John Baillie (theologian)

Very Rev John Baillie CH (26 March 1886, Gairloch – 29 September 1960, Edinburgh) was a Scottish theologian, a Church of Scotland minister and brother of theologian Donald Macpherson Baillie.

Son of Free Church Minister John Baillie, he was born in the Free Church Manse in Gairloch, Wester Ross, on 26 March 1886. A leading theologian, he held academic posts in the UK, USA, and Canada. His brother Donald Macpherson Baillie was Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of St. Andrews and his other brother Peter Baillie served as a missionary doctor at Jalna, India.

Raised in the Calvinist tradition, Baillie studied Divinity at Edinburgh University. After graduating he undertook further studies at both Jena and Marburg in Germany and then went to teach in Canada and the United States. He was a professor at Edinburgh University from 1934 to 1959. He was Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1943.

Baillie wrote A Diary of Private Prayer (1936), regarded as a devotional classic. But his most important contribution to theology was an exploration of the relationship between the knowledge of God to spiritual and moral experience.

As Convener of the Church of Scotland's General Assembly's "Commission for the Interpretation of God's Will in the Present Crisis" ("The Baillie Commission"), reporting to the Assembly 1941 to 1945, Baillie helped the Church to think through its approach and mission to the post-war world.

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