Dr. John Oswalt returns from teaching seminarians in Russia
Asbury Seminary’s Dr. John Oswalt has returned to the Kentucky campus from a teaching appointment in Russia, where he experienced what he described as a fruitful effort under way to train new generations of ministers in theological foundations for successful ministry.
Oswalt, who is Visiting Distinguished Professor of Old Testament at Asbury Seminary, taught for two weeks in Russia’s capital city at Moscow Evangelical Christian Seminary. The course he led in the Major Prophets marks the latest of several teaching opportunities Oswalt has had at the Moscow seminary.
Founded through funding from the Korean Holiness Church, Moscow Evangelical Christian Seminary has a staff made up mostly of Asbury Seminary graduates, including the Rector, Alexander Tsutserov; the Dean, Sergei Koryakin; and Andrei Blinkov, a member of the faculty. The seminary’s students come from across the former Soviet Union, as far as Kaliningrad in the west and Sakhalin Island in the east.
Asbury Seminary professors have had a significant part in the instruction the Moscow seminary offers. Oswalt is one of at least seven Asbury Seminary faculty members, including Emeritus Professor Harold Burgess, who have traveled to teach courses at the institution, and most of them, like Oswalt, have made multiple trips. Asbury Seminary has made these course sessions possible by providing travel funds.
Oswalt said teaching the Bible’s prophetic books to the seminarians in Moscow is a joy for him, and one reason is that, except for end-times predictions, the content of the prophets often has been largely a “closed book” for the students. Their discovery of these books’ depth of theology frequently takes on the nature of a “paradigm shift” in their lives, he said. Representative of this impact was one comment by a student after this year’s class: “This course has finally enabled me to put some things in order in my life that have always been out of order before.”
Oswalt, who holds B.D. and Th.M. degrees from Asbury Seminary and the Ph.D. from Brandeis University, taught at Asbury Seminary from 1970 to 1982 and again from 1989 to 1999 and began his current position in 2009. He also has taught at Wesley Biblical Seminary and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and he was Asbury College President from 1983 to 1986.
In addition to having numerous articles published in journals, periodicals and encyclopedias, Oswalt has written eight books, most recently On Being A Christian (2008), a study of First John. Oswalt, who was a member of the New International Version translation team, serves on a six-member editorial team that revised the Living Bible (New Living Translation, 1996) and continues the revision process with Tyndale House Publishers. He was Old Testament editor of the Wesley Bible (1990) and was consulting editor for the New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis (1997).
An ordained minister in the United Methodist Church with membership in the Kentucky Annual Conference, Oswalt has served as a part-time pastor to congregations in New England and Kentucky and is a frequent speaker in conferences, camps and churches. He and his wife, Karen, have three children and two grandchildren.
