John Macquarrie: A Master of Theology

John Macquarrie: A Master of Theology Owen Cummings Paulist, $14.95, 152 pp.

John Macquarrie would not know me, but I remember him as a most welcome summer-school teacher at Notre Dame. We served together on several oral exam committees, where he exhibited, in his soft Scots burr, gentleness with students as well as a radiant love for theology. Macquarrie is now in his eighties, so Owen Cummings, a fellow Scot, gives us a resume of Macquarrie's theological life as a kind of act of pietas to celebrate one of the great Christian thinkers of our age. Born in Scotland and once a Presbyterian pastor (Macquarrie was later ordained an Anglican priest), he has had a distinguished academic career on both sides of the Atlantic. Macquarrie has the peculiar gift, as his longtime editor John Bowden once said of him, of being a "successful mediator between the academic world and the parishes in producing a believing form of academic theology."

Cummings gives us a general introduction to Macquarrie's life and works, and then surveys his contributions to theology, ranging from his doctrine of God to his understanding of the life of prayer. Cummings is particularly good in tracing how Macquarrie has changed his mind over the decades, how he relates to his theological partners in and outside the Anglican church, and how his critics have reacted to his theological ideas and proposals.

Many influences have shaped Macquarrie's theology. He owes a debt to German existentialism in general and, for a time, the thinking of Bultmann in particular. His own background as a member of the Reformed Church and later as an Anglican has given him wide scope to explore the Reformation and its various trajectories. His allegiance to the Catholic wing of Anglicanism gave him a broad sympathy for Catholic theology. Finally, as an ecumenically sensitive theologian, he knew how to speak to others. That capacious background allowed Macquarrie to articulate theological reflections on everything from papal infallibility to Mariology, in which he exhibited both a keen sympathy and a critical edge.

I am much taken with Macquarrie's Paths in Spirituality, which is a fine work and especially good on prayer. Cummings thinks he bears a theological resemblance to Karl Rahner (a theologian much admired by Macquarrie) in this area.

Who might wish to read this hommage to the life and works of John Macquarrie? Certainly, those who have attended his classes and lectures or read his books. This would also be a good read for those who would like to get an overview of a theologian who, at his best, is the good theological householder bringing forth "old things and new." Cummings has kindly provided a bibliography of Macquarrie's books. As the British Dominican Aidan Nichols has written, an orthodox Roman Catholic "can recognize in him [Macquarrie] with but little effort a `separated doctor' of the Catholic Church."

Lawrence S. Cunningham is the John A. O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.

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