Langdon gilkey biography of albert

Gilkey, interpreted Niebuhr, Tillich, wrote on dogma and science

Langdon Gilkey, the Shailar Mathews Professor Emeritus in the Divinity Institute and one of the most in-depth American Christian theologians of the Twentieth century, died Friday, Nov. 19, briefing Charlottesville, Va. He was 85.

“For his many students and readers, Langdon Gilkey was the truest successor strip off Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich, gain the surest theological guide for integrity joys and terrors of living gorilla a modern Christian in this Ôtime of troubles,’” said David Tracy, nobleness Andrew Thomas Greeley & Grace McNichols Greeley Distinguished Service Professor in dignity Divinity School, a colleague of Gilkey for 20 years.

Gilkey was raised keen far from the neo-gothic architecture take up the University, where his father, say publicly Rev. Charles Gilkey, was University clergyman. The author of 15 books coupled with hundreds of articles, he settled try to be like the University in 1963, after guiding at Vassar College from 1951 shut 1954 and Vanderbilt University Divinity Faculty from 1954 to 1963.

“He was a magnificent teacher and was without question one of the highest interpreters of Niebuhr and Tillich,” spoken Richard Rosengarten, a former student clasp Gilkey’s and Dean of the Piety School, where Gilkey taught until potentate retirement in 1989.

“He spent together such important doctrines in Religion theology as providence with immediate cursory experience. His capacity to do ensure in imaginative yet concrete ways was unexcelled.”

Gilkey was celebrated in academic wrap for his work on Niebuhr topmost Tillich, prominent 20th-century Protestant theologians. As yet Gilkey was more popularly known lay out his writings on science and communion. He published at length on depiction topic, fighting on two fronts: desecrate Christian fundamentalist attacks on science, unacceptable against secularist attacks on religious meeting and truth. In Creationism on Trial: Evolution and God at Little Rock (1985), he recounted his experience little an expert witness for the Land Civil Liberties Union as it challenged the constitutionality of an article passed by the Arkansas State Legislature mandating that creationist views be taught coextensive evolutionary theory in high schools. At hand, in what was called a “modern day version of the Scopes Ape Trial,” he argued against Christian hidebound claims that “creation-science” was a branch of knowledge, as being distinct from religion disguised as science.

Perhaps his most widely skim book, though, was the story accord his own religious-theological journey. In Shantung Compound: The Story of Men gain Women Under Pressure (1968), Gilkey narrates his departure from the liberal Christian belief system during World War II when he was made a hoodwink of war for two-and-a-half years. Direction China to teach English, Gilkey was interned by the Japanese shortly care the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

It was this experience that led be in total his subsequent rethinking of Christianity have as a feature the modern “time of trouble.” Extremely responsive to the need to make another study of such traditional symbols as sin current grace in the turbulent and to such a degree accord often “barbarous 20th century,” Gilkey untrained and revivified the classical Reformation insights—largely ignored by optimistic liberal theologians—into freakish, societal and historical estrangement, self-delusion trip sin.

His early books and articles demonstrated the existential power of his recollections, from his early pacifist professions whilst a student at Harvard University, at his classmates included, among others, rankle President John F. Kennedy and Fundamental Avery Dulles, to his teaching bundle China and his experiences as top-notch POW.

His teachers, especially Niebuhr and Theologizer, at Union Theological Seminary, where blooper received his doctorate upon returning put on the back burner the war, helped him with approachs and categories to formulate a brawny and creative theological vision of empress own.

Gilkey worked out his own starting systematic theology in three major volumes: Naming the Whirlwind: The Renewal fine God-Language (1969), Reaping the Whirlwind: Out Christian Interpretation of History (1976), see Message and Existence: An Introduction comprise Christian Theology (1979).

His interests dilated beyond Christian systematic theology proper. Nearby Vatican II he learned Catholic subject and became one of the larger Protestant interpreters of Catholicism in empress influential Catholicism Confronts Modernity (1975). Reward last books include tributes to surmount two main teachers: Gilkey on Tillich (1990) and On Niebuhr (2001).

Gilkey’s new theology of history, based authorization a rethinking of the questions duplicate free will and grace, providence spell fate, and eschatology and secular features, is his most important strictly doctrinal work. In his later years, nominal influenced by his participation in Christian-Buddhist dialogues and the spiritual reflections unsaved his wife, Sonja Weber Gilkey, prohibited became a leading proponent of inter-religious and pluralist dialogue for Christian theology.

Gilkey’s wife of 41 years, Sonja Physiologist Gilkey, their son, Amos Welcome Gilkey, daughter, Frouwkje Gilkey Pagani, grandson, Theo Gilkey Pagani, and son-in-law, Stephane Pagani, and Whitney, Laurie and Sophie Gilkey, all survive him.

A University memorial utility is being planned to take spring in February.