Wheatley appointed Assistant Professor
The Rev. Dr. Paul Wheatley
The Rev. Dr. Paul Wheatley has been appointed Assistant Professor of New Testament and Greek at Nashotah House, following the successful defense of his doctoral dissertation at the University of Notre Dame.
Wheatley joined Nashotah House in 2020 as Instructor of New Testament and teaches courses in New Testament, early Christianity, and Greek. His research and teaching interests center on the overlap of liturgy, preaching, and scriptural exegesis in early Judaism and Christianity.
His dissertation focused on the role of baptismal imagery in the Gospel of Mark.
“We're overjoyed with Fr. Wheatley's successful defense of his Notre Dame dissertation,” said Dr. Garwood Anderson, Dean of Nashotah House. “We have been looking forward to this day with great anticipation ever since we identified Paul as our new professor of New Testament. This is but the first of many distinctions he will enjoy as a leading younger scholar in the field of biblical studies.”
Wheatley’s dissertation, “Mark the Mystagogue: Ritual Narrative, Identity Formation, and Baptism in the Gospel According to Mark,” argues that the narration of the Gospel of Mark addresses its readers through repeated appeal to the rituals practiced in these reading communities. According to Wheatley, this discourse presents who Jesus is and Jesus’s call to discipleship in analogy to the earliest pre-Markan baptismal ritual, as shown in the undisputed Pauline epistles (esp. Gal 3:26–4:7; Rom 6:3–5; 8:11–17).
He successfully defended his dissertation June 3.
“After two years of teaching while writing a dissertation, I am thrilled to have defended my dissertation with my committee at Notre Dame, and I am looking forward to serving as Assistant Professor of New Testament and Greek at Nashotah House,” said Wheatley. “I’m grateful for the support of the administration, faculty, and staff of Nashotah House, who made many accommodations to allow me to complete this monumental task while teaching. I am also so grateful for the students in my New Testament and Greek courses over the last two years who asked questions and offered their feedback on lectures related to my dissertation, improving my argument along the way. I’m also grateful for their patience, support, and encouragement as I tried to balance these many responsibilities with participation in the wonderful community life of Nashotah House.”
In addition to his PhD in Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity at the University of Notre Dame, Wheatley received his Master of Theological Studies from Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto and his Bachelor of Arts in History at the University of Texas at Austin.
Wheatley has presented lectures and papers at international conferences on Biblical Studies and early Christianity. He is a scheduled presenter for three conferences this summer, including the Society of Biblical Literature International Meeting in Austria; Catholic Biblical Association International Meeting in San Jose, California; and Colloquium Origenianum Tertium Decimum in Münster, Germany.
Wheatley previously served as founding vicar of St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church in Dallas and as associate rector of young adults and traditional worship at Church of the Incarnation in Dallas. His vocation to ordained ministry came after almost ten years of work in evangelism and discipleship with college students, including two years serving as a missionary to students and refugees in Athens, Greece.
