"And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved."
-Acts 4:12

by Louis A. Markos

Personal Testimony

I was born on January 22, 1964, exactly two months after the death of C. S. Lewis and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I grew up in Mountainside, NJ in the Greek Orthodox faith of my 100% Greek family (all four of my grandparents were born in Greece and immigrated to America around 1930). Through the ministry of my 6th grade husband-and-wife Sunday School teachers, I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior at the age of 13. Although I learned and grew spiritually in the Orthodox Church, my real spiritual growth occurred during my undergraduate years at Colgate when I was a member of Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship. Since that time, I have been a strong supporter of the para-Church movement and have retained both a non-denominational focus and a firm commitment to small-group prayer and Bible Study.

Though I maintain to this day a love for the traditions and mysteries of the Orthodox faith, the Lord eventually led me into the realm of Evangelical Protestantism, with its firm focus on the Bible and its strong commitment to share the Gospel. Perhaps the best way to describe my theology is to say that I am an Evangelical but not a Calvinist: which is to say, I believe in salvation by grace through faith, the authority of scripture, and the sovereignty of God while yet affirming fully the reality, integrity, and temporal and eternal consequences of human choice.

In addition, though I believe that man is fallen and that he cannot save himself apart from Christ, I do not believe in total depravity: that is to say, I believe that man (though fallen) still retains the image of God and is capable of limited moral behavior and can act in such a way as to "attract" the notice of God (as does Cornelius in Acts). Though I am not a pentecostal, I affirm the existence of all the spiritual gifts; though I am not a Catholic, I have fed lavishly on the rich tradition of Catholic theology and practice and in many ways model much of my thought on Origen, Dante, and Erasmus. For me, the Christian faith is not a dry academic thing, nor a set of legalistic codes, nor a stick to beat others with, but a love affair, a living, personal relationship that imbues everything I write (whether it be sacred or secular) and that enables me to find seeds of God's Beauty and Truth in all ages and all peoples.

Personal Vision Statement

Although a devoted professor who works closely with his students, I am dedicated to the concept of the professor as public educator. I firmly believe that knowledge must not be walled up in the academy, but must be freely and enthusiastically disseminated to all those "who have ears to hear." As a specifically Christian professor, I also adhere to a second goal: to fuse into a single stream the humanist strivings of Athens and the Christian truths of Jerusalem. Believing that "all truth is God's truth," I seek to measure all human knowledge against the touchstone of orthodox Christian doctrine (the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement, and the Resurrection).

Believing further that Christianity is not the only truth but the only complete truth, I seek to discover in the cultures, mythologies, religions and philosophies of the ancient (and modern) world intimations and foreshadowings of the greater truths revealed in Christ and the Bible. In pursuing this goal, my three principle mentors have been Plato, Dante, and C. S. Lewis, my central vision has been that of the Magi (whose pagan wisdom proved a partial guide to encountering the Christ child), and my core biblical passage Paul's address to the Areopagus at Athens (Acts 17).

Why I Teach

The reasons that I teach are many-fold: 1) to introduce students to the great issues and ideas of our tradition and to encourage them to wrestle with these ideas in a serious, adult fashion; 2) to teach students, through the medium of great literature, that the choices we make in life have consequences and to foster in them the desire to seek answers to the great questions (Who am I? Why am I here? What is the basis of my self worth? etc.); 3) to instill in students a love for literature and for meaningful academic exchange; 4) to counsel and edify students who are going through transitional periods in their lives and to offer them my wisdom, experience, insight, and compassion as a friendly guide; 5) to help students to develop their creative and analytical powers and their ability (and desire) to express themselves in written form; 6) to teach students to think within the strictures of my discipline (literature).

But this is only a partial answer, for I must answer why I desire to teach at a Christian university. My call is to teach Christian students that they need not be afraid of knowledge, but that indeed all truth is God's truth. I teach them that it is the duty of every enlightened individual to seek to know and to participate in the flow of human ideas through a study of and a grappling with the major expressions of the human imagination, and that this duty is not inconsistent with scripture but is rather a sublime affirmation that man IS a rational creature created in the image of God whose deepest yearnings are for the Way, the Truth, and the Life. True, only Christ and the Bible provide us with the full and complete revelation of this truth, but non-Christian literature can point us toward that truth and raise those essential human questions that Christ came to answer. It is my vision that HBU students would not avoid humanistic studies, but learn to discern in them those transcendent issues and desires whose final source is the triune God. It is on the basis of my success in this endeavor that I wish finally to be judged as a teacher.

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