Heup Young Kim (Korean: 김흡영; Hanja: 金洽榮; born January 1949) is a Korean Christian theologian and a scholar of East Asian religions, particularly Confucianism and Daoism (scholar). He specializes in Asian constructive theology, interfaith dialogue, religion and science (books), and is a leading proponent and architect of the Theology of Dao (Theo-dao), which integrates Christian theology with East Asian wisdom traditions. Kim is the founding director of the Korea Forum for Science and Life and was the Distinguished Asian Theologian in Residence at the Graduate Theological Union. He served as a Professor of Systematic Theology at Kangnam University in South Korea, where he also held positions as a dean of the College of Humanities and Liberal Arts, the Graduate School of Theology, and the University Chapel. Kim is one of the founding members and fellows of the International Society for Science and Religion and serves as an Advisor to the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology. He was a co-moderator of the 6th and 7th Congress of Asian Theologians and a past president of the Korean Society of Systematic Theology. In September 2022, Kim was invited as a reference person to the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches held in Karlsruhe, Germany. He also serves on the writing committee for the "Guideline on Confucianism" for the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue at the Vatican Holy See and participates in the Artificial Intelligence Asia Research Group at the Dicastery for Culture and Education Digital Centre.
Early life Heup Young Kim is from Museom Village in Yeongju, Gyeongsangbuk-do, South Korea. The village is recognized as a National Confucian Culture Preservation Village and is famous for its single-log bridge. His family’s ancestral mansion, Haeudang, has been designated a National Folk Heritage site. He attended Kyunggi High School, Korea's most prestigious high school, and graduated from the College of Engineering at Seoul National University. Kim began his professional career as an airplane engineer with Korean Air Lines before transitioning to the corporate sector, joining the Planning Office of Daewoo Corporation. During South Korea's rapid economic growth in the 1970s, he worked as the New York City representative for Samhwa Corporation, a general trading company specializing in importing and exporting goods. During this period, Kim underwent a profound religious conversion from Confucianism to Christianity. This transformative experience led him to leave his corporate career and pursue theological studies, laying the foundation for his influential work in theology and interfaith dialogue.
Academic life Heup Young Kim earned an M.Div. and Th.M. from Princeton Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) in Berkeley, California, under the guidance of theologian Claude Welch. His academic work spans Asian constructive theology, interreligious dialogue, comparative theology, and the intersection of science and religion. Kim has held prestigious research and fellowship positions, including serving as a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University and the Center for Interdisciplinary Study of Monotheistic Religions at Doshisha University. He has also been a visiting fellow at the Centre for Advanced Religious and Theological Studies at the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford, as well as a visiting scholar at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS) at the Graduate Theological Union. Throughout his career, Kim has received numerous honors, including the Graduate Theological Union Alum of the Year award in 2009, a Global Perspectives on Science and Spirituality research grant (2005–2006), a John Templeton Research Grant (2004–2005), and the Most Distinguished Research Professor Award from Kangnam University in 2003. Kim has published extensively in the areas of interfaith dialogue, theology of religions, Asian theology, and science and religion. His notable works include monographs such as Wang Yang-ming and Karl Barth: A Confucian-Christian Dialogue (1996), Christ and the Tao (2003), and A Theology of Dao (2017). He has contributed chapters to several influential volumes, including *The Cambridge Companion to the Trinity[1](2011), Religion and Transhumanism: The Unknown Future of Human Enhancement (2015), Many Yet One? Multiple Religious Belonging (2016), The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Ecology (2017), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Nature (2018), The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Korea (2022), The T&T Clark Handbook to the Doctrine of Creation (2024), and New Confucian Horizons: Essays in Honor of Tu Weiming (2024). These scholarly contributions culminate in Kim’s development of Theodao, a comprehensive theological framework that addresses pressing global issues through the integration of Christian theology and East Asian wisdom traditions.
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