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1. Edited by Ann Loades
Vol. XCVI No. 769
A Tale of Two Essays
In this first issue of Theology for 1993 we publish the first of two
essays on the life and work of Oliver Chase Quick, whose last course
of university lectures was completed in Oxford in 1943.
Canon Paul de N. Lucas and Professor Donald M. MacKinnon
relate in a complementary way to their subject. Canon Lucas' father
arrived in Durham to become archdeacon and canon there more or
less as Oliver Quick was leaving the van Mildert canon chair to take
up the Regius Professorship in Oxford. When later chaplain of
Trinity Hall, Cambridge, Paul Lucas approached Donald MacKinnon
(at that time the Norris Hulse Professor of Divinity in the university)
about the possible publication of some of Quick's lectures that had
not reached the press. Publication would have given great pleasure
to Mrs Quick. As Fellow of Keble College, Oxford, Donald MacKinnon
had been able to discuss the lectures with Professor Quick
himself.
The original version of Professor MacKinnon's essay was there-
fore written some years ago as the intended introduction to a
published edition of Quick's lectures on God and the Incarnation.
When this (SPCK!) project fell through, the essay was available for
Paul Lucas to read when he was invited by the then Dean of Carlisle
to give a lecture on Quick (one of a triad which was to include
lectures on Hastings Rashdall and H. N. Bate).
Having once heard a splendid lecture on Quick by Professor
MacKinnon, I was curious to know whether he had published it. The
result of my inquiry was the discovery not only of the two essays,
but -of invaluable information about how they came to be written.
The essays are so substantial, however, that rather than run what
would be virtually a whole number of Theology on Quick they have
been placed in sequence in two separate numbers. Paul Lucas' essay
provides a comprehensive and illuminating introduction to Quick
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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1993
Theology

2. Paul Lucas
and his theology. Donald MacKinnon's essay (to be published in
MarchiApril) is an evaluation of Quick's work, as well as exhibiting
some of the threads of connection between Quick's work and the
development of his own philosophical theology.
Reading these two essays, and the work of the other contributors
to this issue, different as they are, we can perhaps feel reasonably
cheerful about the continued vitality of theology in Britain?
Ann Loades
Oliver Quick-
Paul Lucas
Oliver Quick was born in 1885 at 5edbergh where his father was
vicar. He died when Oliver was only five. From his upbringing and
education, first at Harrow, then at Corpus Christi College, Oxford,
there emerge two points of subsequent importance. The first is that
he was, of course, brought up and nurtured as a Christian: and as he
had been brought up, so he lived. Yet the keenness of his intellect
meant that he was exceptionally aware of points of view different
from his own which he explored and examined and held in balance
with others, complementary or opposite. The other point to notice
about the years of his education is that they contained success and
failure together-success in that he was head boy at Harrow; and
failure in the form of the first of two great disappointments which
marked his life when he was placed in the third class in his final
school of ancient history and philosophy-'Greats' as Oxford calls
it. Perhaps he could not do himself justice under examination
conditions, short of time and distracted by the presence of other
people and the scratching of their pens; not for him a short cut, an
abbreviated argument or a hasty judgement. No doubt the examiners
misjudged the calibre of his mind and of his philosophical gifts. But
the disappointment went deep and seemed to close the prospect of a
career as a university teacher.
So if a career in the university seemed to be closed a career in the
Church of England naturally opened out. In the decade from 1909 he
went to the Bishop's Hostel, Farnham, and a trio of short curacies;
then to be domestic chaplain at Lambeth to Archbishop Davidson,
where George Bell was his colleague and thence lifelong friend. He
had a time teaching at the Leeds Clergy School; then as a chaplain to
*An edited version of a lecture originally given in Carlisle, May 1986.
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