George Bradford Caird (17 July 1917 – 21 April 1984), known as G. B. Caird, was a British theologian, biblical scholar and Congregational minister. At the time of his death he was Dean Ireland's Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford.
Life and career
Born in Wandsworth, London, England to parents from Dundee, Scotland, George Caird spent his early years in Birmingham, England, where his father was a construction engineer, and where he attended King Edward's School. His university education began at Peterhouse, Cambridge, where, in 1939, he received the B.A. with First-Class Honours in both parts of the Classical Tripos, and distinction in Greek and Latin verse (M.A. 1943). He then left Cambridge to train for the Congregational ministry and study theology at Mansfield College, Oxford. In 1944 he was granted the Oxford D.Phil. for his thesis "The New Testament Conception of Doxa (Glory)".Barr 1985, pp. 493-494
In 1943 he was appointed minister of Highgate Congregational ChurchNow Pond Square Chapel in London. In 1945 he married Viola Mary Newport, known to all as 'Mollie' whom he had met while at Oxford and in 1946 they moved to Canada when he accepted the post of Professor of Old Testament at St. Stephen's College,Part of the University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta. In 1950 he was appointed Professor of New Testament at McGill University, Montreal and, from 1955 was also the Principal of the United Theological CollegeUnited Theological College there.Barr 1985, p. 496Hurst 1994, pp. viii-ix
Caird returned to Oxford in 1959, where he worked as Principal of Mansfield College from 1970 to 1977 after serving as Senior Tutor under John Marsh. Because he was non-Church of England, and because Mansfield was still a permanent private hall and had not yet achieved status as a constituent college of the university (see Colleges of the University of Oxford) during this period (1969–1977), Caird was barred from holding an official university lectureship. However, as a compensation he was granted the honorary position of Reader (academic rank) in Biblical Studies, a status somewhere between Senior Lecturer and Professor. And whenever he lectured on the New Testament at Mansfield, students from all over the university came and filled the large lecture hall to capacity.Kaye 1995, pp. 245–247, 286 According to Henry Chadwick, "He lectured as he preached, almost always without a note ... with nothing before him but a Greek New Testament, usually upside down, for he knew the text by heart".Chadwick, 1987, p. xviii
In 1975-1976 Caird took on almost full-time administration, serving as Moderator of the United Reformed Church, for which he had already served as its nominee as an invited 'observer' at the Second Vatican Council 1962–65.Barr 1985 p. 500 During his tenure as Moderator he made official visits to various parts of the world including South Africa, Israel and New Zealand. His work in the fields of Old and New Testament (he remains one of the few modern biblical interpreters to have held chairs in both) led to three honorary doctorates as well as the earned Oxford D.D., election to the British Academy (and the granting of its Burkitt Medal for Biblical Studies), and appointment to be the Dean Ireland's Professor and Professorial Fellow at The Queen's College, Oxford.Barr 1985, p. 494 But acceptance of the Dean Ireland's post was not automatic for Caird, according to Mansfield College historian Elaine Kaye. "Although he had been allowed to hold his honorary University post as Reader along with the Principalship of Mansfield, the University was not prepared to allow him to hold this more senior post jointly with Mansfield. It was at once a blow and an honour for the College. For Caird it may have been a difficult decision; but his final choice indicates that the opportunity to spend the remaining years of his career as a scholar and a teacher, rather than an administrator-cum-teacher, was to him, welcome".Kaye 1995, p. 286
In 1980 he won the Collins Religious Book Award for his work The Language and Imagery of the Bible. His final years involved biblical translation as a member of the translation panel of The Revised English Bible, as previously he had been a translator of The New English Bible's Apocrypha. He also co-edited (with Henry Chadwick ) Oxford's The Journal of Theological Studies from 1977 to 1984. In his lifetime he wrote nearly sixty articles, over a hundred book reviews, and six books.Hurst 1998, p. 456 Following his resignation as Principal of Mansfield and his taking up of the Dean Ireland's chair, the Cairds left Oxford and moved into the sixteenth century thatched-roof "Brook Cottage" at Letcombe Regis, next to Wantage, Oxfordshire, seventeen miles south-west of Oxford. There they converted the cottage's back storeroom into "the Dusty" - a study for Caird to write in during his imminent retirement; it was there that he was working on his seventh major work, New Testament Theology, when he was felled by a heart attack on Easter Eve, 1984.Hurst 1994, p. v His funeral was held in Mansfield College Chapel on 28 April, with Principal Donald Sykes delivering the eulogy; a memorial celebration was later conducted (13 October) in The University Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford, with his close friend Henry Chadwick delivering the address.
A Festschrift was at the time in the works, which was subsequently converted into a memorial volume, The Glory of Christ in the New Testament: Studies in Christology in Memory of George Bradford Caird, edited by two of his students, Lincoln Hurst (L. D. Hurst) and Tom Wright (N. T. Wright), and published by Oxford University Press in late 1987.
Shortly after his death, some quick decisions needed to be made, particularly that involving his half-completed New Testament Theology; accordingly, Hurst was appointed Caird's Literary Executor. In addition, his children (see below) set up a foundation, The G. B. Caird Memorial Trust, the proceeds from which might enable (successfully, as it turned out) a new senior position to be set up in his name at Mansfield College: the G. B. Caird Fellow in New Testament Theology. It is currently occupied by Professor Jennifer Strawbridge.
Caird's academic legacy is also seen in that during the course of his career he taught numerous people who went on to garner serious scholarly attention. These include Marcus Borg, Colin Gunton, Lincoln Hurst, David P. Moessner, John Muddiman, Allison Trites, Francis Watson, and N. T. Wright.see the various contributions to Hurst and Wright 1987, passim According to British Old Testament scholar James Barr, Caird was sometimes "practically adored" by students.Barr 1985, p. 521
While to some Caird could appear austere, even intimidating, "he was in fact full of fun and humour". In his leisure time he enjoyed (most famously) bird-watching, croquet, snooker, music, theatre, reading mysteries, ping pong, chess, and all forms of puzzles — especially the crossword and jigsaw varieties. Music in particular occupied his time: it "was important to him, and he wrote several hymns, some of which were included within standard hymnals such as Congregational Praise and Hymns Ancient and Modern". He and Mollie had four children: James, Margaret (Meg) Laing, John, and George (Geordie). To Caird the home was never just a house: it was a bastion of the family - a center of games, poetry, music, and other cultural activity, where he was, according to Henry Chadwick, "sublimely happy ... it was a microcosm of vigorous debate and breathtaking wit, sparkling with his wife and his three sons and his daughter, whose gifts were a source of deep joy for him. From Mollie he caught his love for bird-watching, and from his children he loved to learn about architecture [James], drama [John], music [Geordie], and medieval philology [Meg]".Chadwick 1994, p. xviii Also, "no picture of George would be right which omitted his intense affection for his grandchildren."
Major works
Caird's earliest published book, The Truth of the Gospel (1950), is a brief but intense defence of the Christian faith. Some feel that, in terms of its stated purpose, it is more successful than C.S. Lewis's much more vaunted apologetic work Mere Christianity.Hurst 1998, p. 457 In 1954 he produced his first sustained work of exegetical scholarship, the treatment of 1 and 2 Samuel in The Interpreter's Bible. His second book, The Apostolic Age (1955), is a succinct historical study of the early church to the end of the first century. Principalities and Powers (1956), while presumably a discussion of one theme of Paul's theology, is actually a summary of that theology on a variety of topics. Caird's first sustained independent commentary, The Gospel of St. Luke, was, as with his previous treatment of 1 and 2 Samuel, full of historical confidence: some reservations notwithstanding, the Old and New Testament writers left behind them sound history. His second commentary, The Revelation of St. John the Divine, resulted in his being awarded the Oxford D.D. Paul's Letters from Prison is a discussion of Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians and Philemon. As usual, Caird's maverick tendencies bubbled to the surface, and produced relatively conservative results in the face of the prevailing mainstream skepticism about the nature and extent of the Pauline writings: Paul, the writer of Colossians and Ephesians, provided wise and far-reaching insights into the universal human experience that will be ignored today at society's peril.Caird [PLFP] 1978, passimHurst 1998, p. 461 The Language and Imagery of the Bible (1980) examined the literary techniques and meanings of the biblical authors.
In addition to these major works Caird provided a number of shorter studies on numerous topics: Septuagintal lexicography (e.g. "Towards a Lexicon of the Septuagint," 1969); the Christian's attitude to war (War and the Christian, 1979; Caird was a lifelong but undemonstrating pacifist) and Apartheid (South Africa: Reflections on a Visit, 1976). Toward the end of his career he was commissioned to write a number of books, including the New International Critical Commentary on The Epistle to the Hebrews and the volume on Paul in OUP's Past Masters series. But these were to take a back seat to his New Testament Theology, intended to be the ultimate statement of his thinking on the New Testament, and on which he had been working for some years. While he did not live to see it finished, it was edited and completed by Lincoln Hurst and published posthumously by the OUP in 1994 (hardback) and 1995 (paperback).cf., e.g., Metzger 1995; Moule 1995; Hurst 1994, pp. v-xiv; Hurst 1998, p. 457-458
Significance Literary values According to two of his students, what marked out all of Caird's work was an erudite, crisp writing style, a wry humour, and an ability to turn old questions on their heads by posing them in new and memorable ways. "Combining a penetrative knowledge of both Testaments with a rare fastidiousness with words, Caird analysed his texts in a way which for many set a new standard for the field. These traits, coupled with a fertility of imagination and an almost poetic approach to complex theological issues, produced a potent brew which any who took even a small draught were not likely to forget"."Hurst 1994, p. xiii His literary ability was outstanding . . . his clear, crisp sentences say more in a few words than some scholars manage in several pages. A slim volume from Caird, easily mistaken for a slight or negligible work, is likely to be an explosive charge, packed with pithy wisdom".Wright 1997, p. xv
Workings of language