Three German Beers and John Macquarrie

  Working through John Macquarrie’s God and Secularity in my last year at College in 1976 I came across his good natured jibe at John Robinson’s book Honest to God. ‘He’s taken three good German beers – [Bultmann, Bonhoeffer and Tillich] and produced a lot of froth’. Macquarrie’s death last week removed a significant, personally accessible theologian from our midst – and one from whom I’ve learned a great deal. He was born in Renfrew five miles from our house – and went to school less than a mile along the road from here, Paisley Grammar School.

The following comments are only my opinion, I’ve no interest at this stage in being critical, only appreciative. I’m simply reflecting my experience of learning amongst many things from this exiled Scottish theologian, the importance of bringing Christian faith into conversation with modern ways of thinking and living. His Twentieth Century Religious Thought remains a readable vade mecum of modern theology which I still browse – I took it on holiday with me in 1978! Jesus Christ in Modern Thought is one of the more substantial constructive Christologies I’ve read, combining critical systematic thought about Jesus with interest in contemporary appropriation of the core of Christian faith. I still remember reading through it during Lent. Principles of Christian Theology was the modern theology textbook of the 70’s and 80’s, and I still have the hardback revised edition. His Paths in Spirituality, with its treatment of ‘passionate thinking’ has long been an important reference point in my own spirituality, in which passionate intellect and reflective heart are necessary tensions. And God and Secularity is still one of the few books of pure theology I read as an undergraduate that I actually enjoyed – three beers, much froth! Indeed John!!

So another great Christian thinker goes where, perhaps, some of his most searching persistent questions will be answered – but since heaven is not supposed to be boring, may he find much more to enquire about there, and discover that demythologising has become a redundant hermeneutical principle, and existentialism is eclipsed by authentic existence! May he rest in peace.