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Theology in the University — A Contemporary Scottish Perspective*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

D. W. D. Shaw
D. W. D. Shaw
Affiliation:
St Mary's College The University St Andrews, Fife KY16 9JU
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Extract

There is a tale which Douglas Young tells of a St Andrews University divine and which may well be regarded as cautionary. Thomas Jackson was born in St Andrews in 1797, and held the Chair of Divinity, first in St Andrews and then in Glasgow. When he retired in 1874, he returned to St Andrews to write his great work, designed to settle all the controversies of the centuries and bring discordant Scots into unanimity. He had one of the big houses on the south side of South Street, with its ‘lang rigg’, at the foot of which was an elegant garden room, with table and chair. Thither, daily, the septuagenarian repaired, garbed in his ecclesiastical frock coat, took off his shiny top-hat, and grasped a quill pen to set down his great thoughts on the virgin white folio quire, daily laid on the table. white folio quire, daily laid on the table. After several hours, he would tear it all up and go back to the house. After four years, they found him dead, aged eighty-one, and the garden house yielded a single written sheet with the sum of his wisdom: ‘Theology is everything, and everything is theology’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , May 1988 , pp. 217 - 231
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1988

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References

page 217 note 1 Young, Douglas, St Andrews: Town and Gown, Royal and Ancient, (1969), Cassell, London, p. 244.Google Scholar

page 219 note 2 Theological Colleges for Tomorrow, being the Report of a Working Party appointed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, to consider the Problems of the Theological Colleges of the Church of England, (1968), Church Information Office, London.

page 221 note 3 Lindbeck, George, University Divinity Schools: A Report on ecclesiastically independent Theological Education, (1976), The Rockefeller Foundation, U.S.A.Google Scholar

page 223 note 4 Baillie, D. M., God was in Christ, (1948), Faber & Faber, London.Google Scholar

page 223 note 5 The Theology of the Sacraments, (1957), Faber & Faber, London.Google Scholar

page 225 note 6 McIntyre, J., ‘New Help from Kant: Theology and Human Imagination’, in Mackey, J. P. (ed.), Religious Imagination, (1986), Edinburgh University Press, pp. 102–104Google Scholar. See also McIntyre, J., Faith, Theology and Imagination, (1987), Handsel Press, Edinburgh.Google Scholar

page 227 note 7 E.g. To Whom shall We go?, (1955), St Andrew Press, EdinburghGoogle Scholar, Out of Nazareth, (1958), St Andrew Press, Edinburgh.Google Scholar

page 227 note 8 Baillie, J., Invitation to Pilgrimage, (1942), Oxford University Press.Google Scholar

page 227 note 9 McIntyre, J., On the Love of God, (1962), Wm. Collins, London.Google Scholar

page 228 note 10 Lindbeck, George, op. cit., p. 82.

page 229 note 11 Theological Colleges for Tomorrow, p. 37.