In memoriam: Reverend Emeritus Professor Norman Young

1930 – 2024

Reverend Emeritus Professor Norman Young was President of the Melbourne College of Divinity, precursor to the University, in 1982-83. He was a valued member of the scholarly community during his long tenure as a teacher and mentor, full-time from 1964 to 1995 and then in retirement to 2010. We mourn his death on 19 May 2024 and extend our sympathy to his family and a wide circle of former students and colleagues. He was deeply respected as a fine Christian thinker and warm-hearted human being.

Discovering that the Bible should be read for deeper meaning rather than literal truth through George Barclay’s The Making and Meaning of the Bible brought the 15 year old Norman Young from the edges of the Methodist youth group in Geelong and back into serious engagement with faith. Study in Theology for the Methodist ministry at Queen’s College with the Melbourne College of Divinity, with honours also in Philosophy at the University of Melbourne, honed his trademark capacity to put his views with clarity and grace. In 1954, newly married to Barbara, he travelled to Drew University in New Jersey, first to work on a Bachelor of Divinity degree and then to complete doctoral study on Rudolf Bultmann on the fundamental importance of personal encounter with the Mystery of God incarnate. The Youngs returned to Australia in 1960. Norman taught first at King’s College Brisbane where the couple’s two sons were born, and then, from 1964 until retirement in 1995, he lectured in systematic theology first at Queen’s College, and from 1968 as a foundation member of the United Faculty of Theology. This innovative partnership across Methodist, Congregational, Presbyterian, Anglican and Jesuit colleges within the Melbourne College of Divinity was at the cutting edge of ecumenical collaboration internationally. His major work Creator, Creation and Faith, published by Collins in London in 1976 was simply ‘the blue book’ and a touchstone for students beginning theological study. On retirement from the UFT Norman was much appreciated as a teacher for a further 15 years at Yarra Theological Union, and occasional lecturer at Pilgrim Theological College. He is remembered warmly by students and colleagues for his grace and perception; and for teaching them to follow arguments to where they led.

Norman’s work on the drafting committee of the Basis of Union that drew Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregational churches into the new Uniting Church in Australia in 1977 was just one dimension of the work for the wider church and ecumenism that marked his ministry as a theological teacher. As a member of several formal inter-church conversations, most notably the World Methodist/Roman Catholic dialogue, he helped forge theological understanding with immediate pastoral impact in the ecumenical spring of the decades that followed the Second Vatican Council.

A 2013 volume of essays in honour of Norman and his work carried the title Immense, Unfathomed, Unconfined: the Grace of God in Creation, Church and Community. Drawing on that title, Norman reflected on his vocation as a theologian:

I came to see that my work as a theologian committed me, among other things, to identify and, as far as possible, to offer ways of tackling problems associated with faith, but then to acknowledge, indeed to appropriate, the mystery that lies at the heart of it all, the mystery of God’s grace.

Norman’s gentle insistence that the rigorous task of theological reflection goes hand in hand with awareness of unfathomable Mystery was his gift to generations of students and colleagues. We are grateful for his life and work among us.