Charles Cranfield

Charles Ernest Burland Cranfield (13 September 1915 – 27 February 2015) was a British theologian, academic, and Christian minister.

Biography Cranfield was born in Winchmore Hill, London on 13 September 1915 to parents Charles Ernest Cranfield (a town clerk and Methodist preacher) and Beatrice Mary, née Tubbs (an artist). Cranfield attended Mill Hill School and gained a first class degree in classics in 1936 from Jesus College, Cambridge. He went on to study Theology at Wesley House, Cambridge until 1939.

He was ordained as a Methodist minister in 1941, served as a military chaplain during the Second World War, and then worked with prisoners-of-war and as a parish minister during the post-war period. He moved into academia and was appointment a lecturer in theology at the University of Durham in 1950. He was awarded a personal chair as Professor of Theology in 1978, and maintained his links with the university as Emeritus Professor from his retirement in 1980. He moved away from Methodism and became a minister in the Presbyterian Church of England (which later became the United Reformed Church) in 1954.

On 7 April 1953, Cranfield married Ruth Elizabeth Gertrude Bole in Bath. They had twin daughters who both went on to become Church of Scotland ministers. Cranfield died on 27 February 2015 as a result of pneumonia and was buried at South Road Cemetery. In 1982, Cranfield was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.

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