The questions he asked then carried him on to a degree with majors in Philosophy and Religious Studies at Stanford University, an M.Div. at Princeton Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. in Religion at Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.  He has also studied at Oxford and two universities in China, has won multiple fellowships and prizes for his essays and teaching, and has published in several international commentaries on Kierkegaard.  

Once a world-class gymnast whose career came to an end with a broken neck, he currently enjoys less dangerous sports such as baseball and ultimate frisbee, and spends as much time as possible with a far better wife than he deserves and a daughter who always boggles his mind.  He worked part-time in chaplaincy for three years in a maximum security prison, and has ministered in congregations in America as well as overseas.  

In all his work he seeks a better understanding of why people do, and do not, come to faith, and researches and teaches in religion and science, faith and reason, theology and philosophy, the origins of atheism, Christology, and the religious transformations of suffering