After nine years at Glasgow, he moved in 1962 to be Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary, New York. He became known very widely and lectured all around the world. During this period he also changed his ecclesiastical allegiance and became an Anglican priest.
This was a gradual process influenced in two particular ways. In his book on spirituality he described the experience of attending the service of Benediction at the extreme Anglo-Catholic Church of St Andrew’s, Willesden Green, just after the war. From then on an Anglican Catholic spirituality began to imbue his life.
For many years he was a priest associate of the Order of the Holy Cross (an American Anglican Benedictine religious order).
The other influence was his colleague, John Knox, the New Testament theologian. Knox became convinced that episcopacy was an essential element in the continuing expression of “the Christ myth”. Knox became an Anglican, and Macquarrie followed him.
In 1968, when he had been an Anglican for only three years, Macquarrie was invited to be a consultant at the Lambeth Conference, a role he again took ten years later. In 1970 he was appointed Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford and Canon of Christ Church. After New York, he found Christ Church quaint and eccentric but attractive. He enjoyed its traditions and lifestyle. His and his wife’s friendship and hospitality were widely appreciated.
Macquarrie delivered the Gifford Lectures in 1979 and turned down the opportunity to become a bishop in the Scottish Episcopal Church. He served on the Church of England Doctrine Commission and was often engaged in ecumenical dialogue. In his Christian Unity and Christian Diversity (1975) he argued that both were needed in the Church. He could see a place for a reformed papacy in a united Church.
Although a theologian (and sometimes pretty impenetrable), he wrote some good practical things about using various non-essential devotional practices in order to be better prepared for worship on the Lord’s Day.
Rest eternal grant unto him, O Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon him.
I enjoyed Macquarrie’s “Princples of Christian Theology” and it was my Systematic Theology text and one of the texts for our apologetics class. The instructor for Apologetics said that our job was to “translate Macquarrie into English.”
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
I highly recommend his book on Mariology. Excellent introduction. He will be sorely missed.
He was a gripping lecturer: indeed I looked forward to his lectures as a treat. He was not merely on top of his subject matter: it was as if he had wrestled with it (like Jacob with the angel) until it had become part of his life. He had a gentle, delightful sense of humour that was never absent. He was one of the few theologians of his generation who was able to engage with the fashionable unorthodoxies without ever being seduced by them. I’d put him in the same league with Austin Farrer and EL Mascall.
Macquarrie’s book on existentialism made a rather difficult and dry subject accessible and useful. His Systematic Theology took that difficult system and appropriated it well into Christian thought.
This isn’t criticism of the Rev. Macquarrie, but the NY Times obituary read quite differently to me. It left me thinking “I wonder what they’re saying about him on TitusOneNine”. Do these bits just reflect the obituary writer’s preoccupations/limitations?
Which strikes me as rather less than one should say. I have no problem saying “Jesus is divine”… one wouldn’t seem to be able to correctly say less of a person of the Trinity.
And:
I would generally agree with this I think (depending though on what is meant by ultimate) or at least view it charitably, except for the “heretic” bit, which seems to indicate that we’re supposed to read it as being heretical.
#6. Was Macquarrie a perfect interpreter of the Gospel and Christian theology? Of course not. Was the system Macquarrie utilized (existentialism) a perfect structure for a modern Christian theology? Of course not. But Macquarrie, as all modern theologians must do, interpreted the ancient faith in the current categories of metaphysics (existentialism still offers much to the exegete and theologian, however out of date it may be), and not dogmatically maintain the categories of the ancient church.
Theology, if it intends to speak to the modern mind, must update its method, metaphysics, and message in a rational (criticisable) manner.
Mr Howard: I think the NYT obituary does not do justice to Macquarrie’s christology. When criticizing theologies that tended towards the denial of the divinity of Christ, Macquarrie typically sought their motivation in philosophical or hermeneutical presuppositions, and then proceeded to elucidate the problems and inadequacies of those philosophies and hermeneutics. Macquarrie was a fan of “christology from below” and I think it might be fair to say that he saw Chalcedon as an end-point, not a starting-point; but I do think that he intended to end up at Chalcedon.