FEW people who met Angus Holland would forget him. He had a remarkable memory and an agile mind. He could recall in detail the weather in Sydney - and elsewhere - years after the time in question. He could pluck historic cricket scores and election results from the recesses of his brain.

He could calculate instantly what day of the week any given date fell, even if his "simple" explanation of how he did this left no one any the wiser. As a medical student he once interrupted a physiology lecture to correct the professor, who had got a day wrong, to the great amusement of other students.

It was clear from an early age that John Angus Beveridge Holland's life would be devoted to scholarly pursuits, although its direction was not clear. Holland, who has died at 81, was born in Mosman, the eldest of four children. His father, Llondha Llenoi Holland (MB ’20, MS ’21) - his given names are anagrams of his own parents' surnames, Holland and O'Neill - was a doctor. So, too, was his mother, formerly Lorna Beveridge (BSc ’17, MB ’20, MS ’20). Llondha had shone in languages at school and Lorna in mathematics. She graduated with first class honours in medicine and science, and the university medal in physiology.

Angus did well at primary school and was a fine piano player. He was dux of Sydney Grammar, topped mathematics and was in the debating team. He began his medical course at the University of Sydney in 1943 but in May that year his father, a major in the army medical corps, died at sea when a Japanese submarine torpedoed the hospital ship Centaur off the Queensland coast - of 332 men and women on board, only 64 survived.

Holland, resident for three years at St Andrew's, the Presbyterian college, graduated with honours. After a year as a resident medical officer at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and a year teaching pathology at Sydney University, he decided to study for the ministry, through the university's arts-divinity course. This brought him under the influence of John McIntyre, the principal of St Andrew's and professor of divinity.

Holland graduated in 1956 with first class honours in philosophical and historical theology and in philosophy (logic). The professor of philosophy was John Anderson, a vocal atheist. Although Holland felt the conflict, he remained committed to the church and went to Scotland, where McIntyre had become professor of systematic theology at New College, the University of Edinburgh.

Holland worked on the theology of Athanasius (AD 293-373), the bishop of Alexandria, who was a critical figure in the early Church. Arius (AD 250-336) had propagated the Arian heresy, which questioned the divinity of Christ as the Son of the Father. Athanasius rejected Arius's ideas, arguing for the doctrine of the Trinity. Holland explored the Athanasian theology in a thesis of more than 1350 pages. His enthusiasm and attention to detail prompted McIntyre to warn: "Angus, you have enough for your PhD; do not write another word or comma, and if you need to, just stop in the middle of a sentence."

Holland earned his PhD in 1963 and became an authority on Athanasius. He lectured in theology at New College and was acting professor of Old Testament at Emmanuel College, Brisbane, in 1965. Academic work delayed his ordination but after brief periods in country NSW he was inducted in 1966 into the parish of St Andrew's, Narrabeen. He served on the doctrine committee of the church's General Assembly of Australia.

In 1969 he became professor of systematic theology at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, the principal theological school for white English-speaking Protestant South Africans. He is remembered there with affection and admiration for his great knowledge and ability to quote verbatim pages from theologians such as Karl Barth. William Pool, the moderator of the Uniting Presbyterian Church of South Africa, called him a genius of the campus. Away from matters theological, he would humbly demolish the science faculty in the annual classical music quiz.

Holland was a delegate to the World Council of Churches. He was minister-in-charge of African congregations in the area and chaplain to prisons. He disliked the apartheid regime, but believed in taking his faith to those who were otherwise cut off from the Church.

In 1975 he married in Sydney Judith Hamilton, who supported him in South Africa and in Brisbane, where they lived after returning from South Africa in 1995. He was an active Freemason, and he and Judith would come to Sydney for the New Year cricket Test - he became a 70-year member of the Sydney Cricket Ground.

Angus Holland is survived by Judith; a brother, Robert; and a sister, Alison.


This is an edited version of the obituary that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on 19 October 2007.