Paul Heck

Associate Professor of Theology
Age: 46
Hometown: Boston, Mass.
Education: B.A. Harvard University, Classical Literature; M.St. Oxford University, Classical Literature; Ph.D. University of Chicago, Islamic Studies
Area of Research: Islamic Studies
Time at Georgetown: 10 years

What would you say the greatest challenge in your field would be?
The greatest challenge in my field would be to somehow connect the fields to people’s spiritual lives — connecting the knowledge to people’s self-knowledge. It happens, it sometimes happens, but it’s more accidental. So, the problem of God, of course it happens, you know people, they think deeply about these, and they take it very personally, but I mean, Georgetown, probably because of its Jesuit, Catholic tradition, probably cultivates that, but I’m thinking of the field in general, where there’s just great studies done of religion as this human phenomenon. But yeah, how to bring it into our own spiritual lives in appropriate ways. So getting beyond the idea that this is a body of knowledge that we can kind of categorize: This is how religion works in this society or that society or this place or that place. I think the U.S. is a nation indeed of theology, there’s just a lot of impoverished discourse on theology. Maybe a better way to put it is how to get really good theology into the public sphere, whether it’s for some nonbeliever or some deeply committed believer. Both among non-believers and believers, I find a certain impoverished theology such that some people believe that the world came into being 5000 years ago, and then you have some unbelievers who see religion as the consummate evil. Yeah, that’s what I would say, how to bring — not just theology, but real, profound theology into the nitty, gritty reality of the public square. That’s a challenge because they don’t have time for lengthy discussions; it has to be delivered accessibly, quickly: how to do that versus just loud noise, pundits knocking away. How can it be understood that theology has real relevance to our public interest, so that someday people would see that no less than having a good police force, good theology is vital to our public interests. 

Is there any memorable encounter with a student that comes to mind?
I had a student who was raised in a very scientific family, empiricism, spirituality wasn’t on his radar screen, and it was in a course on Islam. It wasn’t his religion, it wasn’t my religion, but we were reading these very humanistic, philosophical, spiritual texts and he kept resisting. He said, “What’s the worth of this?” Thanksgiving, it was a fall semester, I think three years ago, he comes in and he says to me, for the first time in my life, I realized I have a soul. Now I can’t take credit for that, but it happened in my course, but I think the course material and our discussions and his classmates all — it happened. Whatever it means to him, he can figure that out, whether it leads him into a church community, or into deeper spiritual, philosophical reflection of a kind. He has something inside of him that is not simply reducible to material — that was unexpected but just wonderful to hear. And I saw how eager he was, he realized that that discovery — for the rest of his life, he’s going to be thinking and pursuing and you know, it just opened up a whole new journey for his life. Just to have been able to witness that.

If you could teach one course that you haven’t been able to teach yet, what would it be?
A course on economics but bringing in the theological: looking at economics in terms of its transcendent meaning. So we would do all those serious economics, a genie would give me knowledge about economics so that I could teach as an expert in the standards of the field, I’m not talking about some vague wishy-washy thing, but yeah, that I can bring to it a theo-humanistic perspective. I could teach a course on economics in all its rigor according to the fields, but bring a theo-humanistic perspective on it. I wish I could have the talent, but I’d have to go back and get another doctorate; I don’t know if that’s going to happen. It’s such a fundamental part — economics is so fundamental to humans, what we do for our survival as individuals, as societies.

What’s something you wish more students would take away from your courses?
I do a lot to work on their writing skills; they already take that away. We all can improve but there’s a tendency among my students to say that they sharpened their writing skills a bit but what I’d have liked to see, and I’m sure it happens, but to see tangibly as from their first paper to their last paper is to see them take out of the class not answers but questions that they can pursue for the rest of their lives. I think that happens, but I can’t measure it. I hope it happens. I guess that’s what I’d like to see, that more than answers, they take questions away from the course, questions they’d never considered before, that are then questions for them to pursue for years to come.

Interview by David Chardack