Comparative Analysis

Comparative Analysis

Introduction

Georgia Harkness (1891-1974), first woman to teach theology in an American seminary, had her head and her heart knit together. She fused sense and sensibility. At her insistence, her title, both at Garrett Theological Seminary and later at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, was Professor of Applied Theology. For Harkness, theological reflection issued in action.1

Among the many labels her interpreters have used to locate her in the history of twentieth-century theology, the most appropriate is "chastened liberal." She herself used that phrase in a 1939 article for The Christian Century on "How My Mind Has Changed in this Decade." Ten years earlier, in one of the first of her more than thirty books, Harkness had firmly declared her belief in human moral progress. "In spite of temporary eddies in human progress, such as the World War and its after effects," she wrote, "a long look over the past reveals a tremendous advance from the ideals and standards of former days."1 She rejoiced at the fact that the doctrine of original sin was fast disappearing. "The sooner it disappears, the better for theology," she commented. Now, on the; eve of the Second World War, Harkness declared that liberalism needed to be recalled to the meaning of the cross and the power of the resurrection. Although she still believed in liberalism, it was "a chastened and deepened liberalism." As she recognized, this change came about partly from her wrestling with continental theology. 1

Explantion

Marianne H. Micks is Professor Emerita of Biblical and Historical Theology at the Virginia Theological Seminary. Her most recent books are Loving the Questions: An Exploration of the Nicene Creed (1994) and Deep Waters: An Introduction to Baptism (1995).

Reading a selection of Harkness' many publications today is virtually to find a survey of theological currents in the first three quarters of this century. It is also to meet a Christian thinker with extraordinarily broad interests, one, who might well be called a Renaissance woman in that respect. I will explore just four of the diverse and ongoing concerns of this many-dimensioned theologian-her love of poetry, her ecumenical participation, her apparent fascination with eschatology, and finally, above all, her deep commitment to helping people understand the Christian faith. Although she did not speak of herself in this idiom, she was a powerful modern apologist, one who made theology accessible to the laity. All four of these themes are so interwoven in her writing that we will not be able to speak of zany of them in isolation. 1

In the autumn of 1951, for example, Harkness presented a paper to the West Coast theological discussion group of which she was a member while teaching at the Pacific School of Religion. She chose as her topic "Eschatology in the Great Poets." The paper was later published in the journal Religion in Life. In characteristic fashion, she first set forth a clear typology of six predominant forms of eschatological thought alive among Christians at that time and ...