For over 50 years C.F.D. Moule, Lady Margaret’s Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University from 1951 to 1976, held a pivotal place in the discipline of New Testament studies, retaining a position of critical orthodoxy in the midst of a maelstrom of contradictory voices.
Known to generations of students and friends as Charlie, he was small in stature and lean of frame and bore more than a faint resemblance to the Wind in the Willows Mole, with his ageless sharp features, small, round tortoiseshell-framed spectacles, the twinkle in his eye and head slightly leaning to one side.
The Lady Margaret’s Chair is the oldest of the Cambridge Divinity Chairs, being founded in 1502, and is traditionally filled by a New Testament scholar (its previous holders include Erasmus, J.B. Lightfoot and F.J.A. Hort). Moule brought to the Chair great distinction both by his scholarship and character, holding together in sharp focus profound learning with a deep sense of Christian vocation. With characteristic diffidence he wrote in his book The Holy Spirit (1978):
Words are feeble things ”“ never adequate for the job; yet priceless things ”“ seldom dispensable. They are dangerous things, for they are so fascinating that they tempt the user to linger with them and treat them as ends instead of means. But the Word became flesh; and a word that is not in some way implemented goes sour and becomes a liability instead of an asset.
In the company of scholars from a wide variety of backgrounds from the last century such as Vincent Taylor, T.W. Manson, C.H. Dodd, W.D. Davies, Matthew Black and Barnabas Lindars, Moule combined scrupulous attention to detail with common sense.
Read it all. He was not only a great scholar but a remarkably generous man. In 1993 I wrote and asked him if he would be willing to read a draft chapter of my doctoral dissertation at Oxford (the chapter was on John A.T. Robinson, one his colleagues at Cambridge about whom he was especially knowledgeable). He agreed. At that time in his late 80’s, within a week came a beautifully hand written three page response. It was incisive and helpful–KSH.
A great loss. Many years ago I read his [i]Origin of Christology[/i]. I can’t pretend to remember it well, but it had a great (and as I recall helpful) effect on me at the time. His [i]Idiom Book of the New Testament[/i] is a great resource.
He represented a type of Anglican scholar priest now rare in England and extinct over here. From and evangelical home and tradition, he was able to comprehend the wider breadth of Anglicanism while never forsaking his reverence for the Word made Flesh and the Word of God written. That he taught and inspired the present archbishops of Canterbury and York is testimony enough.
I am shocked, yes shocked, that an Oxford man would have dealings with someone from The Other Place.
LOL.
I was a research student at Clare College from 1978 to 1984 and had occasion to speak on two or three occasions. In 1998 I was in Pevensey when i happened to see an elderly man walking by me in the road. I thought that I recognized him, noticed that he as wearing a Clare College tie, and then it came to me. I ran up to him, greeted him, mentioned my name. He asked what I had studued at Clare, and when I said “History” he replied, weren’t you one of Geoffrey Elton’s students — which I was.
Charlie Moule is being greatly grieved here at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, where he was a student, a tutor, and Vice-Principal. He was also related to Handley Moule, the first Principal here. I hope in the next few days there will be a fuller appreciation of his contribution on the Ridley Hall website (www.ridley.cam.ac.uk)