Issue 23 Chaos and TruthBlog | The Late Greats Frederick Donald Coggan
The Late Greats Frederick Donald Coggan
Author: Andy PeckPost Date: 12.06.20
In 1956, Donald Coggan was appointed and consecrated as Bishop of Bradford. His former students at the London College of Divinity presented him with his pectoral cross, on which was engraved a text from 1 Corinthians 9: ‘Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel.’ It was the text that he took for his enthronement sermon when he became Archbishop of York only five years later1 and it summarized his ministry. As Edward Carpenter put it in his magisterial history of the Archbishops of Canterbury, ‘Coggan’s central concern throughout life was the ministry of the Gospel.’2
Donald Coggan realized his call to ministry at an early age. One of the defining moments in his life was his decision at school to move from studying Moderns to Classics, so he went up to Cambridge in 1928 to read Theology already competent in Hebrew and Greek (as well as Latin). His love of the biblical languages was to be reflected in his preaching, in his leadership of the United Bible Societies, and in his work in the translation of the New English Bible and its successor the Revised English Bible
