Mark Osler

In the News: Mark Osler – Christmas, Christ and the Christian university

Law professor Mark Osler wrote an op-ed for the Waco Tribune-Herald on Christian universities and Christmas.

From the article: The duality of that child from the moment of his birth, as God and man, is part of what is so breathtaking about what we celebrate at Christmas. Jesus taught new truths about a God who is loving, who forgives, and who holds great expectations and hope for us. In our living rooms, we recreate the scene: the birth of a savior surrounded not by riches, but the earthy realities of real life, including a stable, animals and exhausted but enthralled young people named Mary and Joseph.

It is an extraordinarily rare thing for the divine and the earthly to combine into any one person or thing. And yet, that is what a university like Baylor strives to be: of God, and of the world. The duality of the project is laid out in the descriptive phrase itself, “Christian university.” Those two spare words promise both a reflection of the divine (Christian) and a part of the world (a university). It should surprise no one that this is a difficult vision. My own school, the University of St. Thomas, faces the same challenge as a Catholic university, of course.