Dan Epp-Tiessen – CMU Media Archive

Dr. Dan Epp-Tiessen, Associate Professor of Bible, has taught at CMU since 1998.

What are you teaching right now that you’re most excited about?

Creation, Environment, and the Bible. Given the ecological challenges this planet faces, we as Christians have a unique opportunity to address those issues because our fundamental conviction is that God has created this amazing cosmos. If God has created this unbelievably beautiful, complex world, we of all people ought to love and care for it.

What are you researching and writing?

I’ve been asked to write a Believers Church Bible Commentary on the book of Micah. I’ve always loved the prophets. They tell it like it is in terms of naming the sins and shortcomings of God’s people, and yet they’re also profoundly hopeful. The book of Micah brings together the importance of worship, the importance of a close relationship with God, and how the two should lead to a life of faithfulness and justice, and of caring for people in the community—especially the weaker and more vulnerable members of the community.

What you are reading for enjoyment?

In the last few years I’ve been trying to read more about Indigenous-settler relations in this country. That’s not always enjoyable, but I’ve found it deeply, deeply meaningful. I think if we’re going to live well in this country, it’s one of the primary agenda items that we as a settler society need to face going forward.

Where or how do students give you hope?

For me the hope and encouragement from students come from when I see them get excited about the stuff we’re talking about in class; when I see them get excited about particular biblical stories or biblical books or biblical passages and themes. They want their lives to be shaped by this stuff. They want to be people transformed by God’s grace, transformed by the life of Jesus, and they want all of that to make a difference in their lives.

What do you most long for in your work?

That students come to love Jesus, that they become excited about—and committed to—the biblical story, and that somehow their lives are transformed and deepened because of the stuff we’ve talked about, read, and studied in class. That’s what I long for: to see our students grow in their relationship with God, grow in their commitment to the Christian faith, and become more mature, healthy human beings.

What saying or motto inspires you?

In the last few years I’ve been drawn to a famous prayer by Augustine: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in you.” For me, that’s a source of huge comfort and hope. It’s also what I hope for my students: that they will come to experience themselves as beloved children of God and be deeply, deeply rooted in God.

Winnipeg, April 5, 2013 – CMU faculty member Dan Epp-Tiessen has released his book, Concerning the Prophets: True and False Prophecy in Jeremiah 23:9-29:32 (Pickwick Publications), which “sheds light on the compositional history, structure, and theology of the book of Jeremiah by demonstrating that a large concentric unit of material focusing on true and false prophecy stands at the center of the book.”

“In a nutshell, false prophecy overlooks community sin, encourages complacency, prevents repentance, and leads to utter catastrophe,” says author Epp-Tiessen, Associate Professor of Bible at CMU. “True prophecy diagnoses the sins of the community, calls for repentance, and asserts that health and healing can only result from following God’s way of life.”

Epp-Tiessen, who holds a Ph.D. in Old Testament from the University of St. Michael’s College (1994), has authored numerous articles, book reviews, curricula, and study guides, including Faith and Hope in the Midst of Changing Times, a five-week worship, prayer, and study guide commissioned by Mennonite Church Canada (2010). He has been teaching at CMU/CMBC since 1998.

Louis Stulman, Ph.D., of the University of Findlay praises as “intelligent, bold, and replete with exegetical insight. It will no doubt enrich all those interested in prophetic literature and the tortuous question of true and false prophecy.”

The fall 2012 release of Concerning the Prophets adds to CMU’s impressive body of works published since early 2012, which includes nine books, 13 book chapters, and 23 journal articles from a 45-member faculty.

“Scholarship lies at the very heart of CMU,” said Earl Davey, CMU’s Vice-President, Academic at the December 2012 book launch event. “I am confident to say we do well at forging an authentic and vital interface between scholarship and the teaching and mentoring process. Students are enriched as a consequence of our ongoing intellectual and spiritual work of analyzing and interpreting, constructing new ways of seeing and understanding the academic worlds we inhabit, and enabling us to discover more productive and informed ways of connecting with these worlds.”

At the book launch, Epp-Tiessen read his favourite sentence in the book the dedication: “To Esther, Chris, Tim, Mark, and Melissa, whose love and laughter nourish my scholarly work, and also place it in proper perspective.”

To order a copy of Concerning the Prophets, visit https://wipfandstock.com.