S Mark Heim
Biographic Data
| ID | 5715200 |
|---|---|
| NAME | S Mark Heim |
| GIVEN NAMES | S Mark |
| FAMILY NAME | Heim |
| SIGNATURE | HEIM S M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Andover Newton Theological School |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2809-0234 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1983 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Dialogue of Spiritual Experience in Buddhist-Christian Encounter
Can one learn more about one’s own religion through the practices of another? My positive answer to this question is illustrated in this paper by reflection on aspects of the Buddhist practice of emptiness, in specific connection with Christian under-standing of our lives as creatures. The Buddhist meditative practices I have in mind have several things in common. They are introspective (activated in one person’s inner consciousness) and premised…
Supremely Simple Trinity and Contemporary “Natural Theology”
In this article I voice and defend Bonaventure's argument from divine simplicity to the Trinity from two versions of its negation, one Christian (Robert Jenson) and one subordinationist/Platonist (Plotinus). I point out that Bonaventure's supremely simple Trinitarianism has internal purchase on the Plotinian system: he makes available arguments that should pull subordinationist Christians/Platonists in the direction of his own view. Moreover, I o…
Home in Three Dimensions
This article reflects on my experience of what it means to have a “home” as a comparative theologian. As I treat comparative theology and transreligious theology here, both are religiously engaged practices. Comparative theology begins from a religious location and seeks to enrich it with learning that can be shared in that community, while transreligious theology engages with religious input in a “free range” manner, with no presumed outcome. Co…
Monotheism and Forgiveness
Forgiveness is a hallmark teaching within monotheistic religions. This Element introduces the topic in three ways. First, it considers the extent to which forgiveness is specific to or constituted by monotheistic beliefs, by a comparison with analogous teaching and practice in Buddhism. Second, the most extensive section explores the grammar of forgiveness shared across the Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam – elements of rep…
Their Cross Problem and Ours
Contemporary Christian witness about the death of Jesus moves in a culture already saturated with an aesthetic or intuitive ethic of the crucifixion. That aesthetic has many features acquired though Christianity’s long social dominance. This essay focuses on one aspect, authentically derived from the distinctive understanding Christian faith attributed to the crucifixion. First, I describe the Roman context, and the natural “reading” of the image…
Paths to Wholeness
This essay explores four main points in outlining the changing relation between ecumenism and interfaith engagement. First, it describes an ironic shift: Where once world mission was the common motive for Christian ecumenical engagement, now differences among Christians over response to religious diversity are themselves of church-dividing status. Second, it argues there is a new urgency for ecumenism as the necessary resource for adequate engage…
Reduction to the Triune Lord in the Phenomenology of Jean‐Louis Chrétien
Comparative Theology at Twenty‐Five
Crucified Wisdom
Of Two Minds about a Theology without Walls
This essay explores the coherence and plausibility of a “transreligious theology,” asking whether there is, in fact, a distinctive methodology, a novel set of conclusions, or an operative community that could correspond to this project. It seems such a project can be distinguished from comparative theology in incremental respects. It seems questionable that there are major undiscovered options in the religious landscape. There does appear to be a…
Religion in the Perspective of“Big History”
At the pinnacle of his career, the renowned sociologist Robert Bellah did not choose to write a magnum opus refining the influential work of a lifetime, focused particularly on contemporary American society. Nor did he choose to offer an unbuttoned reflection on the future of his discipline or the culture he had so closely studied. Instead, he devoted thirteen years to a project of breathtaking scope, religion in the evolutionary history of the h…
Trinity and Religious Pluralism
Salvation as Communion
Salvation is often defined primarily by the conditions it overcomes, by what it is not. The radical, traditional Christian hope that, in redemption, we may become sharers in the divine nature challenges us to exercise a more positive, creative imagination about salvation. Communion, as the distinctively trinitarian quality of Christian hope, distinguishes salvation as a particular aim among other possibilities and helps us appreciate the true bre…
The Depth of the Riches
The doctrine of the Trinity understands God's nature as a communion of persons, implying various possible dimensions of relation with God. Religious traditions may differ in the dimensions they appropriate or the terms in which they integrate the dimensions, leading adherents to distinct human ends. Two real relations with God need not be the same relation. This paper describes how distinct religious ends may be understood as grounded in the trin…
Saving the particulars
Conflict in the testimony of religious experiences appears to seriously undercut its evidential value. Arguments that make positive appeal to the evidence of religious experience usually deal with this objection by denying evidential value to the particularistic elements in such experience as descriptive of an ultimate religious reality and an ultimate human end. Using the work of Jerome Gellman, I contend that the referential value of diverse an…
The Trinity in a Pluralistic Age
Prolegomena to Religious Pluralism
Salvations
On Sharing Religious Experience
Problems in the Philosophy of Religion
The Pluralistic Hypothesis, Realism, and Post-Eschatology
In his Gifford Lectures, An Interpretation of Religion , John Hick presents his pluralistic hypothesis in its fullest form, a religious account of the variety and unity of the great faith traditions. He summarizes this hypothesis in the assertion that in religious traditions and experiences an ‘infinite Real, in itself beyond the scope of other than purely formal concepts, is differently conceived, experienced and responded to from within the dif…
Prodigal Sons
Theological Table-Talk
Paths to Wholeness
This essay explores four main points in outlining the changing relation between ecumenism and interfaith engagement. First, it describes an ironic shift: Where once world mission was the common motive for Christian ecumenical engagement, now differences among Christians over response to religious diversity are themselves of church-dividing status. Second, it argues there is a new urgency for ecumenism as the necessary resource for adequate engage…
Prodigal Sons
Theological Table-Talk
Prodigal Sons
The Pluralistic Hypothesis, Realism, and Post-Eschatology
In his Gifford Lectures, An Interpretation of Religion , John Hick presents his pluralistic hypothesis in its fullest form, a religious account of the variety and unity of the great faith traditions. He summarizes this hypothesis in the assertion that in religious traditions and experiences an ‘infinite Real, in itself beyond the scope of other than purely formal concepts, is differently conceived, experienced and responded to from within the dif…
On Sharing Religious Experience
Problems in the Philosophy of Religion
Salvations
Prolegomena to Religious Pluralism
The Trinity in a Pluralistic Age
Saving the particulars
Conflict in the testimony of religious experiences appears to seriously undercut its evidential value. Arguments that make positive appeal to the evidence of religious experience usually deal with this objection by denying evidential value to the particularistic elements in such experience as descriptive of an ultimate religious reality and an ultimate human end. Using the work of Jerome Gellman, I contend that the referential value of diverse an…
The Depth of the Riches
The doctrine of the Trinity understands God's nature as a communion of persons, implying various possible dimensions of relation with God. Religious traditions may differ in the dimensions they appropriate or the terms in which they integrate the dimensions, leading adherents to distinct human ends. Two real relations with God need not be the same relation. This paper describes how distinct religious ends may be understood as grounded in the trin…
Salvation as Communion
Salvation is often defined primarily by the conditions it overcomes, by what it is not. The radical, traditional Christian hope that, in redemption, we may become sharers in the divine nature challenges us to exercise a more positive, creative imagination about salvation. Communion, as the distinctively trinitarian quality of Christian hope, distinguishes salvation as a particular aim among other possibilities and helps us appreciate the true bre…
Trinity and Religious Pluralism
Religion in the Perspective of“Big History”
At the pinnacle of his career, the renowned sociologist Robert Bellah did not choose to write a magnum opus refining the influential work of a lifetime, focused particularly on contemporary American society. Nor did he choose to offer an unbuttoned reflection on the future of his discipline or the culture he had so closely studied. Instead, he devoted thirteen years to a project of breathtaking scope, religion in the evolutionary history of the h…
Of Two Minds about a Theology without Walls
This essay explores the coherence and plausibility of a “transreligious theology,” asking whether there is, in fact, a distinctive methodology, a novel set of conclusions, or an operative community that could correspond to this project. It seems such a project can be distinguished from comparative theology in incremental respects. It seems questionable that there are major undiscovered options in the religious landscape. There does appear to be a…
Crucified Wisdom
Reduction to the Triune Lord in the Phenomenology of Jean‐Louis Chrétien
Comparative Theology at Twenty‐Five
Paths to Wholeness
This essay explores four main points in outlining the changing relation between ecumenism and interfaith engagement. First, it describes an ironic shift: Where once world mission was the common motive for Christian ecumenical engagement, now differences among Christians over response to religious diversity are themselves of church-dividing status. Second, it argues there is a new urgency for ecumenism as the necessary resource for adequate engage…
Monotheism and Forgiveness
Forgiveness is a hallmark teaching within monotheistic religions. This Element introduces the topic in three ways. First, it considers the extent to which forgiveness is specific to or constituted by monotheistic beliefs, by a comparison with analogous teaching and practice in Buddhism. Second, the most extensive section explores the grammar of forgiveness shared across the Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam – elements of rep…
Their Cross Problem and Ours
Contemporary Christian witness about the death of Jesus moves in a culture already saturated with an aesthetic or intuitive ethic of the crucifixion. That aesthetic has many features acquired though Christianity’s long social dominance. This essay focuses on one aspect, authentically derived from the distinctive understanding Christian faith attributed to the crucifixion. First, I describe the Roman context, and the natural “reading” of the image…
Supremely Simple Trinity and Contemporary “Natural Theology”
In this article I voice and defend Bonaventure's argument from divine simplicity to the Trinity from two versions of its negation, one Christian (Robert Jenson) and one subordinationist/Platonist (Plotinus). I point out that Bonaventure's supremely simple Trinitarianism has internal purchase on the Plotinian system: he makes available arguments that should pull subordinationist Christians/Platonists in the direction of his own view. Moreover, I o…
Home in Three Dimensions
This article reflects on my experience of what it means to have a “home” as a comparative theologian. As I treat comparative theology and transreligious theology here, both are religiously engaged practices. Comparative theology begins from a religious location and seeks to enrich it with learning that can be shared in that community, while transreligious theology engages with religious input in a “free range” manner, with no presumed outcome. Co…
The Dialogue of Spiritual Experience in Buddhist-Christian Encounter
Can one learn more about one’s own religion through the practices of another? My positive answer to this question is illustrated in this paper by reflection on aspects of the Buddhist practice of emptiness, in specific connection with Christian under-standing of our lives as creatures. The Buddhist meditative practices I have in mind have several things in common. They are introspective (activated in one person’s inner consciousness) and premised…
Philosophy (21 works) · Theology (16 works) · Epistemology (12 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (11 works) · Computer Science (9 works) · Biblical Studies and Interpretation (8 works) · Religious studies (8 works) · Christian Theology and Mission (7 works) · Download (5 works)