Horton Outlines General Expansion; Florovsky to Join Divinity Faculty

The Divinity School is planning to expand its faculty once more and to begin inquiries into the relation of religion to business, medicine, psychology, and other secular fields, Dean Douglas Horton announced last night.

A number of new appointments in the coming months will constitute the Divinity School's second major expansion since it began its development program two years ago, Dean Horton said. These new faculty members will carry the School further into such subjects as theology, church history, Old Tostament studies, Christian ethics, and religious education, he added.

Speaking in Harkness Commons at the annual banquet of the Divinity School Alumni Association, Dean Horton revealed plans for extending the School's activities into fields normally regarded as secular. He said he hoped to obtain faculty members who would study the relation between religion and paychology, so that the modern church could "borrow the techniques of mental health."

"Desperate Need"

Dean Horton also proposed the establishment of a series of Institutes, at which laymen and theologians will discuss the message of religion for specific areas of life in the world. Such programs would establish "a desperately needed contact," he said, for at present "a gulf exists between the two worlds, academic and non-academic, nowhere more noticeable nor more painful than in the Church."

In regard to expanding the activities and interests of the Divinity School faculty, Dean Horton proposed "inter-disciplinary courses such as Religion and the Arts, Religion and Business, Religon and Law, Religion and Medicine, and the like, which would be open both to our own students and to students of the other Graduate Schools."

Although Dean Horton made no mention of University Professor Paul J. Tillich, Tillich has been a reader in exploring the relation of religion to such various aspects of secular culture. The German theologian, who joined the faculty last fall, is currently giving an undergraduate course on "Religion and Culture," and is especially interested in the religious side of such fields as depth psychology.

Dean Horton, in proposing that the Divinity School lead in establishing the various inter-disciplinary courses, pointed out that "Theology used to be called the Queen of the Sciences: perhaps by such a ramified ministry as this it could lend the University a certain spiritual unity and so qualify in our modern day and in a modern way for the appellation."

The most prominent Greek Orthodox theologian in the country will join the Divinity School faculty next month, Dean Horton announced yesterday. The Rt. Rev. Georges Florovsky, former dean of St. Vladimir's Theological Seminary in New York, will assume his post as Lecturer on Eastern Church History on Feb. 1.

Horton also revealed the promotion of Professor Amos N. Wilder to the Hollis Professorship of Divinity, the oldest endowed university chair in the country. Wilder, an authority on the New Testament, succeeds Henry J. Cadbury, who retired in 1954.

An authority on the early Greek church fathers and Russian religious trends, Father Florovsky is most noted for his work in the ecumenical movement for unity among Christian churches. He is a member of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches and a vice-president at large of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.

Father Florovsky, who was born and educated in Russia, taught in Prague and Paris before coming to this country in 1948. He has taught at Columbia, Union Theological Seminary, and Boston University. He is the author of "The Ways of Russian Theology," "Eastern Fathers of the Fourth Century," and "Byzantine Fathers, V-VIII Centuries."

Wilder, the new Hollis Professor, is not only a Biblical scholar, but also an authority on modern poetry. He has been on the Divinity School faculty since 1954.