This is Thinking in Public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about frontline theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.

I'm Albert Moa, your host and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

Every semester, the largest classroom at Northwestern University in Chicago is filled with hundreds

of students who are eager to take a course devoted to Russian literature.

The answer as to why comes down to the who.

That says something not only about the class but about the professor who happens to be my guest today.

He's the Lawrence B Dumas Professor of Arts and Humanities at Northwestern University

where he also serves as a professor of Slavic languages and literature.

He earned his PhD from Yale University since that time he's

enjoyed a prolific scholarly and teaching career. He's authored more than 200

peer-reviewed articles. He's written a dozen academic monographs on Russian literature, but it is who he is as a teacher.

And his most recent book, Wonder Confront Certainty, how Russian writers ask the ultimate questions and why their answers matter.

It is that book that is the topic of our conversation today.

Professor Gary Saul Morrison, welcome to thinking in public.

Oh, it's my pleasure to be here. You know professor we've had a

conversation before but I have been eagerly awaiting this one as I've been

eagerly awaiting what at least I'm going to call your magnum opus, a wonder confronts certainty.

I saw a reference in the publishing literature that an editor had suggested this to

you and he may not have realized how long it was going to take to do this.

I think at that point you said that you've been working on it for seven years, I'll just say it really shows.

Yes, no, he suggested it in 2016. This was an editor at Harvard Press, came to me and said,

I have the book you were born to write and I said really you know what's that well

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