Regent University Faculty Come Together for 2018 Spring Faculty Retreat

For a few hours on Friday, February 23, Regent University faculty fellowshipped, communed, and worshiped with one another at the biannual faculty retreat.

“This university is born by a miracle, it is born by the word of God,” said Regent founder, chancellor and CEO Dr. M.G. “Pat” Robertson. “And so I challenge you on this faculty retreat, expect miracles.”

“Really, it’s a goal to set time aside for faculty in all the academic units to worship together, praise the Lord together, pray together, and think deeply about the Word [of God] so that our intellects are being renewed under the authority of the scripture,” said Dr. Gerson Moreno-Riaño, executive vice president of academic affairs.

In his keynote address, presenter Dr. Kevin Vanhoozer, a research professor of systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity College, shared his vision for the role Christian universities play in contending with secular forces and revitalizing culture with faith.

“One of the most important causes for decline in Christianity, Biblical authority, and the notion of the Christian university, is the loss of the scriptural imagination,” he said. “One of the most important strategies for reclaiming the university for Jesus Christ is to make His story the control story for all our thinking about theology.”

For the past school year, Regent University faculty have been reading Vanhoover’s book, Biblical Authority after Babel: Retrieving the Solas in the Spirit of Mere Protestant Christianity, in a “common read.”

“We started in the fall, we had chapel talks about it, library events about it, all the schools and faculty were a part of it,” said Moreno-Riaño. “It really is a goal for us to think deeply on this book and scripture.” Vanhoozer’s address, marked the end of faculty’s participation in the read, serving as a final culmination of their participation.

The honorable Randy J. Forbes, a Regent University fellow and former U.S. congressman for Virginia’s 4th District, spoke as well. He told faculty, “When all the theory breaks down, when everything else we don’t understand and we can’t reconcile it all together, and when we don’t know what else to do … fight for the faith.”