Existential Anglican

...Macquarrie's grandfather was a native Gaelic speaker who had come from the island of Islay to work on the Clydeside, and his father was a skilled shipyard worker...

...Macquarrie was appointed to a lectureship in theology at Glasgow in 1953, where he was known among students and colleagues for his unpreten-tiousness and clarity of style, whether discussing world religions, theology, Heidegger, or British philosophy of language...

...In 1970 they took up residence in the medieval Priory House in Christ Church, the college to which his professorship was attached...

...On our last day, which happened to be Ian's 87th (and last) birthday, we brought a cake, lit a candle, and sang Happy Birthday...

...In 1943 Macquarrie volunteered in the Royal Army Chaplaincy Department where, following the war, he was given responsibility for organizing services for large numbers of German prisoners of war being held in camps in the Middle East...

...The appointment to Union, however, marked a new beginning, and Macquarrie and his family soon began attending a small Episcopal church on 126th Street at the edge of Harlem...

...His fair and informed expositions, his critical but judicious analyses, and his quiet, unassuming manner led students to identify him as "an existentialist without angst...

...and to the extent this is true, the move to New York may have been one...

...The occasion was the publication by SCM Press of a collection of articles by students, friends, and colleagues celebrating the golden jubilee of one of its most distinguished authors...

...If, he argues, humans are creatures of, and dependent upon, God, then this should show itself in a study of the human...

...Macquarrie was less enthusiastic about his studies in divinity, saying that, at the time, he found the theology of John Calvin and Karl Barth insufferable, and dogmatic theology little more than systematic nonsense...

...In 1965 he was ordained to the diaconate, and then to the priesthood, feeling (as he said at the time) a real sense of spiritual renewal...

...My wife and I last visited the Mac-quarries almost exactly a year ago...

...John's wife, Jenny, began teaching mathematics at the Cathedral School while Ian (as John was known to family and friends) attracted students from all over the world...

...class honors degree in mental philosophy...

...Soon after, Macquarrie and Edward Robinson were invited to translate Heidegger's Being and Time, arguably the most important (as well as the most difficult) work in German philosophy in the 20th century...

...During his career, Macquarrie published more than 30 books and numerous articles...

...He was released from the Army in 1947 and, while serving as a minister in the ancient city of Brechin, began research for his doctoral thesis at Glasgow under the direction of Ian Henderson, a graduate in philosophy and a pioneer in the English-speaking world on the work of the great German biblical theologian Rudolf Bultmann...

...This was a perfect fit for a person of Macquarrie's background and training and his doctoral dissertation became his first book, An Existentialist Theology: A Comparison of Heidegger and Bultmann (1955...

...Further, if we can show that humanity points beyond itself to transcendent reality, we can show where the word "God" appears on the map of meaningful discourse...

...Macquarrie's conception of God or "holy being," developed in conversation with Martin Heidegger's understanding of being, aligns him with the tradition of the Church Fathers...

...It has been, and continues to be, used in theological seminaries of many denominations in many parts of the world...

...These works, along with The Scope of Demythologizing (1960), quickly established Macquarrie as a leading authority in contemporary German existential philosophy and theology...

...It was his Celtic heritage, Macquarrie said, that initially drew him away from what he considered the rather dreary evangelical Protestantism of his early years to the more catholic tradition that he found in the "High Kirk" movement in the Church of Scotland, and later in the Anglican communion...

...The first part of Principles is devoted to his proposal for a new style of natural theology that would press back beyond the traditional arguments for the existence of God of natural theology to examine the convictions behind them...

...Macquarrie retains the traditional purpose of natural theology—to bridge the gap between our ordinary, everyday knowledge and the knowledge of faith—but he uses a phenom-enological or descriptive method which, beginning from the experience of our common humanity, seeks to show the structures and experiences that lie at the root of the life of faith...

...Bradley, and found Bradley's idea of the supra-rational Absolute very congenial and compatible with his own, somewhat pantheistic religiosity...

...Campbell, the well-known Scottish philosopher and Gifford Lecturer, Macquarrie was particularly drawn to the work of the great English idealist philosopher FH...

...His steady output of scholarly works continued, including most notably In Search of Humanity (1982), followed by the Gifford Lectures at St...

...From the age of 17 he had been drawn to the Anglican communion but, out of deference to his parents, was reluctant to make the change...

...In the midst of this he was offered the Lady Margaret Professorship of Divinity at Oxford, the oldest chair of divinity in the English-speaking world...

...Oxford also provided Macquarrie a context for concentrating on some of the traditional doctrinal elements of Christianity, including the nature of doctrine itself, the sacraments, and the place of Mary in the Christian tradition...

...Macquarrie graduated in 1940 from the University of Glasgow with a first Eugene Thomas Long, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of South Carolina, is the author of Existence, Being and God: An Introduction to the Philosophical Theology of John Macquarrie...

...A canon in Christ Church Cathedral, he could often be found in his retirement years reading the Gospel in his neighborhood parish, his voice still reflecting his early years in Renfrew, a small town along the River Clyde a few miles from Glasgow...

...Students were discontented, the faculty became divided, summer examinations had to be cancelled, and radical students occupied offices...

...Macquarrie said that some of his best years were at Union Seminary, but with the Vietnam war something of a crisis emerged at the seminary...

...The Macquarries took to the eccentricities of Oxford, and settled in quickly...

...One of his most important works, Principles of Christian Theology, was begun at Glasgow and completed in New York in 1966...

...Although reluctant to leave New York, the Macquarries visited Oxford in 1969 to assess the situation...

...Given that the Glasgow chair holders at the time were relatively young, it is not surprising that other universities were interested, and in 1962, he accepted an invitation to become professor of systematic theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York...

...He shares some common ground with American philosophers and theologians who speak of themselves as panenthe-ists...

...When it was later explained that the crisis had to do with neighbors threatening legal action because the baying of the college hunting beagles was keeping them awake at night, Macquarrie whispered to his wife, "I think I could live with this kind of crisis...

...Macquarrie believed that the whole authority structure was breaking down, and anything in the way of academic activity became virtually impossible...

...These interests were often related to a long-term interest in Christian unity which, he argued, should not exclude diversity...

...He considered his life to be a series of fortunate accidents, he often said...

...He continued lecturing and publishing on philosophical and theological topics long after retirement, and his last book, Two Worlds are Ours: An Introduction to Christian Mysticism, was published three years ago...

...He was attracted to Rudolf Otto's classic, The Idea of the Holy, which resonated with his Celtic heritage, with its emphasis on the sense of the presence of God...

...In addition to the presentation at the Deanery in Christ Church, we had a Sunday lunch in a nearby pub and a quiet dinner at the Macquarries' home...

...But he diverges from classical theism in his emphasis on the temporality of God and the intimate relation between God and the world...

...But he prefers to use the expression "dialectical theism" to make it clear that, while he seeks to avoid the one-sided-ness of classical theism and the difficulties it brings with it, his view is a species of theism, and closer to theism than pantheism...

...A student of C.A...

...He was also fascinated by a course of lectures on Buddhism...

...Having been told that the official who was to show them around Christ Church would be delayed because of a crisis in the college, the Macquarries feared they might be leaping from the frying pan into the fire...

...Walking the boundary between existential philosophy and Christian theology, Macquarrie was a mediator between the secular and the religious, between contemporary culture and religious faith...

...Sometimes referred to as a progressive, or even a radical, in theology he was more traditional in church practice, always emphasizing the importance of consensus while respecting diverse views...

...by Eugene Thomas Long "ohm Macquarrie, one of the most influential and prolific theologians of the 20th century, died May 29, a few weeks short of his 88th birthday...

...He had a significant impact on the thinking of theologians and priests, but he was also an inspiration to many among the laity who read his work or attended his public lectures...

...A third book, Jesus Christ in Modern Thought (1990), published after his retirement, completed this important trilogy...

...Macquarrie always hoped for closer relations between the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, but he insisted that the important question was not what separates Anglicans from Romans but what separates Romans and Anglicans within the Church to which they both belong...

...Andrews University, published as In Search of Deity (1984...