"It is with deep sadness that we learned of the death of Professor David Demson yesterday. David was a devoted and beloved member of the faculty at Wycliffe College for nearly twenty years.
A graduate of Harvard University and with a DPhil from Oxford, he spent time at the University of Basel studying under Karl Barth. He took up a position teaching Systematic Theology at Emmanuel College in 1962, and, upon retirement in 2001, he was given Emeritus status. He taught at McMaster Divinity School, Regis College, the University of Latvia, and at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 2007 he agreed to teach at Wycliffe at the invitation of Principal George Sumner, offering courses on Luther and Calvin and what became another nine or ten courses on Barth. Wycliffe made him an honorary alumnus in 2012 and an emeritus faculty member in 2020.
The last course David taught was this past Winter term on ‘Barth’s Doctrine of Creation’. Nearly every course included graduate students from across the Toronto School of Theology, drawn as they were to his lively engagement with Reformed theology and personal reminisces of Barth. George Hunsinger regarded him as one of Barth’s most sensitive interpreters, writing, ‘With unsurpassed insight and power, Barth is at once explained and thoughtfully corrected in a way that he might well have welcomed himself. Demson’s beautiful effort of retrieval recovers Barth at his very best. Demson penetrates to the true spirit of Barth’s work over and beyond the mere letter.’
David was the author of Calvin’s Theology of the Word of God (1964) and Hans Frei and Karl Barth: Different Ways of Reading Scripture (1997). He wrote numerous articles. He was a Past President of the Canadian Theological Society, Past General Secretary of the Karl Barth Society of North America, and was involved in ecumenical commissions of the Canadian Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches.
David loved teaching and he loved his students. Possessed of great humility, he lectured with humour and evident delight. He regarded every question as a serious question, and while he could be challenging, he was never combative. His former student, Philip Ziegler, said of him, ‘For many of us who encountered David in both lecture hall and seminar room over the years, it was precisely this impassioned quaerens [seeking] which in us first kindled, and then repeatedly re-kindled, an ardour for the ratio [reason] of the gospel of God.’
I visited David in hospital four weeks ago. Although he was connected to all kinds of monitors, I found him reading the paper. After a few reflections on political affairs he turned his attention to what he was thinking of teaching in the next academic year. But the emotion in his voice betrayed a realisation that this might not be and our conversation turned to how grateful he was for his life and for his colleagues at Wycliffe. We shall greatly miss him, and our prayers are with his wife, Leslie and his children in this time of grief.
On the eve of Emil Brunner’s death in 1966, Karl Barth wrote to him, ‘We all live only by virtue of the fact that a great and merciful God says his gracious Yes to all of us.’ In this Easter season we commend David to the gracious Yes of God and to the loving arms of the Risen One."
-The Rt Rev. Dr Stephen Andrews, Principal, Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto
