ABOUT DAN: A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY & TESTIMONY

Hi, I’m Dan Tate. I’m the creator, writer, editor – effectively, the one-man team – behind Christ & Cosmos. I was born and raised in Upstate New York, but I’ve lived around the tri-state area in adulthood. I’m an ex-atheist/pantheist, and a convert to the faith by way of God’s grace. This marks me and my writing – not only because it causes me to confess with Augustine, “late have I loved Thee,” but because it helps make me an especially unlikely sort of convert.

AN UNLIKELY CONVERT: WHEN GOD CAME TO ME AND CHANGED MY LIFE

I am unlikely because I belong to a (wonderful and loving) academic family. I have always had mystical and contemplative inclinations, and you will see them on this site, but I am also innately very skeptical. My first disposition is not one of trust; and I am not one to regard my feelings as truth. When I hear the phrase “I don’t understand it, but I believe it” I die a little inside – my muscles tighten, and my stomach convulses. Before God came to me, I was all about braving the complexities of life with uncertainty, taking the risk of infinite responsibility for my actions, knowing (oh-so-certainly) that there was no greater Guide to be had. In short, cheap, easy, and reassuring answers just aren’t my thing. And hence I thought that I, of all people, was well-inoculated against the Christian faith.

And yet that’s not how things turned out. At the beginning of eighteen, my life changed forever. God came to me out of nowhere while I was shoveling the snow. He came to me of all people, the proud teenage anti-theist, the vocal critic of Christianity, the garrulous blasphemer and God-hater. He came to me, breaking me down and building me back up, reconstituting me in faith. He showed me my sin in that moment; He revealed my shame, my voluntary separation from Him, and the hellish absence, the sheer nothingness, that lay behind my world as a result. Many church fathers have understood evil as nothingness; that day I felt it.

God showed me my selfishness, my egotism, the rage of my aching and still-empty soul – and then He filled it with love, revealing Himself fully in His mercy. This love released me, brought me to grace, convinced me that I had to follow the name of Jesus; and yet, beyond that, God left me on my own. He gave me the joy, the sweetness, that comes from first proclaiming Christ’s name with your lips; but He did not show me where to go from there.

POST-CONVERSION STRUGGLES: WHERE SHOULD I GO? WHO SHOULD I BELIEVE?

Until that moment, I had been anti-Christian. To my mind, I had Christianity and its manipulative psychology figured out. All well and good, I thought, to posit a Law that was impossible to keep, then condemn as damned all those (i.e., everyone) who failed to keep it; and then, to dangle before them salvation, a great rescuer, the Son of God, through whom they could have forgiveness – if only they would believe, join a church, and obey the dictates of the pastor. This, I knew – I used to know – was a sheer cynical power-move, one that had somehow tricked whole hosts of people and then dominated all of Western society. Thankfully, now we had come free from its grasp; and we would never go back. I, certainly, would never go back.

But now I was back. Now, suddenly, God had come to me like a raging, rushing bull – He had toppled me over, broken me apart, and placed me before Jesus and said to me: “This is my Son, my Chosen One. Listen to Him” (Luke 9:35, ESV)! What was I to do? I couldn’t buy this at all; and yet I was compelled to follow it. This was against every inclination of my soul. But I was urged forward by Love Itself, and I travelled it down its hard yet wonderful path.

I did not belong to any church community, and I had few Christian friends. I had almost no one to talk to about what had happened. My friends did not comprehend it, and many abandoned me after it happened (despite the fact that, believe me, I was hardly in a state to proselytize). My parents (who are now Christians, thank God!) thought that I was just “going through a phase.” But I was committed; as I saw it, I had no choice. Truth had called me home.

But what should be my earthly home; what community should I belong to? Where should I go? I did not know which church had the right teaching. Furthermore, all my thought previously had been oriented, in a significant way, against the Christian faith – so I had no special inkling to pursue. I had nowhere to go, I concluded, but the one source that all Christians agreed on: the Bible. And so I read it all the way through, Old Testament alongside the New Testament, and finished it about a year later. In all that time, till near the end of my reading, I did not enter a church. And when I did, good Lord did I feel awkward – embarrassed and ashamed even. I was sure I didn’t belong. Over a long course of time, however, through a process that I will not document here, I did come to orient myself. It was hard and strange, but I did it.

THE JOURNEY SINCE: FROM GRAD SCHOOL TO CHRIST & COSMOS

And so I went forward on the path, till I got here. I studied philosophy in college, then religion and theology in graduate school. I got my B.A. from Allegheny College, an M.A. from Syracuse University, and then an M. Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary.

I continued to try to put things together. And I continued to pursue the path of faith, always buoyed and guided by the God who gave me strength. I even seriously considered the pastorate at one point.

However, throughout I felt called to bring the Christian faith to a wider audience – to share the struggle I had endured, the questions I had asked, the pain I had felt, the doubt I had experienced, the love I had known, the beauty I had seen, and the answers I had found. My experience isn’t universal; I know this. But I do think that, to some degree, it is shared; and I think that anyone, whether Christian or skeptic or seeker, could find what I have garnered on my own path helpful.

This is what I offer on Christ & Cosmos: the reflections of one man who has felt, I think, a decent bit of the intellectual and spiritual struggles of his generation, while experiencing in a very real way the grace of the “Ancient of Days,” the One who from eternity has made Himself known to people in every generation from time immemorial (Daniel 7:9).

In a way, this is not much. I am only one person. But my aspirations are great here: I hope to one day make Christ & Cosmos the go-to resource for those with questions about Christ and faith and what it might mean to follow the Way, the Truth and the Life. These questions are hard – believe me, I know. But I promise, you will be surprised when you encounter the wisdom of the Scriptures and the ancient church. They will feel shockingly real and true, even today – perhaps today more than ever!

I am excited to share this wisdom, this journey, this creative endeavor of applying the wisdom of the past to the present age, while appreciating the greatness and insight of what our time has to offer. It’s an unconventional journey, sure, but it’s a rewarding one – and I think you’ll come to agree. I’m definitely excited to have you along with me!