William Barclay (theologian)
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William Barclay | |
|---|---|
| Born | 5 December 1907 Wick, Scotland |
| Died | 24 January 1978 (aged 70) Glasgow, Scotland |
| Employer | University of Glasgow |
William Barclay (5 December 1907 – 24 January 1978) was a Scottish author, radio and television presenter, Church of Scotland minister, and Professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism at the University of Glasgow. He wrote a set of Bible commentaries on the New Testament that sold 1.5 million copies.[1]
Barclay's father was a bank manager. Barclay attended Dalziel High School in Motherwell and then studied classics at the University of Glasgow from 1925 to 1929,[2] before studying divinity. He studied at the university during the year 1932–33.[3] After being ordained in the Church of Scotland in 1933,[4] he was minister at Trinity Church in Renfrew from 1933 to 1946, afterwards returning to the University of Glasgow as lecturer in the New Testament from 1947, and as Professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism from 1963.[3]
Religious views
Barclay described himself theologically as a "liberal evangelical."[1] Barclay expressed his personal views in his A Spiritual Autobiography (1977), and Clive L. Rawlins elaborates in William Barclay: prophet of goodwill: the authorised biography (1998). They included:
- belief in universal salvation:[1] "I am a convinced universalist. I believe that in the end all men will be gathered into the love of God."[5]
- pacifism: "war is mass murder".[6]
- evolution: "We believe in evolution, the slow climb upwards of man from the level of the beasts. Jesus is the end and climax of the evolutionary process because in Him men met God."[7]
The journalist James Douglas suggested Barclay was also "reticent about the inspiration of Scripture, critical of the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, and given to views about the virgin birth and miracles which conservatives would find either heretical or imprecise."[1]
