“There are few things that I love more than teaching. Having the opportunity to work with thoughtful, creative, and interesting students is truly one of the great joys of life. In Templeton, I get to journey with students through the Bible as we explore some of the most fundamental questions of the human experience: Who is God? How do we live well in the world that God has created? What is sin? What is salvation? What makes Templeton so special, however, is that we also get to explore these questions in conversation with other great thinkers like Aristotle and Plato, Dante and Augustine, Teresa of Avila, Flannery O’Connor, Anna Julia Cooper, and many others. We don’t read these authors and discuss their books for the sake of a knowledge that “puffs up, ” but rather to help our students become wise, compassionate, flourishing people whose loves “build up” others (1 Corinthians 8:1).

I am especially interested in the role of the imagination in intellectual and moral formation, and how the imagination can help us know God. All of my classes bring together theology, literature, and the arts to draw all of us—professors and students alike— into the holy work of coming to know and to love the true, good, and beautiful.

Be warned, though: in my classes, there are a lot of dad jokes involved.”