Philosophers around the world recently mourned the death of John Macquarrie, whose astute mind helped explain the difficult thoughts of geniuses like Martin Heidegger and Rudolph Bultmann to the rest of us. Spending most of his career at Oxford, he examined a broad spectrum of belief systems, from Roman Catholic to Baptist, from Quaker to Lutheran. He was known both for his fairness and for his profound understanding.
One of his central ideas was that, when a philosopher speaks about God, the words and sentences must always be understood as somewhat symbolic, and not entirely literal. In speaking about the central Being of the universe, human language is simply not capable of expressing such facts directly. Therefore, the most serious texts will always be not completely literal. Any text which is understood only on a literal level with either be not very profound, like the owner's manual for your DVD player, or will have important hidden truths available only to the reader who uses a more symbolic method of interpretation. Macquarrie's concept is this: to be literal is to be overly simplistic, and understanding the existence of the universe is not a simple task. Macquarrie hypothesized that God is Being - using the word "Being" to indicate pure existence - the thing which keeps the universe from disappearing.
Interestingly, the philosophers who influenced Macquarrie the most, and the ones whom he most influenced, were the ones with whom he had some disagreement. Heidegger, who did much to consolidate the concept of "Being," was opposed to much of what Macquarrie believed, yet Macquarrie appreciated Heidegger's analysis of this concept. In Europe after World War II, when so much had been devastated, it became clear to many people that they had to return to a serious analysis of God and His nature. Macquarrie's philosophy was one of several which led the way to hope and a peaceful modern Europe. He was born in 1919 and died in 2007.
