The Rev Professor JKS Reid, who died shortly before his 92nd birthday, spent most of his life in the academic world, and was professor of systematic theology in Aberdeen University from 1961 until his retirement in 1976.
The twin son of a Free Church minister in Leith, whose brother George was Moderator of the General Assembly in 1973, ''Jacko'' Reid (as he was known both to friends and to succeeding years of divinity students) was clearly destined for the academic world from his student days, when he took a first class honours in philosophy at Edinburgh and then went on to graduate in divinity with distinction in theology. He was one of a number of divinity students who later became professors (Ian Henderson of Glasgow was another) who studied on the continent and saw the rise of Hitler at first hand.
Reid was a student at Heidelberg in 1933 and Marburg in 1937, where he went after a short period as professor of philosophy in Calcutta, where his father had been ordained in 1892. Reid was ordained just before the Second World War broke out, as minister of Craigmillar Park Church in Edinburgh. His ministry there lasted until the early 1950s, though it was interrupted by war service in the Middle East and Europe as a chaplain in the Parachute Regiment.
When the war ended, he continued as a chaplain in the Territorial Army. The convivial life of the army mess appealed greatly to him, and he regaled his students in Aberdeen with stories of his experiences there.
In 1952, Reid became professor of theology at Leeds University, a post later to be held by David Jenkins who became famous as bishop of Durham. The two, however, were poles apart theologically. Reid was someone who was firmly in the Calvinist tradition (he edited Calvin's treatises) and had little sympathy with trends in modern theology.
In the 1960s, Scottish theology was divided between those who followed the teaching of the Swiss theologian Karl Barth, who stressed that God was so infinitely superior to all human aspirations that human reason was worthless, and those who took a more sympathetic view of contemporary culture, art, and philosophy.
JKS Reid and his contemporary in Edinburgh, Professor Tom Torrance, were sympathetic to Barth, whereas the two Glasgow professors, Ronald Gregor Smith and Ian Henderson, were much more sympathetic to contemporary trends such as the existentialism of the German theologian Rudolf Bultmann.
While parish minister in Craigmillar Park, Reid had already made a name for himself in academic circles. His first book, The Church's Standing Orders, was published in 1943, and he translated two seminal works by the Basel New Testament scholar, Oscar Cullman, The Earliest Christian Confessions and Baptism in the New Testament.
These and a significant book on the authority of the New Testament, along with his joint editorship (with Professor Tom Torrance) of the infant Scottish Journal of Theology made it no surprise when he was appointed to the chair of systematic theology in Aberdeen.
Small, in stature, with a very precise, clipped, quiet way of speaking, Jacko Reid was not someone to be crossed lightly. One of his former students described him as ''a remorseless scholar who was remorseless in the pursuit of standards''.
He was precise in scholarship, demeanour, dress, and behaviour, and he instilled into his students the importance of a disciplined approach both to their thinking and to their conduct of worship.
Reid was a strong supporter of the ecumenical movement in the 1960s . His book Presbyterians and Unity was published in 1965. He was a member of the British Council of Churches and of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches and represented the Church of Scotland at the second Vatican Council.
He was also secretary of the joint committee of the New English Bible, and oversaw the final completion of the New English Bible in 1970, for which, the following year, he was awarded the CBE. He and his wife Gretta, who died some time ago, had no children.
Rev Professor JKS Reid, theologian; born March 31, 1910, died March 18, 2002.
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