Dr. Philip Olsson

My friends call me Phil and I live with my wife and two younger daughters in Moscow, Idaho.

The route to the present has for me been a windy one. As a comedian once said, I started out as a child. Raised by Christian parents in the San Francisco Bay Area, I attended church weekly and went to a Christian school from K thru 12. I liked sports, sang in choirs, played trombone, and sometimes foolishly teased and fought with my siblings. I also demonstrated fairly early a knack for verbal fencing, especially with my dear mom (often enough just to get myself out of trouble).

What got me moving down the path of ideas and toward an academic life, however, was probably when I started reading a publication called the Conservative Chronicle in high school. It collected regular pieces by syndicated columnists like Patrick Buchanan, William F. Buckley, and Thomas Sowell, to name a few. Through reading these writers consistently, I became a strongly opinionated political conservative (which even led me to interview for a school project the presidential candidate Alan Keyes in the mid-90s). Since that time, I’ve remained passionate about many of the issues and ideas that shape our world.

As I entered college, I became interested in defending my Christian faith with greater rigor while at the same time falling into some youthful sins that led me, by the grace of God, to seek not only to be forgiven through Christ but to serve him with my life (I had come to Jesus as young as age four, but things were getting serious now). It was at some point late in my undergraduate studies that I grew more committed to studying the humanities. Some time before that I had changed my major from Mass Communication (with brief stints in college radio and local news journalism) to History. Following that, I went on to earn graduate degrees in History as well as Religion (with dual emphases in Theology, Ethics, and Culture & Philosophy of Religion and Theology).

More recently, I was graced with my lovely wife in 2009. And the decade since then has been quite the adventure. Not only do we now have nine grandchildren, we’ve only just recently returned westwardly after a six year stay in the midwest, where we learned a lot and made many great friends. The last three of those years were spent at Providence Academy (an ACCS school), where my wife taught Music at the Grammar School and I taught Bible, Ancient Humanities, and Rhetoric at the Upper School.

Among my interests and hobbies, I am a good American boy. I like baseball (committed to rooting for the Oakland A’s, though they often disappoint in the postseason), enjoy shooting hoops and swimming, and when the weather’s right will sometimes take my ‘65 convertible (poppy red) Mustang for a drive.

Teaching Philosophy

Essential to a Christian understanding is the proposition that we owe the Triune God thankful hearts and lives. He made all things and will someday restore all things. These things being the case, we as His adopted children should seek to give Him thanks in our words and works and from beginning to end.

As a teacher, I seek through my own speech acts and the work I assign to orient my students in a posture of grateful, diligent service to the God who has redeemed us and promises to raise us anew in a renovated cosmos. This posture can be practiced in a variety of ways, which include generally taking history seriously (backing humbly into the unknown future, with eyes to our ancestors and forebears), appreciating the creative talents of humans down through the centuries, engaging with the history of philosophy (and its Big Questions concerning what is Real, how things are Known, and how we Should live), studying the ways of God with his ancient covenant people, and gaining for ourselves the skills of critical thought and artful expression.

Statement of Faith

I believe in the Triune God of the Hebrew-Christian Scriptures. He is the absolute fact, essential, necessary. He dwells on high, exalted and self-sufficient. Out of His endless riches,He spoke into the void, bringing forth the world. The world, with its individual members, is contingent and utterly dependent upon the Persons of the Godhead, who enjoy an eternal, mutual love, joy, and peace.

In granting salvation to rebel humans, their redeemer has not only gratuitously forgiven them but is working to outfit His adopted children for life with Him. The Father teaches us to submit as sons and daughters, the Son teaches us to love and sharpen one another, and the Spirit teaches us that we only thrive through God’s power. Together, the Triune Persons instruct us to be united in our worship of the one God in spirit and in truth (John 4:23).

I am Reformed in my theology and Presbyterian in my understanding of church government. Our family attends a CREC church in Moscow, Idaho.