Get to Know The Rev. Paul D. Wheatley

The Rev. Paul D. Wheatley has been appointed as instructor of New Testament at Nashotah House, beginning Fall semester 2020. Upon completion of his dissertation, he plans to serve as Assistant Professor of New Testament. 

Fr. Wheatley has taught extensively at the parish level and has lectured in a variety of courses at the undergraduate and graduate level at Dallas Baptist University, Southern Methodist University, and at the University of Notre Dame.  

As a doctoral candidate at Notre Dame, Fr. Wheatley is writing a dissertation on how the Gospel of Mark uses the ritual of baptism as a commanding metaphor. 

“By focusing on the most fundamental ritual of Christianity, I am able to look at the significance Mark gives to the baptism of Jesus in the gospel narrative, Mark's authorial style and theology, and situate this within discussions of baptism in the Pauline epistles and in early Christian baptismal practices,” he says.

Nashotah House Welcomes New Testament Professor, The Rev. Paul D. Wheatley.

When asked about his philosophy of education, Fr. Wheatley noted Flannery O'Connor who once said about writing, "’The writer should never be afraid of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.’ I think the same could be said about teaching and learning. The best learning happens when students bring their curiosity to a topic and a teacher can guide them to the tools for ‘staring’ constructively. This is exploring one's own questions, with a guide. I try to stoke curiosity by questioning widely held assumptions that hinder the search for the truth. Often what I discover beyond my assumptions is a deeper and more firmly rooted truth, far more interesting than what I had previously imagined.” 

In teaching this method of "staring," Fr. Wheatley first tries to model his approach, then he likes to partner with students as they try to exegete the Scriptures for themselves before turning them loose to try it fully on their own.

“This is especially important when trying to teach the Scriptures at a graduate level,” he says. “Many of us have been reading the Bible on our own and in church for our whole lives. By our familiarity with it, we can be lulled into thinking we know what it's all about. Yet, ‘the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, joints and marrow, able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart’ (Heb 4:12). The Bible itself upends our assumptions that we have it mastered, and drives ever deeper into sharpening our ‘thoughts and intentions of the heart.’”

In this way, studying the Bible at the graduate level trains the future priest and teacher to be ever more shaped by a deep encounter with God in the Scriptures. Years on end of preaching from the lectionary and teaching from the Bible can drain a preacher dry, or it can dig a well in the soul to be filled by streams of living water. “In the few semesters I have had with students,” Fr. Wheatley said, “I endeavor to train them to ‘stare’ at the Scriptures in a way that will guide them to their own lifetime of wonder and discovery that will overflow into the lives of their parishioners and a world still hungry for the mystery of God's encounter with humanity.” 

As Flannery O'Connor said elsewhere, "Mystery isn’t something that is gradually evaporating. It grows along with knowledge."

Furthermore, this past year, Fr. Wheatley received a grant from the North American Patristics Society to travel to Oxford to present a paper, titled Behind the Veil of Translation, about lists of Hebrew names that scribes attached to manuscripts of Acts, the Pauline Epistles, and Revelation during the eleventh through twelfth centuries.

Fr. Wheatley also received a grant from the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame in January, 2020, to participate in a workshop on Latin Paleography, which included a week of research at the Vatican Library on a manuscript of the Catholic Epistles and Revelation that was given to the abbey of Assisi by the King Louis IX of France after St. Francis of Assisi's death.

In addition to several travel grants for conference presentations, he received an Advanced Language Learning grant in 2018 from the Nanovic Institute of European Studies “to work on his German” in Cologne / Köln, Germany.

Fr. Wheatley has written for The Living Church magazine and is a favorite Covenant blogger on topics such as preaching, biblical interpretation, baptism and the world of early Christianity, church planting, race and culture, and the ongoing relevance of early Christianity in the life of the church. Currently working on an article for submission to a New Testament journal on the anointing at Bethany in Mark 14:1–9, Fr. Wheatley has also written about the spirituality of contemporary music, including songs by Bob Dylan, David Bowie, and Leonard Cohen.

A common question among seminarians and faculty at Nashotah House is: “What are you reading now?” Fr. Wheatley says as a native Texan, he has spent the last few years during his sojourn in northern Indiana reading Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy out of a sense of nostalgia for his home state. 

“These books are deeply moving and heartbreaking, while also providing in their aggregate a profound reflection on the work of memory and writing that makes me think about my research and teaching in new ways.”

He’s also reading Prairie Fires, a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and he and his eldest daughter are currently on their third reading through the Little House series this year. 

“I love having more perspective on the author of these books and the social environment that gave birth to them,” he says. “In some ways, my interest in the biography and social dynamics behind Laura Ingalls Wilder's children's books mirrors my interest in the world of early Judaism and Christianity from which the New Testament arose. Understanding the world behind the books brings the meaning of the books themselves into ever greater clarity and depth.”

And hobbies? Fr. Wheatley has been home-brewing beer for about 15 years now, and he says his best recipes are a bourbon-barrel-aged winter warmer and a wheat stout that he calls "Wheatdawg Stout". 

Nice.

“I also have a healthy devotion to any forms of low-tech coffee preparation methods I can find,” he says. “I love hiking, backcountry camping, and the joy of a long walk in the wilderness. And, ages ago, I played bass guitar in a few bands that gigged around Austin and Dallas, but now I mostly sing songs and dance with my daughters.”