Missional Essays
subjective well-being, self-fulfillment, happiness, Christianity, eudaimonism, hedonism
- Explain your understanding of the goals of a Christ-centered, liberal arts education. How might your own disciplinary training contribute to these goals, and what are some specific ways that you might promote them in your teaching at Wheaton?”
A Christ-centered, liberal arts education should be steeped in the intellectual breadth and depth of the Christian tradition and prepare one to carry out the great commission in a variety of contexts, especially the immediate context of one’s field of study and/or occupation. In this way, a Christ-centered, liberal arts education, when contrasted with a secular liberal arts education, prepares a person to enter into a Christian vocation—broadly construed (Col. 3:17; 1 Cor. 10:31; Matt. 25:14 ff.). To achieve this purpose, a Christ-centered, liberal arts school should at mimimum require its student body to take introductory coursework in theology and philosophy. To this might be added introductory coursework in Biblical theology, Old and New Testament studies, and Church history.
My disciplines, theology and philosophy, are central elements of a Christ-centered, liberal arts education. My theological training in the Wesleyan Tradition gives me a shared heritage with Wheaton College. While I am applying for a position in the philosophy, rather than theology, department, my Biblical and theological training provides a foundation for my work and teaching in philosophy. As I see it, a philosophy course at a Christ-centered institution should cover the work and ideas of historic and contemporary Christian philosophers and place them in dialogue with secular philosophers and voices from other religious traditions. Thus, in both my personal approach to philosophy and the courses I teach, I embrace a worldview comparison model.
This model is most evident in my introductory philosophy material (see my teaching portfolio for a syllabus and reading schedule). The course walks through the major branches of philosophy and challenges students to (1) identify and scrutinize their own worldviews; (2) engage others’ worldviews charitably; (3) judge the nature, scope, and impact of their disagreements accurately; and (4) develop a toolkit for structuring their worldviews critically and comprehensively. In our final unit—Ethics and the Good Life—students explore the implications of their worldview for private life, social life, and vocation. Throughout the course, we engage with the work of Christian philosophers and assess the explanatory power and scope of the Christian worldview. Concretely, this means that in my epistemology unit, we not only cover issues like skepticism and the nature of knowledge, but also the relationship between faith and reason and whether some knowledge of God can be properly basic. In my metaphysics unit, we not only cover the differences between Platonic and Aristotelian realism, but also spend a significant amount of time on natural theology (e.g., the coherence of theism and arguments for and against the existence of God) and applying issues in the philosophy of mind and freewill to questions in theology. Finally, my ethics unit not only covers secular moral theories (virtue ethics, consequentialism, and deontology) but also engages with questions about God’s connection to moral frameworks and what kind of difference the existence of God generally, and of the Christian God in particular, makes to questions about the meaning of life.
While the worldview comparison model I prefer sits on the surface of my introductory philosophy curriculum, it sits below the surface of my introductory ethics and computer ethics curriculum. Teaching PHIL 205 Ethics and Society at Wheaton would allow me to draw Christian worldview issues further into the forefront. Beyond normative theories and their application to specific social issues, I would draw on my past Christian ethics coursework at Hardin-Simmons University and Asbury Theological Seminary to include a discussion of topics like the relationship between God and morality (including a discussion of natural law and divine command theories of morality), the nature and use of the Bible as an authority in ethical decision making, a discussion of just war and pacifism in the Christian tradition, and discussion of H. Richard Niebuhr’s typology in Christ and Culture. With this in mind, the introductory ethics proposal in my portfolio is not fully representative of what I would prepare for Wheaton, which would include normative theories but also draw heavily on Dennis Hollinger’s Choosing the Good: Christian Ethics in a Complex World (Baker Academic, 2002). Given that your needs for an Ethics and Society instructor fall in Spring of 2027, I will have ample time to prepare this course.
Beyond Introduction to Philosophy and Ethics and Society, I understand that you need the Visiting Assistant Professor to handle one section of Logic per semester. I have extensive training in logic (see CV) and, unless there is already a preferred institutional text, I would use Hausman, Boardman, and Kahane’s Logic and Philosophy, 3rd edition, which includes an appendix on syllogistic logic that I find particularly useful as part of the transition from propositional and predicate logic. The book goes beyond what I would expect of an undergraduate logic course, but it will be a helpful resource for students who want to go deeper. As part of the course, we would apply the methods learned in class to philosophical and theological arguments (e.g., reconstructing the logical problem of evil in both propositional and predicate-logic systems).
- Describe your program of research. How can Wheaton support you in these endeavors?
I primarily work in ethics and philosophy of religion.
My research in ethics centers on theories of well-being and their impact. A theory of well-being is a theory of what is good for individuals, in other words, a theory of self-interest. Well-being is worth studying in its own right, but it also plays a pivotal role in normative ethics, theories of the good life, and philosophical discussions of the meaning of life. I am an active member of a diverse, international group of early-career researchers (known as the Well-Being Working Group) who approach the philosophy of well-being from a broad range of perspectives and meet weekly to discuss drafts of our own work or the published work of others.
While I aim to understand a broad range of perspectives on human well-being, my dissertation advances a subjective theory of well-being that will be palatable not only to the philosophical community as a whole, but also to Christian philosophers and theologians. The theory of well-being I advance identifies faring well with self-fulfillment and pleasure. This view contrasts with the family of (broadly) Aristotelian theories—often called eudaimonism or perfectionism—that tie well-being to flourishing as the kind of thing one is. My theory, on the other hand, focuses on the flourishing of one’s individual or particular nature. I further argue that nature-fulfillment theories, even self-fulfillment ones, cannot satisfactorily explain the goodness of pleasure or badness of pain (see my writing sample for a defense of this claim). This leads me to identify well-being with self-fulfillment and pleasure, rather than self-fulfillment alone. Throughout the dissertation, I defend the compatibility of this theory with the Christian Worldview and call to my aid figures such as C. S. Lewis and George MacDonald. A strong case can be made that Lewis held a hedonic theory of well-being (see Stewart Goetz, A Philosophical Walking Tour with C. S. Lewis [Bloomsbury, 2014]) and Lewis and MacDonald also make a compelling case that human persons image God not only in their shared attributes but in their individuality and pecularity. As George MacDonald notes in his sermon on Revelation 2:17: “Not only … has each man his individual relation to God, but each man has his peculiar relation to God. He is to God a peculiar being, made after his own fashion, and that of no one else.” I agree. When applied to a Christian picture of reality, my preferred theory of well-being says that you and I fare best when we both flourish as the peculiar beings we are and enjoy union with God. (See my dissertation summary for further details.)
I also work on the relationship between theories of well-being and theories of the good life. Many philosophers, especially virtue ethicists, lump the two together, but they are at least conceptually distinct. Consider a wealthy antebellum slave owner who enjoys a rich home and social life but cares little about the harsh working conditions of their slaves. Pretheoretically, this looks like a case in which one increases their well-being at a cost to the overall goodness of their life—my work on well-being aims to preserve this intuition. If I want to live a good life—a life that is choice-worthy on the whole—I will likely have to make sacrifices to my own well-being. Nevertheless, when we consider what it means to fare well in a world governed by a good God and in the face of an ultimate separation of those who place their faith and Christ and those who do not, there are important empirical connections between living a good life, exercising faith, and faring well that go beyond conceptual distinctions about what it means to fare well and what it means to lead a good life.
Finally, I have explored the effects of emerging technologies on human well-being in my Computer Ethics course. The course addresses a broad range of ethical issues related to digital technologies, but I am most interested in the future of automation. For example, tech companies such as OpenAI are interested in producing “highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work” (OpenAI Charter). In future research, I aim to assess the desirability of this outcome through the lens of various well-being theories.
My research in philosophy of religion is divided between issues in Christian philosophical theology and issues in theism, broadly construed. I have described my dissertation project above, which integrates my work in ethics with work in philosophical theology. Beyond this, I work on more traditional problems in philosophy of religion. Here, my work tends to focus on the problem of evil and the coherence of theism.
The primary way Wheaton can support my research will be by providing opportunities to discuss it with faculty in the theology and philosophy departments. I would also be developing conference papers on these topics during my time at Wheaton and would look to the department for travel support. Finally, my work on well-being and in the philosophy of religion often draws on the thought and works of C. S. Lewis. It is likely that I would spend a significant amount of time at the Wade Center.
- As a Wheaton College faculty member, how would your teaching, scholarship, and mentorship work to deepen Christ-centered diversity by creating a campus climate where all faculty, staff, students, and alumni are included as full participants who feel welcomed, respected, valued, and supported? Please refer to Wheaton’s Christ-Centered Kingdom Diversity Commitment and Gender Equity Vision Statement.
I share Wheaton’s commitment to diversity, inclusion, justice, and unity as outlined in your Christ-Centered Kingdom Diversity statement. I particularly affirm its theological basis, stating that “all individuals [are] equal image-bearers of Jesus Christ.” To this I will add that on my own understanding, each person’s bearing of the image of God includes not only their shared attributes (the common image given to all persons) but also things individual and peculiar. When reflecting on our membership in Christ’s body, C.S. Lewis wrote
The very word membership is of Christian origin, but has been taken over by the world and emptied of all meaning. In any book on logic you may see the expression “members of a class.” It must be most emphatically stated that the items or particulars included in a homogeneous class are almost the reverse of what St. Paul meant by members. By members … he meant what we should call organs, things essentially different from, and complementary to, one another: things differing not only in structure and function but also in dignity. … They are not interchangeable. Each person is almost a species in himself. … Its unity is a unity of unlikes, almost of incommensurables. (Lewis, “Membership”)
George MacDonald, who was something of a spiritual father to Lewis, inferred from the passage about the white stones received by the saints in Revelation 2:17 that each saint “can worship God as no [other saint] can worship him,— can understand God as no [other saint] can understand him” (“The New Name,” Unspoken Sermons, Series 1). These are, I believe, powerful reasons to care about diversity and inclusion at a Christ-centered institution.
I promote diversity and inclusion in my classroom by first identifying elements of diversity among my students, initially through a student-interest survey, university profiles, and icebreakers; later by in-class perspective-taking and by observing group interactions. I then encourage charitable engagement across the various perspectives we encounter and introduce perspectives I do not see represented. While I continually draw students back to diversity within the Christian Tradition, my introductory philosophy course also includes readings outside the Christian tradition, including work from less commonly taught philosophers (e.g., I include readings on Al-Ghazālī’s Skeptical Ruminations, Ibn Sīnā’s Flying Man, Mozi’s Impartial Caretaker, and Mengzi’s Child at the Well). This practice of perspective-taking is foundational to my ethics curriculum, which requires students to consider the interests and value orientations of those affected by their actions in our shared world. Fair, equitable, and beneficial actions and policies require that we understand and respect a broad range of perspectives. As we explore the diversity of both our classroom and the world, I strive to model a respectful demeanor that communicates a safe space and fosters open dialogue and engagement—and students often remark on the kindness and respect I’ve shown them and their peers in my student evaluations.
I also affirm Wheaton’s commitment to justice and unity. I seek to provide all of my students with an equal educational opportunity, which includes not only accommodations for students with disabilities, but also presenting material to students in a variety of modalities and attending to the variety of learning styles present in my classroom. I also seek to assess students justly. For some, this means a focus on “objective” assignments and anonymized grading procedures for “subjective” assignments. While I incorporate objective assignments in most courses (almost exclusively in a logic course), I prefer not to anonymize my grading procedure for subjective assignments. Instead, I use metrics, such as comparative progress across subjective assignments, and aim to provide feedback that maximizes growth for each student. Treating students justly means responding to them as the peculiar person they are.
Finally, I recognize that, as a Christian institution, Wheaton’s students, administration, faculty, and staff share a common goal: with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, to have the mind of Christ, and to glorify the Father. Reflecting the Church as the body of Christ, MacDonald notes that “there is no massing of men with God.” Beyond this common goal, there is also a unity of truth. It is something of a Christian philosophical cliché and motto to proclaim that “All truth is God’s truth.” To this, I will add that, given its breadth and depth, the Christian worldview is assimilative—a term I borrow from John Henry Newman. In his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, Newman wrote that “Two things cannot become one, except there be a power of assimilation in one or the other” (chap. 5, sec. 3). Given the truth of Christianity, faithful Christian teaching has a unitive power exceeding the unitive power of other worldview systems and faiths.
- Describe your understanding of the relationship of the Christian faith to your discipline. Where appropriate, briefly discuss the connection of some contemporary issue in your discipline to biblical teaching.
Christians in the Middle Ages referred to philosophy as the handmaiden of theology, and, when practiced well, philosophy fits that description to this day. Over the past hundred years, we have seen a great revival of Christian thought in the field of philosophy. We have seen a renewal in the study of natural theology, including new and sophisticated arguments for the existence of God. We have also seen thoughtful engagement with the problem of evil in its various forms and developments in what it means for God to be good in spite of the quantity and varieties of evil and suffering in our world. One of my chief objectives as a person trained in Christian philosophy is to collect and present the key elements of this revival to my students and to show its roots in the intellectual history of the Church and in the testimony of Scripture.
In my response to Missional Essay Two, I highlighted my research on recent trends in the well-being literature. Biblical teaching on the image of God and our roles as members body of Christ, along with theological reflection on these truths by Christian philosophers and theologians (e.g., Lewis and MacDonald), enriches ongoing philosophical discussion of the nature of well-being and points to an integration of contemporary eudaimonic-hedonic hybrid theories of well-being with a Christ-centered, Biblical picture of reality. Here we find that Biblical teaching on the image of God and subsequent reflection on that teaching in the Christian tradition resonates with a contemporary philosophical thesis.
A good deal of what I might share here has been shared in my response to the first and second essay questions, and I hope the hiring committee will forgive me for referring back to a previous answer in response.
- How did you first come to trust in Jesus Christ? What is your understanding of his saving work on your behalf? Describe your spiritual growth, including the expression of your faith in your life and the life of the church.
My understanding of the saving work of Christ is heavily influenced by the Wesleyan tradition. Salvation is by faith through Christ and not by works, yet those with faith in Christ are empowered by the Holy Spirit to do good works and known by their fruit. Christ’s work in us is expansive and transformative. Prevenient grace affords us what is needed to have faith in the first place; faith in Christ, in turn, justifies and sanctifies us. That is, by faith in Christ we are made new or born again, a work of God that may occur independently of one Baptism. Christ’s justifying grace forgives us of our sin and places us in good standing with God the Father, and his sanctifying grace begins a transformation of our character so that our lives may exemplify God’s holy love. While God, through the Holy Spirit, works in and through us during this process, it is up to us to cooperate with God’s work in us. In what follows, I will discuss some of the history of these works in my own life.
Growing up in a Christian home, I have been in a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ for most of my life. My father was raised in the Southern Baptist Church, and my mother was raised in the United Pentecostal Church. Our family attended a non-denominational church in Lubbock, Texas, called Trinity, where my sister and I were both baptized as soon as we were old enough to profess our faith—I was eight years old when I first professed Christ as Lord and Savior.
I was a very religious child and preteen—even after my nuclear family discontinued church attendance, I still found my way to Sunday service through my neighbors and friends. This was followed by a tenuous hold and eventual release of my faith during my teen years. Then, following my junior year of high school, my steady girlfriend went on a summer mission trip with her church and returned “on fire for Christ.” I was not pleased. She also insisted that I attend youth group with her at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Lubbock, TX. Again, I was not pleased. But once I started to attend, my dedication to Christ came roaring back, and after high school, I was committed to staying at St. Luke’s and serving as a youth intern, teaching Sunday school for younger members of the youth group.
In 2005 as a young man, not long out of high school (class of 2003), I entered the office of Dr. Will Cotton, the then-head pastor of St. Luke’s. I had requested the meeting, eager to tell Dr. Cotton that I was ready to enter full-time ministry. I’m not entirely sure what I expected Dr. Cotton to say. At least part of me wanted him to pull out the keys to some small church and hand them to me then and there, or set me up on some evangelical speaking circuit. I do, however, know that I was utterly surprised by his response. He asked me to join the church—something I had managed to neglect during my four years of regular attendance.
As it turned out, I was not yet even eligible to enter the candidacy process for ordination in the UMC; I had not been a member of a local congregation long enough. Dr. Cotton advised me to pursue an undergraduate liberal arts degree and to use that time to work out my call and develop skills I could later utilize in my ministry. This unexpected turn in my journey would eventually help me discern a calling for work in Christian academia. Ever since, I have been working through that calling. At Hardin-Simmons, I pursued a Master of Arts in Religion. While pursuing my first MA, I served as a part-time “lay” pastor at Hamby UMC, and after completing my degree, I accepted an interim position as the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Quanah, TX. My plan was to serve FUMC for one year, while I applied to philosophy Ph.D programs. I ended up serving as the pastor of FUMC Quanah for three years. My time in Quanah was an excellent opportunity for spiritual growth. I became very involved in the local Ministerial Alliance and wholeheartedly embraced the challenges and opportunities of full-time pastoral ministry. After a year in Quanah, I decided to further my education at Asbury Theological Seminary—a place where I could build both my theological and philosophical education with an eye toward future doctoral work in philosophy. My course work began online, but I moved to Wilmore to pursue my degree in-person after my third year in Quanah, TX.
Following my education at Asbury Theological Seminary and a brief season as an adjunct philosophy instructor at Asbury University, I moved to Saint Louis to begin work on a PhD in Philosophy. Here, I have focused on fulfilling my calling as a Christian educator by concentrating my studies on issues in the philosophy of religion and philosophical theology, with special attention to the intersection of philosophical theories of well-being with the Christian worldview.