Canon Anthony Harvey obituary

Other lives: Influential church theologian and ethicist

My friend and colleague Anthony Harvey, who has died aged 87, was an outstanding classicist who switched to theology and became a leading New Testament scholar, and subsequently an influential church theologian and ethicist.

His books on ministry and on the gospels included Jesus and the Constraints of History (1982) – based on his Bampton lectures at Oxford University – which was rated among the best historical Jesus books of its generation. A monograph on St Paul, Renewal Through Suffering (1996), and several articles (including one on the Lord’s Prayer to appear shortly) maintained his scholarly independence and impeccable academic standards. Is Scripture Still Holy? (2012) showed his concern to relate this to the life of the church.

Anthony was born in London, son of Cyril Harvey, a barrister, and his wife, Nina (nee Darley), attended Eton and then studied classics at Worcester College, Oxford. Following ordination in 1958 to a curacy in London, he returned to Oxford in 1962 to continue research at Christ Church.

After a spell as warden of St Augustine’s College, Canterbury (1969-75) he became a lecturer at Oxford and chaplain of the Queen’s College before moving to Westminster Abbey as canon librarian in 1982; from 1987 until his retirement in 1999 he was also archdeacon and sub-dean.

At Westminster he was the statutory theologian on various church commissions, including the archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie’s initiative which led in 1985 to the Faith in the City report. The two years of intensive fieldwork behind that report redirected the activism of an always compassionate but privileged and somewhat remote intellectual.

Shocked by the extent of many communities’ alienation from the life of society, he gave time and effort to local social projects. By What Authority? The Church and Social Concern (2001) and Asylum in Britain (2009) offered his theological reflection on this frontline experience. Books on the ethics of Jesus, retaliation, sexual morality and peacemaking also stemmed from his active involvement in church, and society, which continued up to his death.

Following the death in 2013 of his wife, Julian (nee McMaster), a gifted artist and poet, he wrote a memoir of his ministry, profession and marriage, Drawn Three Ways (2016). Readers of that book may see how the stoic philosophy and religious faith that he learned and taught when young came to shape his response to his wife’s long illness and the death in 2008 of Christian, the third of their four daughters.

He is survived by his daughters Marina, Helen and Victoria.

Robert Morgan

The GuardianTramp

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