Nuttall, Geoffrey Fillingham 1911–2007
Nuttall, Geoffrey Fillingham 1911–2007
(Geoffrey F. Nuttall)
OBITUARY NOTICE—
See index for CA sketch: Born November 8, 1911, in Colwyn Bay, Denbighshire, Wales; died July 24, 2007, near Burcot, Worcestershire, England. Minister, church historian, educator, and author. Nuttall was ordained a Congregational minister in 1938, but his enthusiasm for church history knew few bounds. He was especially interested in the more liberal and charismatic, even radical, aspects of British Puritanism, an area rarely explored in depth by other scholars, and his focus was upon the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He thought of himself as a Separatist and dissenter, rather than a traditional Calvinist. Nuttall preached to Congregational (later United Reformed) congregations, but he spent much of his career as an academic. He taught church history and theology at the University of London, at New College, from 1945 to 1977, then at King's College, London, from 1977 to 1980. Nuttall was active in many church-historical organizations: a past president of the Congregational Historical Society, the Ecclesiastical Historical Society, and the United Reformed Church Historical Society. His historical interests reached beyond the Protestant denominations; he also studied such topics as the Chartres cathedral, Bernard of Clairvaux, Erasmus, and William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, often in Welsh, Latin, ancient Greek, and other languages in which he was fluent. Nuttall was a prolific writer, with no less than 600 titles to his credit, at least thirty of them full-length books. These include The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience (1946), Visible Saints: The Congregational Way, 1640-1660 (1957), Christianity and Violence (1972), Studies in Christian Enthusiasm (1983), and Early Quakers and the Divine Presence (2003).
OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:
BOOKS
Knox, R. Buick, editor, Reformation, Conformity, and Dissent: Essays in Honour of Geoffrey Nuttall, Epworth Press (London, England), 1977.
PERIODICALS
Times (London, England), August 29, 2007, p. 47.