HBU professors are devoted to and loved by HBU students. They tirelessly labor for their students’ well-being. But that does not stop them from doing research and publishing top-notch books.
Professor of Philosophy and Scholar in Residence Dr. Jerry Walls is a heavy hitter when it comes to book production. He has authored, co-authored, edited or co-edited a dozen books and over 80 articles and reviews.
Walls, along with Dr. David Baggett of Liberty University, has written a follow up to their book,Good God (Oxford University Press, 2011), which won Christianity Today’s 2012 Apologetics Book of the Year. The sequel is God and Cosmos, a thorough but amicable examination of how secular ethical theories don’t explain enough, and a robust four-pronged argument that orthodox Christian theology does. It is set to release in early 2016.
Walls’s latest solo work is Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory: Rethinking the Things That Matter Most(Brazos Press, 2015). It is a thoroughly Protestant book that puts logic to work examining eternal realities.
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Reading literature in historical context is
always important, but never more so than when reading historical letters, such as the epistles of the Apostle Paul. In the theology department, Dr. Ben Blackwell and Dr. Jason Maston have teamed up to edit a book of non-technical essays that will help beginning and intermediate students understand the first century Mediterranean culture in which Paul was writing.
The book is called Reading Romans in Context: Paul and Second Temple Judaism (Zondervan, 2015), and it is a wonderful example of how HBU faculty make the best research accessible to readers of many academic levels.
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Dr. Louis Markos, who holds the Robert H. Ray chair of Humanities, is an expert on the works of C.S. Lewis, as his eleventh book showcases: From A to Z to Narnia with C.S. Lewis (Lampion, 2015).
Like so many others, Dr. Markos has been deeply affected by the writings of Lewis. In his words, Lewis “has inspired and shaped my thinking on such a wide range of topics that no single book could hope to capture the myriad ways in which he has tested my assumptions, altered my opinions, and refined my beliefs.”
From A to Z to Narnia with C.S. Lewis takes 26 big ideas that Lewis explores and makes them memorable by matching them to each letter of the alphabet. It also includes three full-length reviews of the Narnia movies, a short biography, and several annotated bibliographies of books by and about C.S. Lewis.
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Markos is not the only C.S. Lewis expert on the HBU faculty. Dr. Michael Ward is the director of HBU’s C.S. Lewis Centre in Oxford, England. His 2008 work, Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis established him has one of the foremost Lewis scholars alive today.
Ward’s latest contributions to the literature are essays in C.S. Lewis and His Circle (Oxford University Press, 2015) and Women and C.S. Lewis (Lion Hudson, 2015), and a forthcoming collection that he has co-edited called C.S. Lewis at Poets’ Corner.
Poets’ Corner is a portion of Westminster Abbey that got its name from the large number of writers that are buried or commemorated there. Ward was instrumental in obtaining a memorial for C.S. Lewis in this prestigious location. C.S. Lewis at Poets’ Corner, which will be published in early 2016, will explain and reflect upon the memorial’s significance and the proceedings of three conferences that occurred in conjunction with its installation.
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Dr. Philip Tallon, chair of the Department of Apologetics, recently authored The Absolute Basics of the Christian Faith: An Introduction to Christian Theology. The book is a short, accessible introduction to the Christian faith, covering important theological topics like the Trinity, the incarnation, salvation, and eschatology. It will be published by Seedbed late in 2015.
Tallon also wrote two essays for the recent book, C. S. Lewis’s Christian Apologetics: Pro and Con, edited by Gregory Bassham (Brill, 2015). In his essays, Dr. Tallon offered a defense of the key ideas contained in C. S. Lewis’s The Problem of Pain.
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Late 2015 or early 2016 will see the release of a scholarly work dealing with the historian’s first love,primary sources. Dr. David Davis, director of the Master of Liberal Arts program, is publishing with Wipf & Stock From Icons to Idols: Documents on the Image Debate in Reformation England.
From Icons to Idols will be an accessible critical edition of documents from bishops to printers to artists that trace the debate of one of the central arguments of the Reformation. Because of the nature of the work, this book will be in high academic demand. But because the book deals with religious identity in a tumultuous period, it will also be relevant to many outside the academic sphere.
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Dr. Barbara Elliott, assistant professor of Liberal Studies in the Smith College of Liberal Arts, has written a biography of Houston businessman, Ralph Marek, called Doing Business With the Holy Spirit. While many business schools warn future leaders not to bring their faith into their work, this 92-year-old Houstonian attributes his success in building a multi-million-dollar business and a family foundation directly to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The three Marek brothers actually made the Holy Spirit their fourth partner in the family business. Ralph Marek proved that it is possible to fuse Christian faith with being an entrepreneur in the construction business and still be competitive, if you treat your workers like family. This is the author’s fifth book.
Elliott is also working on a second edition of Candles Behind the Wall: Heroes of the Peaceful
Revolution that Shattered Communism, her account of the spiritual causes that brought down the Berlin Wall. It was originally published in 1993 by Eerdmans Publishing in America, Mowbray Books in England, and Hännsler Verlag in Germany under the name Barbara von der Heydt.
Works in Progress
Dr. Encarna Bermejo will publish a detailed needs analysis of Spanish heritage learners. Dr. Holly Ordway is studying the modern writers who influenced J.R.R. Tolkien. Dr. Gary Hartenburg is working with Aristotle’s epistemology. And Dr. Robert Llizo is translating Medieval Latin texts which will be referenced as sources for other scholarly works.
In addition to all of these enlightening written projects, we want to recognize the daily contributions of all the HBU faculty to enlightening the lives of our students.