As one gets older, one becomes increasingly aware of individuals who happen to be featured on the obituary page. I learned last month from an obit item in The New York Times, complete with photograph, that the Scottish theologian John Macquarrie had died in Oxford, England, at age 87.
I would suspect that many of my readers are not familiar with the name --- which is no reflection on them. Although John Macquarrie was a first-class theologian, he did not enjoy the celebrity status of a Karl Rahner or an Yves Congar, on the Catholic side, or of a Karl Barth or a Paul Tillich, on the Protestant side.
Macquarrie, however, played a significant role in my own formation as a theologian. I have 15 of his books on my personal library shelves, including two editions of his signature volume, "Principles of Christian Theology," which I had used as a text for graduate-level courses when I was teaching at Boston College in the 1970s.
Because of the book's insufficient historical and doctrinal content and its existentialist approach to the major theological issues, it was not completely suited to a predominantly Catholic student-body. At the time, however, it was the best available book of its kind.
The limitations of this otherwise excellent volume were partly responsible for my decision to write a compendium of my own, which I came to entitle simply "Catholicism" (originally published in 1980). I had hoped that it might better satisfy the needs of Catholic graduate-level students as well as intelligent non-specialists, without, however, sacrificing an important ecumenical dimension.
Now-Cardinal Avery Dulles once cited the writings of John Macquarrie in his defense of my "Catholicism" book at a meeting of the U.S. Bishops' Committee on Doctrine in October 1982. Dulles made the point that, if my book did not exist, there would be no comparable work available to Catholic readers other than Macquarrie's "Principles of Christian Theology."
Noting that "Catholicism" was already being adopted as a text in college and graduate-level courses in theology, he described it as "very moderate in tone," "not prone to ridicule," and as successful in diffusing "the anger and resentment that some people feel that authority in the Church is always oppressive. It takes a basically positive view toward authority, and takes quite seriously the theological implication that is presented by faithful conciliar teaching."
"The alternatives," then-Father Dulles continued, "are so infinitely worse that really, one has to deal with the best one has. In many colleges they were using books by John MacQuarrie [sic] as their theological textbook. And I would hate to go back to that.
"I would respect John MacQuarrie as a theologian very much, I think he is a brilliant man, but nevertheless he is far from Catholic doctrine in his doctrine of God, it seems to me, and a mixture of Heidegger and high Church Anglicanism is not a satisfactory textbook, and yet you didn't have anything better until McBrien's 'Catholicism' came out."
This week's column, however, is not intended to be about my "Catholicism" except as a context for the place and significance of John Macquarrie, not only in the field of Christian theology, but in my own theological development as well.
I had admired his work so much that I asked to meet with him. He was teaching at the time at the Union Theological Seminary, a prestigious, non-denominational institution in New York City. It was during his years in the United States that he had decided to change from the Scottish Presbyterianism of his youth to Anglicanism, largely because of the attraction of its liturgical life.
Macquarrie agreed immediately to see me and offered his apartment at Union Seminary as our meeting place. I was much younger then and needed all the sound mentoring I could get. John Macquarrie offered it generously and wisely.
One bit of encouragement has had its effect to this very day. I had recently begun a weekly column for various Catholic papers and wondered if it was a mistake to invest so much time and effort in popularizing academic theology. He unhesitatingly insisted that theologians have a responsibility to share the fruits of theological scholarship with a wider and increasingly educated public.
I took John Macquarrie at his word and have not looked back. This week's column, in tribute to him, appears on the 41st anniversary of its inauguration in early July, 1966.
Today's column also honors Avery (now Cardinal) Dulles, for whom I have the highest personal and professional respect, and to whom I shall always be grateful for his support and encouragement when it really counted some 25 years ago. Father Richard P. McBrien is the Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.
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