Frank Stanton Burns Gavin

Background

Gavin was born on October 31, 1890 in Cincinnati, Ohio, of Scottish and Irish ancestry, the only child of William James Gavin, a physician, and Laura Adelaide (Burns) Gavin.

Education

After graduating from Hughes High School, Cincinnati, in 1907 Gavin entered the University of Cincinnati, from which he received the A. B. degree in 1912. Beginning the multiple activity typical of his later life, he had also, while an undergraduate, taken courses at Xavier University and had enrolled at Hebrew Union College, both in Cincinnati. The latter by special arrangement subsequently gave him its B. H. L. degree (1918). In 1912 he entered the General Theological Seminary, New York City, at the same time pursuing graduate study at Columbia University, where he was a university fellow in Semitic languages and received an A. M. degree in 1914 and a Ph. D. in 1922. In 1915 he graduated from the Seminary with the S. T. B. degree and was ordained to the priesthood. He later undertook additional graduate studies at Harvard University in Semitic and early Christian literature, receiving the S. T. M. degree in 1917 and the Th. D. in 1919.

Career

After a year at St. Luke's Church, Cincinnati (later renamed St. Barnabas's), Gavin entered the novitiate of the Society of St. John the Evangelist ("Cowley Fathers") at Cambridge, Massachussets. In 1919-1920 he directed the preparatory department of Nashotah House, Nashotah, Wisconsin; the year 1920-1921 he spent at Athens, studying contemporary Greek theology. On his return to America he left the Society, in which he had taken only temporary vows. In 1921-1923 he was professor of New Testament at Nashotah, and in 1923 he became professor of ecclesiastical history at the General Theological Seminary. From Gavin's varied scholarship came a series of valuable books: his Columbia Ph. D. thesis, Aphraates and the Jews (1923), on a Syrian Church Father; Some Aspects of Contemporary Greek Orthodox Thought (1923), the Hale Lectures which he gave in 1921 at Western Theological Seminary, Chicago; and The Jewish Antecedents of the Christian Sacraments (1928), the Chapman Lectures, London, 1927. Along with his teaching he found time, amid the demands of a growing family, for much pastoral work, preaching, and lecturing. He aimed to work out an Anglo-Catholicism both loyal to historic traditions and progressively alert to modern needs. His ideas were expressed in Selfhood and Sacrifice (1932), in a series of articles on "Liberal Catholicism" edited for The Living Church, and in his last written work, an essay on "Revisions" contributed to Affirmations, edited by B. I. Bell (1938). After 1930 Gavin's work was increasingly interrupted by periods of bad health. He was able, however, to take an active part in the Faith and Order movement (serving on the Theological Commission and Continuation Committee of the World Conference on Faith and Order) and in the ecumenical relations of the Episcopal Church, especially with the Eastern Orthodox churches. In 1935 he was a member of the Anglican theological delegation to Bucharest, Roumania. In 1936-1938 he was counselor of the Council on Ecclesiastical Relations of the Episcopal Church. His brilliant career came to a premature end; after attending the World Conference on Faith and Order at Edinburgh, 1937, he returned to his duties in New York, but his health rapidly gave way, and an attack of pneumonia led to his death at the age of forty-seven. At his funeral in St. Mary the Virgin's, New York City, the Cowley Fathers sang the Requiem, and Orthodox and Anglican prelates took part; he was buried in Cypress Hills Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.

Achievements

• Gavin was a noted church historian, known for his works.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Jewish Antecedents of the Christian Sacraments (Cosimo Classics)

    (What saves both Christian sacramentalism and the ceremoni...)

  • Some Aspects of Contemporary Greek Orthodox Thought (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Some Aspects of Contemporary Greek Orthodox ...)

  • Some aspects of contemporary Greek Orthodox thought.
  • Aphraates and the Jews;: A study of the controversial homilies of the Persian sage in their relation to Jewish thought
  • Selfhood and Sacrifice: The Seven Problems of the Atoning Life

Connections

On June 22, 1921, Gavin married Eula Christian Groenier of Greensburg, Indiana. Mrs. Gavin and their five children - William Francis, James Louis, Peter Michael, Mary Elizabeth Christian, and Jane - survived him.

Father:

William James Gavin

Mother:

Laura Adelaide Burns

Spouse:

Eula Christian Groenier

Daughter:

Jane Gavin

Daughter:

Mary Elizabeth Christian Gavin

Son:

Peter Michael Gavin

Son:

William Francis Gavin

Son:

James Louis Gavin