G. B. Caird

George Bradford Caird, FBA (17 July 1917 – 21 April 1984), known as G. B. Caird, was an English churchman, theologian, humanitarian, and biblical scholar. At the time of his death he was Dean Ireland's Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford.

Born in Wandsworth, London, England to parents from Dundee, Scotland, George Caird's early years were spent 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 he received the B.A. in 1939, First-Class Honours in both parts of the Classical Tripos, with distinction in Greek and Latin verse. A lifelong Congregationalist, he then left Cambridge to study theology at Mansfield College, Oxford, and acquired the Oxford M.A., First-Class Honours, in 1943. In 1944 he was granted the Oxford D.Phil. for his thesis "The New Testament Conception of Doxa (Glory)".

After serving three years as a pastor in Highgate, London, in 1946 Caird and his young bride, Viola Mary Newport, known to all as "Mollie," pulled up stakes and left for Canada. Virtually fluent in ancient Hebrew, there he was quickly made Professor of Old Testament at St. Stephen's College, Edmonton, Alberta, and later (simultaneously) Professor of New Testament at McGill University and Principal of the United Theological College of Montreal.

In 1959 Caird returned to Oxford and the Congregationalist stronghold of Mansfield College, where he was first Senior Tutor (under John Marsh) and later Principal (1970–1977). 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. 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".In 1975-1976 Caird took on almost full-time administration, serving as Moderator of the United Reformed Church, and during his tenure he visited South Africa. 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 four honorary doctorates (including the 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. 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".

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 1977-1984. In his lifetime he wrote nearly sixty articles, over a hundred book reviews, and six books. 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. 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 Great St. Mary's Church, 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. According to British Old Testament scholar James Barr, Caird was sometimes "practically adored" by students.

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 variety. 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]". Also, "no picture of George would be right which omitted his intense affection for his grandchildren."

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. 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. 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).

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"." 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".

Workings of language

Caird had what seemed to be a bewildering array of interests. Ultimately, however, it was all of a piece: the unifying thread was the variety of ways in which language works. According to N.T. Wright, he loved words, and how human beings enjoy using and abusing them. This is demonstrated, e.g., by his early attraction to Septuagintal lexicography, or his analysis of The Language and Imagery of the Bible. In the latter Caird explored, among many other concerns, the rich variety of metaphor and imagery used by the biblical writers to convey their meanings. Going against much of the modern grain, he insisted that the Old and New Testament writers must be permitted to speak with their own voices and that modern vogues, presuppositions and dogmatic biases must not be permitted to get in the way. He particularly detested recent linguistic theories such as Structuralism, which he saw as sheer lunacy; it was among the "Gaderene precipitations into the Dark Ages". He "believed in the perspicuity of the substance of Holy Scripture, a principle which the medieval schoolmen and the Reformation inherited from St. Augustine, but which the disciples of Rudolf Bultmann have found it notoriously hard to share". Those who read or heard him were well aware that Caird thought British biblical scholarship (that of Dodd in particular) was the last word on the subject, and he found nothing more satisfying than a good joust with German theology. In this regard for over thirty years Bultmann remained his favorite target. Caird's focus on linguistics also inevitably led him into the area of Biblical translation. According to James Barr, since Caird was out of the country at the time, he was unable to contribute to the translation of the New English Bible (begun by his mentor C. H. Dodd in 1946, the year Caird moved to Canada); but he returned to England in time to serve (along with his close friend and colleague C. F. D. Moule) on the translation panel of the New English Bible's Apocrypha in 1961. Caird's views on translation were stated strongly and precisely in almost all of his works, including his articles dealing with the Septuagint and in The Language and Imagery of the Bible. He railed against the "word substitution" method, which he maintained tried to be faithful to the original Hebrew and Greek syntax and vocabulary, but sacrificed intelligibility in English. A frequent target of his wrath in this regard was the Revised Standard Version, which he saw as too wooden literal at crucial points. Caird advocated the "Dynamic equivalence" approach, promoted by, among others, Eugene Nida, wherein "one has to reproduce, not the words of the form of the original, but the meaning of the original as a whole. The New English Bible, according to Caird, was not only the first officially sponsored translation of this kind, but also 'incomparably the best'". To his delight Caird was able to contribute to the translation panel of the Revised English Bible in the last decade of his life, although he died before his work on that project was able to be brought to completion.

New Testament theology

Caird's overall conception of New Testament thought is seen in his synthetic New Testament Theology, which for him involved presiding over "an apostolic conference on faith and order" (cf. Acts, Gal 2). Here he attempted to allow the New Testament writers "to speak for themselves" on a wide variety of topics (predestination, sin, salvation, the life of the church, eschatology, christology). He avoided using any form of artificial force to press their viewpoints into the arbitrary strictures of a system. The consequent unison of Caird's New Testament conference was therefore similar to that of a choir, sung not in complete harmony but with proper counter-melodies. Yet another integral feature of New Testament Theology was his inclusion as the final chapter of a discussion of the theology of Jesus. For him this was "the starting point and goal of New Testament theology". Although New Testament Theology was published posthumously, Caird's effort had a visible and immediate impact on both sides of the Atlantic. According to Bruce Metzger of Princeton Theological Seminary, it was "vintage Caird" - "a weighty volume whose pages instruct as well as stimulate". John Muddiman, G. B. Caird Fellow in New Testament Theology at Mansfield College, Oxford, saw it as "a tangible monument to the scholarly achievement of George Caird". And, according to C. F. D. Moule of Cambridge, Caird's final work is "a very important book," "brilliant and provocative"; it causes the New Testament "to speak for itself by exact scrutiny and deft interrogation and with a sensitive awareness of the hazards of bridging the time-gap; and the results are fresh and radical".

Historical Jesus

Caird's career-long preoccupation with the Historical Jesus, known from his commentary on The Gospel of St. Luke and showcased at the end of New Testament Theology, is also reflected in his shorter works Jesus and the Jewish Nation and "Eschatology and Politics: Some Misconceptions," among others. Jesus and the Jewish Nation was one of the groundbreaking works that facilitated a new phase in the study of the subject, according to N. T. Wright, whose book Jesus and the Victory of God is built much on foundations laid by Caird. As with other New Testament specialists who had a strong classical training, Caird was baffled by the skepticism with which gospel commentators and others who write on the Jesus of history have traditionally looked upon their historical sources. Consequently, his work has a refreshing lack of negative presuppositions. As with his teacher C. H. Dodd, he was adamant that the gospels were reliable witnesses not only to the theology of the early church but to the theology of Jesus himself. His claim in particular that Jesus's friction with the Pharisees reflected a legitimate, contemporary, first-century Palestinian debate about "what it means for the nation of Israel to be the holy people of God in a world overrun by gentiles," and that this is profoundly "political," is fundamental to his work on Jesus.

Paul the Apostle

Another of Caird's lifelong preoccupations was Paul the Apostle, seen particularly in his works Principalities and Powers, Paul's Letters from Prison, and comments scattered throughout The Language and Imagery of the Bible and New Testament Theology. For Caird Paul has not been given his proper due by modern scholarly opinion in terms of the uniqueness and importance of his contribution to Christianity. As a dyed-in-the-wool Cambridge-trained classicist, Caird saw Paul not so much as a conveyor of supernatural information but as a brilliantly innovative thinker, a skillful interpreter of the scriptures and of the mind of Jesus, or "humanity at its very best". Paul was also a revolutionary, as Caird saw him: one who was fervently committed to the socially convulsive implications of the gospel, especially in such concerns as class divisions within society (including the equality of women), the constant corruption of political and religious authority, and the unity of the Christian church as a rebuke to a warring and fractured world. In all his works Caird never shrank from making clear his unqualified admiration for what he saw as the frequently misunderstood apostle; yet this could hardly be mistaken for hero worship. He could disagree with Paul at times, and "if he had ever seen [him] approaching in the High Street, he wouldn't have treated him with exaggerated deference, nor would he have crossed the street to avoid him. He would probably have invited him to read a paper to his Postgraduate Seminar, and would have felt no embarrassment at taking him into the Senior Common Room for tea beforehand". In certain ways Caird contributed to the debate concerning the New Perspective on Paul, seen perhaps most visibly in an extended review of E. P. Sanders's work Paul and Palestinian Judaism.

Eschatology

Yet one more of Caird's concerns involved the understanding of Old and New Testament eschatology. It is still largely believed in scholarly circles that Jewish apocalyptic had relinquished all hope for this world and expected an imminent divine intervention as the final thunder-clap of history. Caird saw this as a major distortion. Those who wrote the apocalypses resembled the prophets in that they never let go of their hope in divine interference within the midst of history. Instead, by something called "prophetic camera technique," they used metaphorical imagery that "telescoped" events within history and the ultimate victory of God at the end of time. By such a means this-worldly events were used to elucidate the End, and the End allowed the biblical writers to see historical events in a new and refreshing way. In identical fashion Jesus looked forward to a coming intense testing, for both himself and for his disciples, during his own generation (the near lens), but which pointed to a final ultimate resolution (the far lens). According to Caird, this was just as true for Paul and the author of the Book of Revelation. Hence Caird's The Revelation of St. John the Divine stands as a pristine example of the "Preterist" interpretation of the Apocalypse. For Caird "that which must swiftly come to pass" does not signify the End in the literal sense; it is the end that was imminently confronting the first-century church, encompassing its persecution and potential extinction. Thus, according to Caird, the author of the Apocalypse "no more expects the end of the world than any of the other prophets before him". Such concepts again reveal Caird as clearly standing in the tradition of his teacher, C. H. Dodd, and Dodd's "Realized eschatology." But, through the use of more recent linguistic theory than Dodd had access to, Caird went beyond Dodd's thinking on the subject. At the popular level, Caird's views on eschatology place him at the polar opposite of some best-selling dispensationalist authors such as those who wrote the escapist Left Behind novels; while on a scholarly level, his views have been heavily built upon by some (e.g. N. T. Wright 1996) and emphatically disputed by others (e.g. Dale Allison 1985).

Politics: war, women, apartheid, church unity

Caird's writings often stress the integration of theology and politics. Long before it was in vogue, he felt the urgency of including politics in any responsible theological dialogue. This is identifiable early on in Principalities and Powers; there, he repeatedly urged, the unusual phrase meant for Paul his unique take on the political, social, economic and religious power structures of this world. And, as in his work on the historical Jesus, the importance of political concerns in Christianity remains central in his taking on of such varied topics as the modern Christian attitude to war ("War and the Christian"), the status of women in society ("Paul and Women's Liberty"), and Apartheid. With regard to the last, his addresses to the South African Dutch Reformed Church (during his tenure in 1975-1976 as Moderator of the United Reformed Church) were later distilled and published as South Africa: Reflections on a Visit. A clarion call for the modern Christian Church's renunciation of racism, it demonstrated that for Caird the gospel, while profoundly religious, is not uniquely religious; it penetrates to all areas of personal and collective human activity. His work as a humanitarian and churchman is perhaps best reflected in Our Dialogue with Rome: The Second Vatican Council and After, which his close friend Henry Chadwick called "a memorable little book" that attempts to bring some order out of the morass of Protestant-Roman Catholic dialogue, "with its unexpected moments of sudden joy and usually more numerous tears".

Ultimate assessment

Caird was a complex figure, which makes any attempt to reduce his life and work into a short survey hazardous. However, taking into account the concerns expressed here, certain things may confidently be said of him - most principally that he was a scholar's scholar, and yet one who was (paradoxically) never a pure academic who enjoyed the sequestered safety of his study. His pastoral temperament was frequently at the fore, and for him it required that he do the double duty of preacher-scholar. "To know George you had to hear him preach, for here became apparent one of the great strengths of his life. It was clearly the same man who conducted advanced seminars and helped graduate students to see through the complexities of their work. Many of those who went to his lectures remarked not only on the vigorous academic discipline they were invited to share, but on the direct relationship they were encouraged to see between honest probing and the preaching of the Gospel" (Donald Sykes). "He understood the task of the exegete to be not only the discernment of the author's original intention but also the elucidation and proclamation of the Gospel of God. Just as he could hardly endure sermons without intellectual content, so his lectures were truly evangelical".

Caird would probably have appreciated the Latin inscription (chosen by his wife Mollie) in Mansfield College Chapel: "Fons sapientiae verbum Dei" ("The word of God is the fountain of wisdom") (Jesus ben Sirach 1:5; so Caird's translation for the New English Bible).

On a scholarly level it may be said of Caird that, "despite his independence, [he] belonged to and typified a marked tradition within British scholarship. Points of similarity with C. H. Dodd, less often with T. W. Manson, are frequent. What Caird displayed in a highly illuminating way is the manner in which theological conviction, literary values, and historical reasoning worked together in that current of learning . . . in this respect the rethinking of Caird's thoughts can be, and is, a contribution to the whole intellectual history of an era". And finally, on a personal level, "those who knew him will never forget that tall figure who seemed to walk faster than anyone else, black Oxford gown trailing him in the breeze, who always spoke in public without notes, and who—perhaps as a fitting symbol of his life—always seemed to be out of the lecture hall before his listeners had written down his last word or had had the opportunity to consider the meaning of what they had just heard".