Eugene Fairweather as Ecumenical Partner

Abstract

My first encounter with Eugene Fairweather occurred in the early 1940s at an intercollege Theology Society meeting. I cannot now remember the subject of the paper Eugene had read. He expected to be challenged on his 'high church, catholic views', especially by United Church students, all of whom, he suspected, were under the influence of moralistic understandings of the 'social gospel'. My most influential mentor at Emmanuel was Dr. John Line. He had felt the challenge of the neo-Reformation theology of Brunner and Barth, with what seemed to be its profounder understanding of the reality of God and its more sober, realistic understandings of the plight of man than his former liberal views had afforded. Much in his teaching seemed sound to me and from it I derived the ammunition to challenge, yet with more evident accord, Eugene's theological understanding. The direction of the attack, he confessed then, and often since, took him by surprise. But there began that night a friendly partnership in theological dialogue that has continued for more than forty years