E.R. Fairweather

Eugene Rathbone Fairweather was a Canadian Anglican theologian born in Ottawa on November 2nd, 1920. He grew up in Montreal. He was educated at McGill University (BA), the University of Toronto (MA), Trinity College (Toronto) (BD), and Union Theological Seminary (STM, ThD), where he undertook doctoral studies under the supervision of Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr. During his time in New York he served as an assistant priest at the Cathedral of St John the Divine. Upon the completion of his doctorate in 1949 he returned to Trinity College in Toronto to teach, and in 1964 became the Keble Professor of Divinity. He continued to teach there until his retirement in 1986. He served for many years as an assistant priest at the Church of St Mary Magdalene. He died on April 2nd, 2002.

He had a strong focus on certain major theological thinkers in the tradition of the Western Church such as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas, but at the same time exhibited a lively interest in (and wrote about) many important figures in the history of Canadian Anglicanism, such as John Strachan, John Medley, Tully Kingdon, and Harold Hamilton.

He served at various times as the President of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies, the Canadian Theological Society, and the American Theological Society, and was also for several years the Editor of the Canadian Journal of Theology.

He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, as well as an honorary doctor of McGill University in Montreal (DD), the University of King's College in Halifax (DD), and Huron College in London, Ontario (DD).

For many years he was a member of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches and a Patron of the Tantur Ecumenical Institute. He was in addition an official Anglican observer at the Second Vatican Council as well as a participant in the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, in connexion with which the Cross of St Augustine was conferred upon him in 1981 by the Archbishop of Canterbury (Robert Runcie).