions gained are sectarian and should be argued such as my particular view of the Eucharist, but there were a few simple truths that stood out to me that I don’t think are that controversial. I surely knew them seventeen years ago, but they were impressed on me so many times in reading and tutoring the Bible that they are stamped on my soul.

God is love. There are times in the Old Testament when a reader might doubt it, but always, at the bottom, God is wooing humankind. In the end, He does not just relate to the pain of our brokenness, He is broken. He does not stand afar off and smite, as He could, but is smitten enough with His beloved children to be wounded for us.

The God of the Bible is Triune and so can love within the three Persons fully, but that love overflows and fills creation.

God is just. If His love is sometimes hard for readers to see, the justice of God may be what obscures this vision. God hates injustice. He hates the poor to be oppressed by the powerful and for the many to covet and steal the wealth of the few. He hates to see the wicked prosper and the good to be left empty. Each immortal soul matters to Him and He will perform radical surgery to reach out to each one and remove the cancer we keep giving ourself by our selfish choices.

Justice is the scalpel he uses, but love is the motive. A man can make himself so sick, cling to the rot and the ruin so tightly, that no pain is sufficient to remove it. Those men make themselves hateful to God, but only because they refuse His justice and loath His love to cling to their tiny desires instead of embracing God.

God is the subject of the books of the Bible.

Moses is there, but as the servant of God and giver of His law. David is there, but only as a man after God’s heart. Esther is there, because she risked all to save His people. Everything and everyone in the Bible disappoints . . . including the vision of God each character enshrines, but God stands behind each failed attempt to capture Him, carve Him, put Him in a location, and limit Him to a time.

God alone is at the end of all the dreams of the pilgrim. God alone is at the end of history. God alone can love through ruin and rubble. God is so beautiful that being near Him can make a shepherd poetic, a king wise, and a murderer a saint.

God loves the Jewish people. God is so much the beginning, center, and end of the story that He would need no other character to make the Bible complete, but God chose to reach out to humanity. He focussed on one group in particular, His Chosen People, the Jewish nation. He loved them and blessed all the nations through them. He took on their flesh and suffered the tyranny they suffered. He became man as a Jew and so exalted that nation.

He did this not to exclude the rest of us, but to provide a path, a personal path, a human path to us. He did not love “us” in the abstract or en masse. He came to Abraham, to Moses, to David, to Isaiah, and finally to Mary so we could all become His children. He loved the Jews in particular, because His love for me, for you, is never general but particular.

His is no Godly impersonal welfare system for humankind, but personal Divine Charity for a person.

God knows. The God of the Bible can face hard truths. He hides from nothing and we can tell Him everything, because He knows it. No impiety is hidden from Him and no blasphemy makes Him insecure. He demands worship only because it is appropriate for us and good for us, not because it adds anything to His glory. He knows the worst of us, and the best that is possible, and allows humanity to live in His sight.

God began history, He uses patterns in time to reveal Himself, and someday He will end the story. History does repeat, but it is going somewhere. Every hard lesson is learned again, more intensely, but school will be out someday. Virgins conceive. A remnant returns. This is that spoken of by the proper. Again. And again. But not forever.

I love the Bible, but not as much as I could. After seventeen years, and thousands of hours of discussion, I have just started. Just the notion of God’s love overwhelms me, staggers me, and compels me to read again: Moses, Paul, John.

Now to begin reading and following the Logos  again in Houston. Anybody want to join me?

Listening in on conversations is not good, but sometimes it cannot be avoided.

Ahead of me on a plane, one man bellowed the problem with America. “Too many irrational people.” he mooed.

Irrationality, like the plague, is universally to be avoided, so I was interested to see how to avoid the problem.

“People just do what their religion says,” he spat.

That was it. I listened to him for what felt like hours, because it was hours and he never got much beyond that one point. He wanted ethics based on reason, science, and evidence, not on religion. I hear this sort of thing often, but I don’t understand it.

Why isn’t religion a good basis for ethics?

“Reason” is very good, but a way of thinking, not a thought. One can build a house with a hammer, but not, generally, of hammers. Reason is a tool to apply to good thoughts, but there is no reason religion cannot provide some of those thoughts.

Science is very good at tellings us what “is,” but “is” famously doesn’t equal “ought.” Com-box Atheists are always worried about magical thinking, but it is hard to see anything more magical than pulling an ought from any amount of is. Science can tell us the way the world is, but one simply Kant, sorry for the pun, get science to say the way things “ought’ to be.

The minute it does philosophical or ethical assumptions have been smuggled into the discussion.

Ethical evidence is good, but religion seems perfectly capable of producing it.

If not careful Americans will end up with ethics drawn from entertainment, at least as dubious as any source one can imagine. Christianity, by contrast, claims to be a word from the Almighty and All Knowing, who might be thought to understand how His creation ought to be. Older religions like Christianity have spent centuries with very bright people working out the implications of this revelation.

Surely adopting such a package would be better for most of us, than trying to be a local Aquinas and creating a world view for ourselves.

The problem was plain. The man on the plane did not think religion contained knowledge, but this assertion is hard to justify. Is it true God exist? If so, and we assert it with reason, then we know it and are feee to act on it. Is the Bible the Word of God? If so, then when we know this, we should act on what it says. This all may be wrong, but it seems, at least on the surface, more promising than the list I heard on the plane.

Next time you hear: “only very religious people oppose x” you might think: only the people who are part of a worked out worldview they don’t abandon to suit the whims of the times. Religion may not contain knowledge, or a given religion may contain none, but in forming our ethics, Christian religion has a better claim than most fields at being helpful.

In Fall 2012 I start work at Houston Baptist University. My job description? Change the world.

Houston is the right place at the right time to do this work. Read John Mark Reynolds’ take on it. You may want to come to Houston too, and if you think that, take it seriously. It is a city that not only has great apologists, but also people who love literature and the arts. My fellow Hieropraxis contributor Andrew Lazo has already laid claim to the endeavor of starting the CS Lewis Society of Houston…he will not have any trouble getting that membership list filled!

In part 1 and part 2 of this piece, I talked about the first six of the Ten Pillars, the vision statement that guides Houston Baptist University. Here are the final four piece of the vision.

7. Bring Athens and Jerusalem together.

“A university is a cultural center and a place for invitation and engagement. Athens and Jerusalem can meet on a campus in the city of Houston.” Yes indeed!

Houston Baptist University is a place where the intellectual and cultural life, nourished and cultivated on campus, intersects with the life of the community. The campus is a space for engagement – and that is perfect for apologetics. St Paul preached on Mars Hill and quoted from the Greek literature of the day to help present the Gospel to the Athenians. Athens met Jerusalem, and the world was changed.

HBU has three museums: the Durham Bible Museum, the Museum of American Architecture and Domestic Arts, and the Museum of Southern History. The Morris Cultural Arts Center includes a recital hall and a theatre. HBU has made the space for engagement to happen.

8. Expand our commitment to the creative arts: visual, musical, and literary.

This is part of the vision of HBU:

“It has been said that the writer of songs influences a culture more than the politician exercising power. What is surely true is that our God is a creative God who brought a beautiful world into existence and filled it with people capable of appreciating beauty. Similarly, just as we believe human beings are made in God’s image, we believe He provided the ability to create artistically as a reflection of his creative glory. The Christian university, committed to the worship of the Creator God, and thus to both aesthetic appreciation and creation, must be involved in the arts.”

I am an academic and a Christian apologist… and by the grace and gift of God, also a poet. Could there be a better place for me than HBU? I think not.

9. Cultivate a strong global focus.

The Gospel is for all people, everywhere. One of the challenges of cultural apologetics is to find ways to share the good news of God in Christ, and remove obstacles to faith, in ways that make sense for people in their particular cultural contexts.

Study abroad and language learning are important parts of learning how to be a gracious, informed, productive citizen in the 21^st century. I am excited to be part of an educational program that recognizes the necessity of both local community (in residential learning and community involvement) and global outreach.

10. Move to the next level as an institution.

And finally, I am excited about HBU because the university recognizes the importance of its role in our culture — and is stepping forward boldly to fill the need.

HBU has a brilliant vision that means educating with a ‘mere Christian’ vision to change the world for the cause of Christ:

“Christians of all stripes – evangelicals, other Protestants, and Catholics – must re-engage their historic commitments to the foundational importance of a university education that is marked by the distinctive convictions and values of historic Christianity. The church must again consider the university as part of its mission because the university is so closely tied to the future of the society.”

HBU is growing as an undergraduate university — moving steadily forward in increasing the size of incoming classes. It is also growing, very intentionally, as a graduate university, with new MA degrees such as the MA in Philosophy. More degrees are in development, including an MA in Apologetics.

The vision is clear:

“The foundation of all the efforts detailed here will be to produce graduates who have been challenged to think carefully and critically, to write and speak clearly and effectively, to demonstrate integrity in their daily lives, and to see their faith as being important both to their behavior and to their way of thinking.”

Great things are ahead… and I am astonished at the goodness of God that I get a chance to participate in them.

We are going to change the world.

And that is why I am going to Houston Baptist University.

We are not going back to Eden, but are here to build a City. That is the truth expounded in the Christian Bible and that is the truth that moved Augustine to write.

If you don’t want to live in a City, you should go to Hell, because it is a City that is coming: the new Jerusalem. There is a place for the country, I am from West Virginia after all, but it is the City where human things reach their fullness.

It is obvious this is good and bad. The day is coming when the City will be all good, but that will only be when Jesus rules on Earth. It will never come from Christian in this lifetime or from non-Christians.

No present City, not even Houston, is perfectible and we should fear any group as mad and tyrannical that pretends it can be. Instead, we try to improve what we can while recognizing that in this present city we are pilgrims. We occupy until He comes, but we are not going to achieve final victory until He comes.

No Christian should ever be too comfortable with the Establishment, especially when we are the Establishment. The Establishment is always corrupt. It is not left, however, to the Christian to avoid the Establishment for we must love even our enemies. There would be an ease to avoiding the temptations of power by shunning the powerful, but what if they convert? What if we prevail Harvard’s faculty? What if HBU or some Christian college become powerful by doing good?

Power sometimes flows, often comes, to those who loath it: Washington or Cincinnatus. Sometimes it does not. But when a good man comes to power, he can use it well. Sometimes a bad man in power will also, by Providence use it well. Both may fail.

The result of any act is subtle in history. A good act may do harm in the short term and a bad act be helpful and provide “relief.” We do not see history as God sees it from start to finish and so we must avoid superficial judgments. This rebukes the television evangelist who sees “smiting” after every sin and the secularist who thinks fifty years of secularization in Europe shows secularism can work.

Both are hasty in judgment.

Christian oppose vice, because it is wrong. In the end, virtue will exalt a nation, but it may also bring problems as well in the short term. Jesus was virtuous and died. Socrates was virtuous and died. Virtue triumphs, but not today.

Christians do not think the right always wins, but that the right will eventually win. If we don’t know the right from outcomes, what does show it?

First, there is the overall outcome or judgment of history. Murder looks likely to bad, because generally, over time, humans have found it to be so.

Second, there is the knowledge that comes from God. God may reveal to humankind the flow of history and of ethics, especially in areas where our desires might create easy errors in our judgment.

Third, experience combined with reason suggests long term outcomes, but it cannot fix goals. Of course, what it cannot do is pick for us which outcome is best. Recently I was reading a Victorian secularist, who would be horrified as modern secularism. The “ends” he desired, the manly virtues (his language) are the opposite of many our present secularists goals.

Of any individual, it is impossible for us to tell who is “good” or “evil.” Many who do evil things may be better on the whole than many who do not appear to do evil. Many actions that are bad become mixed with actions that are good and so do as much good as harm. We can judge an individual action, but not motivations.

We are none of us pure and none of us without the common grace of God.

Lord Jesus Christ may I live in your City some day.

In Fall 2012, I start work as a full professor at Houston Baptist University… No one who has been following my work will be surprised to learn that I am coming on board in order to help develop a MA in Apologetics, a sister MA to the already-created MA in Philosophy (which has an Apologetics Certificate included — and is accepting applicants right now for the Fall 2012 semester!)

My colleagues include John Mark Reynolds, Nancy Pearcey, Mary Jo Sharp, Michael Licona, Lou Markos… and many more outstanding scholars. It is quite the team!

Why Houston Baptist University? Many reasons, but they all rest on the solid foundation of HBU’s vision and commitment to become a beacon of excellence in Christian education.

The Ten Pillars are the ten principles that guide HBU’s work. In Part 1 I discussed the first three pillars. Now let me pick up with Pillar 4:

4. Establish a residential society of learning.

A strong residential focus for education is not just good pedagogy, it’s good theology.

Part of the challenge of Christian education is to push back against the naturalistic, secular idea that our bodies don’t matter – that we can educate minds without forming the whole person, body and soul. We are made in the image of God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; we are made for community and relationship. Ours is an incarnational faith, because the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.

The residential society is most critical for undergraduates, for whom residential life in a Christian community could, literally, be where they set their feet on the path of life. I have been teaching a diverse body of undergraduates at a commuter school for the past seven year. Our young people crave connection and meaning. A residential society of learning will help them in their studies, their relationships, and their walk with Christ.

A residential society of learning is not just for undergraduates, but for graduate students and faculty as well! It is how the faculty relate with each other and with students. It is how graduate students relate to each other and to faculty. It is a commitment to a particular place as our “home ground” for learning, and to the process of mentoring and discipleship.

5. Increase our cultural impact through our faculty.

Intellectuals from the secular universities have had a powerful shaping influence on our culture – and not for the good. To change this trend, to recover reason and reshape the imagination of the West for Christ, we need to do more than pastoral triage when our young people have their faith shaken in college, or intellectual rear-guard action to defend against wrong ideas that have taken root in scholarship. We must go out into the intellectual, academic world as Christians doing great work in whatever field we are in.

Houston Baptist University has made a commitment to give its faculty the time and encouragement to do research, write, publish, and speak in their fields. I am tremendously excited by this important commitment to engaging with culture in order to transform it. In addition to my teaching, mentoring, and administrative work, I will be actively writing and speaking, especially in my field of specialty, imaginative and literary apologetics, and proudly listing my Houston Baptist University affiliation!

You will see me in November when I speak on Literature and Apologetics at the 2012 Evangelical Philosophical Society Apologetics Conference. And I will be speaking at a conference sponsored by the C.S. Lewis Society of Madison, Wisconsin and the Bradshaw-Knight Foundation:  The Ten Books That Most Influenced C.S. Lewis.  But wait! Not just me, but also Louis Markos, also of HBU! Here are our topics:

• The Aeneid by Virgil presented by Dr. Louis Markos from Houston Baptist University.
• Descent Into Hell by Charles Williams presented by Dr. Holly Ordway, Houston Baptist University.

6. Renew our campus, renew our community.

One of the things that I immediately loved about Houston Baptist University when I set foot on campus for the first time is the feel of “place.” The campus is in the city, as part of the community, yet it also has its own distinct identity as a physical location, with enclosing walls, a beautiful (and beautifully symbolic) gate of entry, lovely greenspace with magnolia trees, and buildings that reflect a commitment to architectural grace and beauty. This is a university that knows that it belongs exactly where it is, and that has its roots deep in Texas soil and the Houston community so that it can produce students and scholars of distinction for the entire nation. New buildings are going up, and new connections are being made with the local high schools and the local community. I am excited to see what great things will happen in the days to come…

Times being what they always are: times are hard.

Christians are not discouraged for the simple reason that we have lived in hard times for two thousand years. We look in our own hearts and see a culture war: we are always choosing moderation over excess and God’s will over our own. Or not.

Romans killed us and then nearly killed us by converting. Barbarians killed us and then introduced their heresies. The American Christian majority has been the shame and envy of Christendom at the same time.

Our generation of Christians is awash in new tools, like the age that faced God’s gift of the printing press. The Net has given us access to . . . all the information . . .and that has changed us. It hasn’t changed the truth, it hasn’t changed what is beautiful, and it hasn’t changed what is good, but it has washed over the walls built to protect us from the false, the ugly, and evil.

We must learn new virtues to keep from letting this information destroy us.

American Christians could choose a short-term focus, but then we would fail our children and grandchildren. Oxford and Cambridge could lose every Christian tomorrow and still the Gospel would be proclaimed in stone and glass so beautiful Richard Dawkins would never destroy them.

We are always losing, as a group, to somebody, but it is somebody new in each generation. Just as Christians looked to lose the future to communism in my generation so sexual ethics is being challenged in this one.

Christians need not be afraid, because we have seen it all before, heard all the arguments, but we must not be complacent. Merely asserting our position will not work, we need open dialog, trust in the truth, and love.

So what do should we do?

I don’t know, of course, but there are few old and tried methods that the Church can use in his hard time.

We must have confidence and build lasting institutions as if we are going to win. The Church needs an intellectual harbor where it can pool her intellectual resources. There Christians of all persuasions can join to fight the shadows of this age with the light of Christ. We have built tiny Christian colleges with one or two good people: we need a Christian university, a real one, with all the good people we can find.

If you will defend traditional values, we need you.

Simultaneously, we should listen to our critics and learn from them. Our position of confidence must not make us arrogant. There is no soul created in God’s image from whom we cannot learn. While drawing together as a community, we must invite in our critics and go out to meet them not to “win,” but to learn.

We will win by learning.

Finally, this community must create beauty and original works of scholarship. We cannot repeat old arguments, however good, but find new ones. We need new art, new theater, new video . . . and new scientific research and paradigms

Can it be done? It can be done. Will anyone do it? God help us, we will try. Will anybody join us?

My mother is one of the wisest women I know. Many people will say that today, usually because we are so formed by a good mother that failure to recognize her wisdom would be self-loathing. To have given her full time and intellect, formidable gifts, to raising my brother and me gave us a heritage, but to have given us her wisdom was greater style.

Mom knew what to do and when to do it: the very definition of practical wisdom. She was also full of wonder, the very definition of a higher wisdom. Her life revolved around a reverential awe of the Lord, the very model of spiritual wisdom.

She taught me many things, but this Mother’s Day I lay down on this couch, blog, and call her blessed for five.

First, Mom taught me to wonder. She would argue with me for an entire day on the Civil War, courtship practices, or the friendship. This was not due to disagreement, once she thought my support for the Union in the Civil War was facile, and spent the day pressing my views. She did it for the joy of thinking.

Dad would be driven to distraction by our endless quest to get “to the bottom” of everything, but Mom taught me that often, if you went at one more hour, you did achieve more clarity.

Second, Mom taught me to examine everything, but not to be afraid not to change my mind. That sounds odd to us, but it is tricky balance. Often those with traditional views are rigid and fearful but those claiming open-mindedness are just using it is a veil to react to convention by adopting a new revolutionary convention.

Mom would have none of it. I saw her change her mind on important issues of theology, personal conduct, and politics, but only when she thought best reason, experience, and Revelation demanded it. She was willing to agree with convention, even at the cost of being viewed as “boring,” when reason demanded it as well.

Mom is traditional without being reactionary, full of change and hope without taint of revolutionary tyranny.

This, I have discovered is a very rare trait.

Third, Mom taught me that growing up is good. She was nineteen, one year married, when I was born. In one way, we grew up together and Mom made it look good. She never was afraid to tell me of mistakes she made, I remember a few, and so I have never held them against her.

Fourth, Mom was never a tyrant. At times, I have disappointed her by adopting ideas and behaviors that were stupid and bad. Mom would disagree, discuss endlessly, but never rejected me. She was neither soft nor hard . . . she was just right. Is there anything more comforting than a Mom who will love you, but not your foibles?

She loved me as Jesus saw me, but with no excuse for my (many) sins.

Finally, Mom is the most romantic person I know, but she tempered her romance. She created beauty everywhere. I remember her taking a crow bar and redoing a basement corner into a cozy family room . . . all without spending any money. She always was dressed perfectly, but with no budget for clothes.

But all her romantic desires enriched her, they never governed her. She did hard work, deferred dreams, and too bad news in stride. Some romantics will harm others in the name of Beauty, Mom never did.

If I become half the human being my Mom is, then I will be happy. She always wanted us to call her “Mother,” but Daniel and I thought it sounded stiff, like a card that says “what is a Mother?” is a grocery store. Now I am sorry we never picked up the habit, because “Mom” is too short, she went the whole way all her life and has become fully that blessed being we call “mother.”

What is a mother?

You, Mom. You.

I am going to Texas! Yes, I am leaving the beaches and breezes of San Diego, to go to Houston Baptist University, where I have accepted the position of professor starting Fall 2012.

I am a New Englander through and through. Texas was mentally categorized under “people are nice there, and it’s hot and humid. Also, there are cowboy hats.”  It was not categorized under “I might work there someday.” Why did I decide to take this step, leaving behind the familiar and secure?

Because we are going to change the world.

The mission of Houston Baptist University is to provide a learning experience that instills in students a passion for academic, spiritual, and professional excellence as a result of our central confession, “Jesus Christ is Lord.” (Mission & Values)

Houston Baptist’s President Robert Sloan articulates the scope of HBU’s ambition for the Kingdom:

“To say “Jesus Christ is Lord” is not merely to affirm a religious confession, nor to say something only about an interior faith or personal, individualistic values. Rather, to say “Jesus Christ is Lord” is to make a statement that touches not only the private spiritual lives of believers, but encompasses all of the ranges of the created order, including the scope and breadth, as well as the complexities, of human social, political, emotional, and physical experience. He is Lord, not only of the church, but over all things visible and invisible (Colossians 1:16), and therefore there is no area of reality which is, or even can be, outside the sphere of His Lordship. For a university to express Christ’s Lordship as a function of its academic mission is to embrace in principle, through research, teaching, and the learning community, all the questions, issues, and intricacies which curiosity and imagination can engender, from undergraduate through graduate experience.”

John Mark Reynolds, the incoming provost, says that the future’s so bright, he needs shades

You’ll hear more from me, soon, about what I’ll be up to at HBU. But in the meantime, let me start to share with you the vision of HBU, as set out in their Ten Pillars, and how my work lines up with that vision.

You can read the full description of each of the Ten Pillars here.

1. Build on the classics.

To engage with the classics is to step into a deep, rich stream of conversation that has nourished great thinkers, writers, and citizens for hundreds of centuries. I am passionately in favor of teaching from the canon, and have done so to the best of my ability for the past six years as a professor of composition and literature. Building on the classics doesn’t mean ignoring contemporary literature or concerns: quite the opposite. By wresting with books and ideas that have made an impact on culture, and by engaging imaginatively with the fictional and poetic worlds of writers like Homer, Shakespeare, or Austen, students develop the depth of vision and experience to make better sense of their world.

Right now in my Shakespeare class, I have thirty undergraduates, from a wide range of majors and cultural and academic backgrounds. I see the recognition in their eyes as we discuss the destructiveness of Leontes’ irrational jealousy in A Winter’s Tale. I rejoice at the way they wrestle with the power of rhetoric for good and for evil in Julius Caesar. And I delight in the insights they have about the role of the arts in culture, the power of creativity, and the importance of story…making connections to The Hunger Games, Doctor Who, Star Wars…

HBU has committed to a liberal arts core curriculum of the classics for undergraduate education. Every student, not just a lucky few, will get to join the conversation. And that vision of building on the classics is not limited to undergraduate education, but is part of HBU’s vision of graduate education too.

2. Recruit for national influence.

HBU is expanding its recruitment beyond Houston, beyond Texas, and growing in size as well. This makes HBU an exciting place to be right now: a small place, building up for the future. We will be a beacon for Christian education in the world.

3. Embrace the challenge of Christian graduate education.

We desperately need academically rigorous Christian graduate programs in a variety of fields. Why should secular schools be the only option for people who are called to the intellectual life?

My PhD (in English Literature) is from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and my first MA is from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (also in English); I wasn’t a Christian at the time that I chose my graduate schools, but if I had been, where would I have gone to get the same quality of education in English literature?

Can you imagine a world in which a committed Christian institution offers that kind of excellence? I can.

My second MA (in Apologetics) is from Biola University. Biola is doing amazing things to equip the saints and send them out into the world to work for the Kingdom. But there are more people who need a strong Christian graduate education than Biola can possibly educate, mentor, and equip by themselves. There are regions of the United States (like Texas and the Midwest and New England) that desperately need their own schools to love and support.

Can you imagine a world in which there is an “Ivy League” of Christian graduate schools? I can.