Gregory Walter teaches in the Religion department and the Science Conversation. Walter’s courses take up Christian theology and cross over to many disciplines.   These courses often engage students to take up the secularization of religious life, matters of mercy and forgiveness, but most of all ideas, images, and arguments about God in dialogue with contemporary concerns.

Gregory Walter specializes in Christian systematic theology.  Walter’s work has contributed to scholarly discussions of theological rationality, hermeneutics, divine love, and interreligious theology, which have been published in various theological journals and as chapters in edited volumes and scholarly yearbooks. He has also contributed to the scholarship attending to several figures: Martin Luther, Johann Georg Hamann, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Karl Holl, Hans-Joachim Iwand, and Paul Tillich. Walter published his first monograph, Being Promised: Theology, Gift, and Practice (2013), which considered promise as a form of gift-exchange and developed a theology of place. 

He is currently working on two projects. The first is a long-term project reconstructing theology as a form of inquiry in conversation with pragmatism. The second further is a monograph-length theological account of the crucifixion of Jesus.

He speaks frequently at congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) on religious pluralism, Lutheran theology, and other concerns.  He has also served on a task force for the ELCA’s church-wide office on ecclesiology.

Gregory enjoys board games, keeping up with his family, and their dog. He might be the only member of the St. Olaf faculty who closely follows Prince Valiant’s weekly adventures.