Obituary: Donald Verseput, Bethel Seminary professor

Donald Verseput of North Oaks, a Bethel Seminary professor who focused on linking scholarship to the life of the church, died of cancer Monday. He was 51.

A scholar of the New Testament in the Christian Bible, he completed a doctorate of theology in New Testament in Switzerland in 1986. He taught at schools in Germany and Illinois before coming in 1998 to Bethel, a Baptist school in Arden Hills with at least 40 denominations represented in the student body.

"The challenge of seminary education is to bridge 2,000 years of cultural change and history," said Leland Eliason, executive director and provost at Bethel. The focus for Verseput, who received the seminary's 1999-2000 Faculty Excellence Award, was building a bridge between disciplined scholarship and the life of the church by teaching the information to future pastors and teachers, Eliason said.

"He had prepared himself so that for the next 10 to 15 years, he could do a lot of writing," Eliason said.

When he died, Verseput was about halfway through writing a commentary on the book of James, in which patience is a theme. He traced patience and several other virtues through the literature of the ancient world.

"What he did was show the closeness of the ancient world to the modern, and the powerful relevance of the Gospel to both," Eliason said.

Survivors include his wife, Laurie; a daughter, Elisabeth; a son, Timothy; his parents, John and Naomi Verseput, and a sister, Mary Bailey.

Services will be held at 5:30 p.m. today at Bethel University Benson Great Hall, 3900 Bethel Dr., Arden Hills.

Trudi Hahn is atthahn@startribune.com.