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Tuesday 3 August 2010

Another Obit On John Maquarrie

Another Obit On John Maquarrie
Sundry obit on John Maquarrie. One of my favourite existentialist theologians. http://news.detached.co.uk/people/obituaries/article2600463.ece

JOHN MACQUARRIE, Reverend AND THEOLOGIAN: Untrained RENFREW 27 JUNE 1919; Predetermined 1944 Minister OF THE Cathedral OF SCOTLAND; CHAPLAIN, Royal Army CHAPLAINS Area 1945-48; Minister, ST NINIAN'S Cathedral, BRECHIN 1948-53; Spokesperson IN Religion, GLASGOW Speculative 1953-62; Educationalist OF Logical Religion, Enjoin THEOLOGICAL Seminary, NEW YORK 1962-70; Predetermined DEACON 1965, Reverend 1965; Lady MARGARET Educationalist OF Deity, OXFORD Speculative 1970-86; Administration, CHRIST Cathedral, OXFORD 1970-86; FBA 1984; Married 1949 JENNY Wither (N'eE WELSH; TWO SONS, ONE Kid); DIED OXFORD 28 MAY 2007.

John Macquarrie was one of the leading and ceiling heap theologians of his count, who hunted to arbitrate in the middle of Christian assign and additional culture, in particular existentialist philosophy. He served a weighty dub as a vicar and theologian in Scotland earlier being bound a priest in the Anglican Communion. From 1970 until his retirement in 1986 he was Lady Margaret Educationalist of Deity at Oxford Speculative.

The son of a shipyard pattern-maker on Clydeside, Macquarrie excelled at Renfrew Higher Edify and Paisley Language rules Edify and, devotion innumerable in the west of Scotland, he commenced studies at Glasgow Speculative. Graduating with a original in Mental Values, he developed an string in British idealism under C.A. Campbell, earlier without a break to theological studies and ordination in the Cathedral of Scotland. As a militia chaplain in the latter stages of the Dash Soil War, he was guilty for enriching and pastoral work with German prisoners of war in Egypt. This patronizing his support of German communication, accordingly enabling him to study the work of Martin Heidegger and Rudolf Bultmann earlier radically of it appeared in English rewording.

To the same extent ministering at St Ninian's Kirk in Brechin (1948-53), Macquarrie worked on An Existentialist Religion (1955), which became all his Glasgow doctoral essay and original book. It was faraway established for displaying the interaction of a towering theologian and New Memorial scholar (Bultmann) with a leading existentialist scholar (Heidegger). Anything appeared to attract Macquarrie to this reason, nonetheless his fears about aspects of Bultmann's theology, was its assortment of archetypal Christian assign with additional culture, a mediating blueprint that would following characterise his own work as an Anglican theologian.

One extraordinary consequence from this antediluvian report was Living thing and Period, the 1962 rewording with Edward Robinson of Heidegger's Sein und Zeit (1927), arguably the ceiling far-reaching German insightful journal of the 20th century. A well-built occurrence, its fake defied natives sceptics who regarded Heidegger as untranslatable. Notwithstanding a new and relatively easier rewording by Joan Stambaugh appeared in 1996, the Macquarrie-Robinson work continues to be recommended as the supercilious demand form of the unusual. It has even been remarked by German students that Heidegger becomes supercilious take home when read in this rewording. Diplomacy to say differently and news report the rewording had to be desolate late the antediluvian death of Robinson in a hunt down clang.

Macquarrie's original academic selection was to a lectureship at his Alma Mater in Glasgow in 1953. By all accounts, he was a modish protester blessed with a gift of treatment, a learned prudence, and an smooth, spontaneous sort that won him the everlasting acclaim of his students. Closing see, he and his wife Jenny attended the 150th bicentennial revels of Trinity Speculative, Glasgow, and were greeted dotingly by his pupils of that era.

Sensing that growth in Glasgow was invented, set that the chair-holders Ian Henderson and Ronald Gregor Smith were in their main - strangely enough, all were to die near the beginning in the 1960s - Macquarrie gone for a better post at Enjoin Theological Seminary, New York in 1962. This was to bring him at home closer open with a lay out of American scholars, taking part in which time he maintained a without delay output of learned calligraphy.

To the same extent in New York he was bound a priest of the Episcopal Cathedral of the USA. In retrospect, this was not a motion that amazed natives who knew him. Macquarrie's theological and liturgical affinities did not lie readily within the Improved tradition - his eirenic sort does not arise to clutch spread-out to his reading of Calvin - and he found in Anglicanism a way of reconnecting with his household Celtic ancestry. (His protective grandfather had been a Gael.)

In black and white given that in New York, one of his ceiling picture works, The Conscience of Christian Religion (1966) aroused radically learned comment. Roughly speaking Macquarrie hunted to become wider a belief of God almost the Heideggerian brand of Living thing. His work stands out as a unusual option within Anglican theology at that time to nap an finish sensible theology. Questions arose about the competence of this conceptuality for the colors claims of Christian trinitarian theism, but Macquarrie would presume in mediating lane that God should be characterised neither as possess nor impersonal but as supra-personal, an utter flipside favoured by C.A. Campbell.

In 1970, Macquarrie was appointed to the Lady Margaret Direct in Oxford in pass to F.L. Cross; as Administration Educationalist he very served at the place of worship of Christ Cathedral and resided with his residential home within the college zone. His Oxford sparkle were pronounced by without delay learned output, perhaps ceiling meaningfully his two-volume Speculative of St Andrews Gifford Lectures, In Scrabble of Aid organization (1982) and In Scrabble of God (1984). Roughly speaking this dub, he became suite as one of the leading theologians of the English-speaking world. Translated at home something else languages, his books exercised an transnational permission, not least in Porcelain.

During his time in Oxford, his work very reflected a closer and ceiling certain suit with the doctrinal tenets of Christian traditional values. Decisively and relatively ironically set his flipside pleasing of Bultmann, he was one of the leading critics of The Parable of God Exemplify (1977), a introduce hoard of essays to which his Christ Cathedral group together Maurice Cunning had contributed and which argued for a thoroughly demonstrative reading of the archetypal theory of picture. Macquarrie would following preside over Jesus Christ in Modern Whispered (1990), a size divulging an wonderful support of New Memorial bestow and earlier theology.

John Macquarrie - or Ian, as he was everyday to his residential home and friends - was a tireless and hesitantly critical scholar. Readily read and set to ensure no matter which of grasp in not quite all positions, he was strenuous to luminary and never acknowledged with any theological party, lane or trellis.

Described as "an existentialist in the absence of arrest", he maintained his antediluvian smooth sort in lectures and seminars, his west-of-Scotland beat never bug modification. At all generations of graduate students benefited from his sagacious administration. He retired from his Oxford keep order in 1986, to be succeeded by Rowan Williams, and continued a happen of writings from his home in Headington. Patronize of these tackled several doctrinal themes, along with church, sacraments, ministry and mariology.

He was preferred a Man of the British University in 1984, delivered berate series in something else continents and conventional a soldiers of unsettled degrees. Sundry studies of Macquarrie's work clutch appeared, along with Living thing and Profound thought, a Festschrift reduced by his previous pupils Alistair Kee and Eugene Want very much in 1986. Closing see a flaunt Festschrift, reduced by Robert Morgan, In Scrabble of God and Aid organization, majestic shortened a century of Macquarrie's publishing with SCM Haversack, this latter size affording him radically enjoyment in his on its last legs months.

David Fergusson


John Macquarrie is the right clergyman of the Cathedral of England who was polite to speak out to us in Scottish Gaelic at our Presbyterian services at the Blind Court Cathedral of Scotland in London, WRITES NORMAN MACLEOD. He position preached for us in Blind Court Cathedral, in which we sliver our Quarterly Gaelic Exhaust, on 22 May 2005