At the beginning of this ceremony I would like to express my gratitude to Dean William A. Graham for his ongoing interest in Harvard Theological Review and for his generosity in helping us to organize this Centennial Anniversary.
I am pleased to welcome you here to Harvard Divinity School, in that place where one hundred years ago some professors of this Faculty launched a new periodical, Harvard Theological Review. I express my welcome to you, Helmut Koester, former editor, to Bunn Thompson and Marianne Palmer Bonz, former managing editors, to the members of the editorial board, to the authors present here, to the copy editors, typesetters, proofreaders, and just readers over the years.
It is impossible to start without a thought and a prayer for Krister Stendahl, former editor of HTR, who is not able to participate due to his severe illness.Footnote 1
I cannot start either without mentioning Dr. Margaret Studier, who has been the soul and the body, the Martha and the Mary of this event. My gratitude is immense toward her. She selected the room, the food, and the paper of the program, if not the arrangement of this room. She is also and first of all the indispensable present managing editor of HTR.
I have to confess to you that as a young professor at the University of Geneva (Switzerland) at John Calvin's and Theodore Beza's divinity school I did not know much about American theological education and research. Educated in Europe, I knew that Karl Barth disagreed with Paul Tillich, but I had little awareness of Harvard Divinity School. But I knew very well one of the oldest periodicals of the United States, the Harvard Theological Review, which I read at the University of Geneva Public Library on the Salon Bonivard. Its subscription continues today and it is still available there.
I was the delegate of the University of Geneva to the board of the Ecumenical Institute of Bossey, Céligny close to Geneva, where I met Krister Stendahl, Dean of Harvard Divinity School, also a member of this board. I realized then how small my world was and how large and influential Harvard and its Dean were! Then, during a meeting of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas in Basel, where we both spent some years along the Rhine river, I met James M. Robinson and he introduced me to Helmut Koester at the famous Café Spillmann. That was the beginning of my connections with Harvard. During my first visit in 1988 I met Harvey G. Cox and was pleased to tell him that the French translation of The Secular City was on the list of the required readings of one of my colleagues in Pastoral Theology. I was surprised then that he was still teaching and he still is today!
A scholarly periodical is a strange animal. It is very fragile: if suddenly three hundred people no longer subscribe, this is the end of the adventure. The price of the dollar or the level of the Dow Jones average, a change in the religious climate or the humor of the editorial board can also put HTR in danger. But a periodical is also strong, for it appeals to feelings and passions, not only to little grey cells. Members of the editorial board can defend a title with the greatest energy. Others, as volunteers, can devote hundred of hours to assure its survival. Weakness and strength are, therefore, two marks of any scholarly journal.
What we observe and celebrate today, however, is still another quality of HTR: continuity—1908–2008. As we say in French, “bon an, mal an,” as we say here in the liturgy of marriage “in good times and in bad,” during all these years Harvard Divinity School found people, authors, editors, and managing editors who were willing to publish regularly four issues per year.
To secure continuity—needed then and still today, really indispensable—demonstrates not only the characteristic American virtue of “determination,” but also scholarly “adaptation.” Intellectual life, theology in particular, has changed in the last hundred years. The study of religion has not remained the same. HTR has had to accept or, better, to provoke changes, in the field of religion and theology, in methods, in persons.
Adaptation was needed also in another way. The twentieth century has been the century of specialization. One is no longer a New Testament scholar, but a Johannine scholar, not a Medievalist but an expert in the Glossa ordinaria. The trouble is that specialization does not curb another phenomenon, the enlarging of the fields. Harvard has now many specialists in Buddhism, while one person was enough in 1908 to cover the all of the non-Christian religions.
I remember a conversation with Michel de Certeau, who had been invited as visiting professor by my Faculty in Geneva. I mentioned to him his work as editor of Jean-Joseph Surin. He looked at me and told me: “I like higher criticism but I appreciate also a critical apparatus. This is the manual side of our intellectual work.” To publish a scholarly periodical belongs also to that manual side of scholarship. It is important to avoid typos, to be correct with a Greek quotation, to avoid mistakes in foreign titles, to fix punctuation. But, of course, it is also a priority to know the difference between a good paper and an exceptional contribution. In the editorial work of a periodical, lower criticism cohabits, therefore, with higher criticism.
This morning our perspective will be retrospective: what was the religious, theological, and intellectual life at Harvard like in the beginning of the 20th century? Professor Peter J. Gomes will help us to gain a clearer vision concerning that time. Dr. Fay A. Martineau, who is responsible for the creation of a large index of the hundred volumes of HTR, due to an important grant of the Carpenter Foundation, will provide us a glimpse into her impressive collection. Then, Professor Helmut Koester, editor of HTR for many years, will discuss the special case of New Testament and religion in Antiquity to help us to understand what has changed in the last hundred years.
This afternoon our perspective will keep our interest in HTR's past, but will add the possible prospective dimension for us to ponder. David C. Lamberth has chosen the title, “Original and Ongoing Theological Issues through 100 Years of HTR.” Francis X. Clooney will entertain us with the topic, “The Future of Harvard Theological Review in a Global and Interreligious Age.” All of the contributions presented today will constitute the core of a special issue of HTR in the Fall of 2008.
In conclusion I reiterate my gratitude to everyone who has helped in the preparations for this day of celebration.
I am pleased to introduce now the Rev. Professor Peter J. Gomes, who is my pastor at Memorial Church as he is the minister of many Harvard people—the man who, like Ulysses, has a thousand honorary tours in his pocket, the famous preacher and the one who keeps memories alive at Harvard. He will take us for a walk through Harvard in 1908, in the time of our grand- or great-grandparents. Please join with me in welcoming Professor Gomes.
