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Revelation and Reason: Theological Epistemology in John Macquarrie’s Thought

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2020

Stephen R. Burge
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Abstract

John Macquarrie’s contribution to Anglican systematic theology has been long acknowledged and his impact is still being felt both within and outside Anglicanism. His existentialist theology, with its roots in German philosophy, as well as Christian mysticism, can at times seem quite distant from ‘traditional’ Anglican theology, but when his way of engaging in theological reflection is examined closely, his epistemology does not appear to be as remote from the ‘traditional’ Anglican hermeneutic of Scripture, tradition reason as it might seem at first sight. This article will argue that Macquarrie’s epistemology is rooted in the Anglican three-fold hermeneutic inherited from Richard Hooker, albeit in a way that is adapted for the modern age. In some respects, Macquarrie’s hermeneutic is a development of Hooker’s ‘three-legged stool’, but a ‘stool’ that has been heavily renovated in light of, and in response to, the existentialist crisis seen in continental philosophy from Søren Kierkegaard onwards. Macquarrie offers a resolution to the tension between individual and corporate identities, and his epistemology may offer Anglican thought a means of negotiating some controversial contemporary theological issues.

Keywords

Christologyexistentialist theologyhermeneuticsJohn MacquarriemysticismRichard Hooker
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Anglican Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , May 2021 , pp. 84 - 97
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Copyright
© The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2020

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Footnotes

*

I would like to express my thanks to Revd Dr Alexander Jensen (Eastern Region Ministry Course) who introduced me to John Macquarrie, and especially to the reviewers of this article who provided me with very helpful comments.

1

Revd Dr Stephen R. Burge is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, and an Assistant Curate in the Diocese of St Albans, UK.

References

2 John Macquarrie, Jesus Christ in Modern Thought (London: SCM Press, 1990), pp. 339-47. See also idem, Stubborn Theological Questions (London: SCM Press, 2007), pp. 134-63. See also Charles C. Hefling, ‘Reviving Adamic Adoptionism: The Example of John Macquarrie’, Theological Studies 52 (1992), pp. 476-94.

3 See John Macquarrie, Two Worlds Are Ours: An Introduction to Christian Mysticism (London: SCM Press, 2004); idem, ‘Eckhart and Heidegger’, The Eckhart Review 2.1 (1993), pp. 63-69.

4 Cf. Macquarrie’s discussion of Heidegger and Eckhart, in Stubborn Theological Questions, pp. 184-95.

5 See Macquarrie, A Guide to the Sacraments (London: SCM Press, 2007), pp. 27-33; see also idem, Stubborn Theological Questions, pp. 64-77 and 208-18.

6 Macquarrie, Stubborn Theological Questions, pp. 208-18.

7 Macquarrie, Jesus Christ in Modern Thought, pp. 48-146; Macquarrie even applies this to the dating of the Pauline epistles, p. 49.

8 Macquarrie, A Guide to the Sacraments, pp. 101-12.

9 E.g. Richard Hooker, Of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, 1.6.1, p. 217; see also Owen F. Cummings, John Macquarrie: A Master of Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 2002), pp. 39-47.

10 E.g. Hooker, Laws, 2.1.1-2.8.7, pp. 286-336. See also Mark LeTourneau, ‘Richard Hooker and the Sufficiency of Scripture’, Journal of Anglican Studies 14.2 (2016), pp. 134-55.

11 E.g. Hooker, Laws, 2.7.7, p. 318; cf. Macquarrie, Jesus Christ in Modern Thought, pp. 147-72.

12 E.g. Hooker, Laws, 1.8.1, p. 225 and 1.8.9, p. 233.

13 Bruce Baugh, ‘Heidegger on Befindlichkeit’, Journal of the British Society of Phenomenology 20.2 (1989), pp. 124-35 (124).

14 Vincent Vycinas, Earth and Gods: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969), p. 43.

15 Macquarrie, Existentialism (London: Pelican Books, 1978), p. 131Google Scholar.

16 Macquarrie, An Existentialist Theology: A Comparison of Heidegger and Bultmann (London: Pelican Books, 1973).

17 See B.H. MacLean, Biblical Interpretation and Philosophical Hermeneutics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 99-142.

18 Macquarrie, Jesus Christ in Modern Thought, p. 343; see also idem, Stubborn Theological Questions, pp. 140-51.

19 William Nicholls, Systematic and Philosophical Theology (London: Pelican, 1969), p. 180.

20 Søren Kierkegaard, The Problem of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orientated Deliberation in View of the Dogmatic Problem of Hereditary Sin (New York: Liveright, 2015), pp. 50-63.

21 Macquarrie, An Existentialist Theology, pp. 74-75.

22 John Macquarrie, Christology Revisited (London: SCM Press, 1998), p. 108.

23 Macquarrie, An Existentialist Theology, pp. 75-76.

24 Macquarrie, An Existentialist Theology, p. 76.

25 Gershom Scholem, ‘Buber’s Hasidism’, Commentary 34.4 (1961), pp. 305-16.

26 Martin Buber, I and Thou (London: Continuum, rev. edn, 2004), p. 13.

27 Buber, I and Thou, p. 14.

28 Macquarrie, Paths in Spirituality (London: SCM Press, 2nd edn, 1992), p. 85. See also Macquarrie, Twentieth Century Religious Thought (London: SCM Press, 5th edn, 2001), pp. 195-99.

29 Macquarrie, ‘How Can We Think of God’, Theology Today 22.2 (1965), p. 197.

30 Benjamin Myers, ‘Faith as Self-Understanding: Towards a Post-Barthian Appreciation of Rudolf Bultmann’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 10.1 (2008), pp. 24-26.

31 E.g. Steven T. Katz, ‘Dialogue and Revelation in the Thought of Martin Buber’, Religious Studies 14.1 (1978), pp. 57-68; Brendan Sweetman, ‘Martin Buber’s Epistemology’, International Philosophical Quarterly 41.2 (2001), pp. 145-60.

32 Robert E. Wood, Martin Buber’s Ontology: An Analysis of I and Thou (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1969), pp. 3-26.

33 Steven T. Katz, ‘Language, Epistemology, and Mysticism’, in Steven T. Katz (ed.), Mysticism and Theological Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 22-74 (58-65).

34 Macquarrie, A Guide to the Sacraments, pp. 132-34; cf. Brian Douglas, ‘Transubstantiation: Rethinking by Anglicans?’ New Blackfriars 93 (2012), pp. 426-45.

35 Cf. Edward Schillebeeckx, The Eucharist (London: Burns and Oats, 2005), p. 144; see also idem, ‘Transubstantiation, Transfinalization, Transfiguration’, Worship 40 (1966), pp. 324-38.

36 Cf. Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 4.63.12.

37 E.g. Macquarrie, Jesus Christ in Modern Thought, p. 387.

38 John Hick, The Metaphor of God Incarnate (London: SCM Press, 2nd edn, 2005), p. 158.

39 See Macquarrie, Stubborn Theological Questions, pp. 134-51; and idem, Jesus Christ in Modern Thought, pp. 375-85.

40 Macquarrie, Paths in Spirituality, p. 72.

41 Macquarrie, Principles of Christian Theology (London: SCM Press, 2003), p. 248. See also Stefan Alkier and David Moffitt, ‘Miracles Revisited: A Short Theological and Historical Survey’, in Stefan Alkier and David Moffitt (eds.), Miracles Revisited: New Testament Miracle Stories and their Concepts of Reality (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), pp. 315-36 (330-31).

42 Cf. Alvin Plantiga, Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

43 Macquarrie, Jesus Christ in Modern Thought, p. 48. Cf. Edward Schillebeekx, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology (London: Collins, 1979), pp. 77-102.

44 Joel B. Green, ‘Scripture and Theology: Uniting the Two So-Long Divided’, in Joel B. Green and Max Turner (eds.), Between Two Horizons: New Testament Studies and Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 23-43 (p. 25 n. 4).

45 Vernon L. Purdy, The Christology of John Macquarrie (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), pp. 42-43.

46 See Werner Jeanrond, Theological Hermeneutics: Development and Significance (London: SCM Press, 1994), pp. 137-48.

47 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (repr. London: Continuum, 2012), p. 301.

48 Cf. Louise M. Rosenblatt, The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978); Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), pp. 124-51; and George Aichele and Gary A. Phillips, ‘Exegesis, Eisegesis, Intergesis’, Semeia 69-70 (1995), pp. 7-18.

49 MacLean, Biblical Interpretation and Philosophical Hermeneutics, p. 148.

50 Myers, ‘Faith as Self-Understanding: Towards a Post-Barthian Appreciation of Rudolf Bultmann’, p. 29.

51 Owen F. Cummings, ‘John Macquarrie: Model of Systematic Theology’, Downside Review 115 (1997), pp. 215-24.

52 See Cummings, ‘Model of Systematic Theology’, pp. 219-22.

53 Alexander Ross, ‘Gaping Gaps? Implications of the “Bible in the Life of the Church” Project for Bridging the Anglican Hermeneutic Divide,’ Journal of Anglican Studies 12.2 (2013), pp. 143-64 (162).

54 Macquarrie, Principles of Christian Theology, pp. 53-59.

55 Hooker, Laws, 1.6.1, p. 217.

56 Cf. Macquarrie, Paths in Spirituality, p. 55.

57 Cummings argues that Macquarrie articulates ‘six formative factors in theology’, namely: experience, revelation, Scripture, tradition, culture and critical reason; I would suggest that these can be grouped into three: (i) experience and revelation; (ii) Scripture, tradition and culture; and (iii) critical reason. See Cummings, ‘A model of systematic theology’, pp. 217-18.

58 See Macquarrie, Paths in Spirituality, pp. 62-72.

59 See Macquarrie, Paths in Spirituality, p. 21.