The Rev Dr Anthony Harvey
Scholar and Sub-dean of Westminster Abbey who became a sharp critic of the Conservatives
THE REVEREND DR ANTHONY HARVEY, who has died aged 87, was Sub-dean of Westminster Abbey from 1987 to 1999, having become a Canon five years earlier. He was a New Testament scholar of considerable erudition and one of the last of a now defunct breed of scholars who combined their research and writing with substantial service to the Church.
In both spheres he was assisted by an acute mind and a capacity for sustained work, together with a degree of detachment from what he regarded as trivial matters.
He became Sub-dean at a time of unprecedented change in the ranks of the Abbey’s senior personnel, and throughout the reign of Michael Mayne, Dean from 1986 to 1996, he was the power behind the throne. In the damaging controversy which followed the dismissal of the Abbey’s organist by Mayne’s successor there was widespread regret that Harvey had been either unable or unwilling to exercise a restraining and reconciling influence.
A significant change in his general outlook took place in the mid-1990s as a consequence of his membership of an Archbishop’s Commission on Urban Priority Areas, which produced the controversial report, Faith in the City. He was invited to join the commission for his theological expertise, and up to this point his attitude to social and political matters had been broadly conservative.
The experience of visiting Northern industrial towns and other deprived areas led, however, to his becoming a sharp critic of the Conservative government and an active supporter of campaigns for the underprivileged.
Anthony Ernest Harvey’s own background was by no means underprivileged. Born on May 1 1930, the son of a London KC, he attended the Dragon School, Oxford, and went from there to Eton as a King’s Scholar. At Worcester College, Oxford, he read Classics, then Theology, and completed his training for Holy Orders at Westcott House, Cambridge.
He was a curate at Christ Church, Chelsea, from 1958 to 1962, then returned to Oxford as a research student at Christ Church. He now embarked on the writing of a large, one-volume Companion to the New Testament, based on the New English translation. Published in 1978, this was highly praised for a combination of sound scholarship and accessibility which made it particularly useful to non-specialist clergy and laity. Two later editions were needed.
Meanwhile, in 1969, Harvey had been appointed Warden of St Augustine’s College, Canterbury, where he was responsible for the final year of ordination training of men who had read Theology at King’s College, London. Although he remained in this post for six years his tenure was not an unqualified success.
His teaching was of the highest quality, but an Eton-oxford background, allied to a certain austere aloofness, made it difficult for him to relate to students of very different origins. There were also unfortunate clashes with the Dean of King’s College who had overall responsibility for the course.
Harvey returned to Oxford in 1976 – this time as a lecturer in the Faculty of Theology and as a Fellow of Wolfson College. A year later he took on, additionally, the chaplaincy of Queen’s College, and also became a member of the Church of England’s Doctrine Commission, to which he made a valued contribution over the next nine years.
Recognition of the quality of his mind led to appointment as Bampton Lecturer in 1980, and the resulting book, Jesus and the Constraints of History (1982), was widely recognised as an important contribution to the study of Christology. Using his considerable knowledge of the ancient world, he placed Jesus in the line of Jewish prophets, being of such a unique character that he could be regarded as an agent of the divine.
Among his other books were Jesus on Trial (1976), Strenuous Commands (1990), on the ethical implications of the teaching of Jesus, and an autobiography, Drawn Three Ways (2016), the title a reference to his life as scholar, as a churchman and caring for his sick wife over a long period.
Harvey was awarded an Oxford DD in 1983 and his mind now turned increasingly to ethical questions, leading to several books on sexual morality, violence and war. His suggestion that the teaching of the Bible on sexual matters was not clear-cut generated a brief controversy, but the scholarly basis and style of his argument did not lend itself to sensationalism.
During his time at Westminster he did much to enhance the Abbey’s educational role through the organisation of lectures and study courses, and he masterminded the refurbishment of the museum. He was also responsible for the installation on the West Front of the Abbey of 10 statues representing Christian martyrs of the 20th century including Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King and Oscar Romero. For many years he was co-chairman of the London Society for Jews and Christians and he did much to further closer Jewish-christian relations.
That he did not become Dean of a major cathedral is perhaps explicable by a desire to maintain the leisure essential to his studies and writing, and also by the serious health problems of his wife, Julian, who predeceased him. He is survived by three daughters, a fourth daughter having predeceased him.
The Rev Dr Anthony Harvey, born May 1 1930, died January 9 2018