At the end of this academic year, Professor S. Mark Heim, the Samuel Abbot Professor of Christian Theology at Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School, will retire from full-time faculty work. He will continue in the immediate future to teach one course, but this change is momentous in that Professor Heim is currently the longest-serving member of the Andover Newton at YDS faculty and has been an anchoring force as Andover Newton has gone through radical change.

Heim is a graduate of Amherst College, Andover Newton Theological School (1976) and the Boston College – Andover Newton Theological School joint doctoral program in systematic theology (1982). Prof. Heim has written extensively on issues of religious pluralism, atonement, and Christian ecumenism. His books include Salvations: Truth and Difference in Theology; The Depth of the Riches: A Trinitarian Theology of Religious Ends (Theological Booksellers Theologos award for best academic book 2001); Saved from Sacrifice: A Theology of the Cross; Crucified Wisdom: Christ and the Bodhisattva in Theological Reflection (winner of Frederick Streng award in Buddhist-Christian studies 2019) Monotheism and Forgiveness, and, most recently, Theology and Medicine in Conversation: How the Healing Happens (with Benjamin Doolittle). Heim has also edited several volumes, including Faith to Creed: Ecumenical Perspectives on the Affirmation of the Apostolic Faith in the Fourth Century and Grounds for Understanding: Ecumenical Resources for Responses to Religious Pluralism. 

Heim received a Henry Luce III Fellowship in Theology (2009-2010) and a Pew Evangelical Scholars’ Research Fellowship (1997-98). He is a member of the American Theological Society. He served as co-chair of the comparative theology group in the American Academy of Religion.  His teaching in science and religion received several national awards, including a Templeton Foundation award in 1998 for one of the twelve outstanding courses in this area. He was from 2014-2018 the primary investigator on a grant from the American Academy for the Advancement of Science devoted to integrating science into the theological curriculum.

An ordained American Baptist minister from Vermont, Heim served First Baptist Church in Franklin, NH in the years between his MDiv and doctoral studies. Heim has represented his denomination on the Faith and Order Commissions of the National Council and World Council of Churches. He has served on numerous ecumenical commissions and study groups, including the Christian – Muslim relations committee of the National Council of Churches. His teaching and research interests include comparative theology, theologies of religious pluralism, science and theology, Christology and atonement, and ecumenical ecclesiology.  

Since relocating with Andover Newton Theological School from Newton, MA to New Haven, CT; and becoming among the inaugural faculty members to teach at Andover Newton Seminary at YDS; Heim has become an influential member of the YDS faculty and Andover Newton Affiliate faculty.  Along with a colleague from the Yale Medical School, Dr. Benjamin Doolittle, he teaches an interdisciplinary course on theology and medicine. He also teaches courses such as Christ and the Boddhisatva and Theologies of Religious Pluralism. Heim chairs the YDS faculty’s Professional Studies Committee, which considers significant issues of student standing and related policies.

Heim advises students and attends Andover Newton at YDS’s worship experience, Emmaus, weekly, often presiding over communion in that service. His spouse Melissa Lewis Heim, a retired history teacher whose doctoral studies focused on Christian missions, was among the founders of that worship service. 

Andover Newton at YDS’s Founding Dean Sarah B. Drummond says, “I’m grateful the Heims were able to make the move from Newton to come here and build something new. Although I’ve known from the start that this transition would come, it’s a gut-punch nonetheless. It’s difficult to imagine Andover Newton at YDS without Mark and Melissa Heim. I’m just glad that Mark will continue in his teaching ministry so that we need not say goodbye. We’ll walk with him as he sees what God has in store for his next chapter.” A search for a new Abbot Chair will commence after a season of intentional discernment to take place next academic year.