March/April 2022 Professors

Steve Turnbull is a familiar name at MI as he teaches Scripture Practicum. He is the senior pastor at Upper Arlington Lutheran Church in Columbus, Ohio and a teacher of New Testament and Biblical theology. After graduating from the College of Wooster (B. A. Chemistry and German, 1997) and Luther Seminary (M.Div., 2001), he studied New Testament at Duke University (Ph.D. 2006). Steve has served at Community of Grace Lutheran Church in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, where he also learned the bracing joy of cold weather running. Steve is an enthusiastic fan of Ohio State football and Olympic Track and Field, but his first loves are his wife Amy, their two inspiring children, and one incorrigible Labrador Retriever.

About Sacraments:

This class on the sacraments will explore Baptism and the Lord’s Supper in their Biblical and theological contexts and will challenge students to appreciate and practice the sacraments in their Christian communities as means by which the Holy Spirit promotes and strengthens discipleship to Jesus.

Required Texts:

1. The Bible

2. Althaus, Paul, The Theology of Martin Luther, 1966, Published by Fortress Press.

About Pauline Epistles:

Who is Paul? Who was Paul? What comes to your mind when you hear the name “The

Apostle Paul”? Or, even more provocative: what is Paul? For some people, what comes to mind is “the greatest missionary pastor of the church.” That may be so. But, maybe not. For others what comes to mind is not something about who he was or what he did, but what he wrote about and taught: “justification by faith,” or “the freedom of the gospel.” Paul is the greatest theologian of the church. Maybe so. Maybe not. For others, something less positive comes to mind: “anti-woman,” or “anti-homosexual.” In general, whatever one’s general theological and ecclesiological bent is, there’s a Paul for that. If you’re a mega-church pastor, Paul will be the champion of whatever makes your church and ministry tick. Thus the “what is Paul?” question. He is not just a person of the past; he is a something, sometimes with a life all his own that may or may not be the real Paul. We have many to owe for this, notably the Christian church’s Reformation heritage which drew heavily on Paul’s letters to define all things Christian, and then fit the gospels into Paul’s framework. When it comes to understanding what Paul says about the church and ministry, do we learn from Paul, or Lutheran tradition/theology that uses Paul to make its own (maybe unPauline) claims? This course will attempt to hear Paul from his letters (some of which he may or may not have personally written), in order to get a sense of how his letters his worked to form communities “so that Christ might be borne in them”

Required Readings:

1. Gorman, Michael. Apostle of the Crucified Lord: A Theological Introduction to Paul & His Letters. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004.

2. Thompson, James W. Pastoral Ministry According to Paul. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006.

3. Thompson, James W. The Church According to Paul. Grand Rapids, Baker Academic, 2014.