John (Ian) Macquarrie was born on 27 June 1919 in Renfrew, Scotland. He was described in the Handbook of Anglican Theologians as ‘unquestionably Anglicanism’s most distinguished systematic theologian in the second half of the [twentieth] century’. A Royal Army Chaplain in 1945, he ministered to the parish at Brechin in 1948. Appointed Lecturer at the University of Glasgow in 1932, he was made Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminar in 1962 and ordained in the American Episcopal Church three years later. Macquarrie retired as Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, Oxford.
Fellow of the British Academy, he held honorary degrees from the University of South General Theological Seminary, University of Glasgow, Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest, and Virginia Theological Seminary. He was Visiting Professor at Colgate Rochester Theological Seminary, Tulane University, and General Theological Seminary. Notable works include An Existentialist Theology (1955), Twentieth-Century Religions (1963), Principles of Christian Theology (1966), God-Talk (1967), The Concept of Peace (1972), Thinking about God (1975), and Being and Truth, a Festschrift edited by Alistair Kee and Eugene Long (1986).
