William Marshner
William Harry Marshner, S.T.D., is a convert to Catholicism, a Thomistic theologian, ethicist, and a founding professor at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia, where he was chairman of the theology department in the early days of the college.
Biography
Born in Baltimore in 1943, Marshner was raised in the Lutheran Church. He pursued his undergraduate studies at Gettysburg College as a pre-ministerial student, majoring in Greek. An interest in Old Testament exegesis led him to postpone entry into the Lutheran seminary in order to pursue a degree at the Yale graduate school. He studied Hebrew, Akkadian, Aramaic, and other Semitic languages. Most importantly, however, at Yale he became a member of the Party of the Right (Yale) and served for a term as Chairman.
The impossibility of reconciling the historical-critical method of exegesis with the method of Jesus and his Apostles forced him to deeper philosophical and theological questions. In 1967, Marshner was received into the Catholic Church and began writing for Triumph magazine, where he was an assistant editor from 1971–1973, and for The Wanderer newspaper, where he was Washington, D.C. editor from 1972-1975.
Personal
Since 1975, he has been married to Connaught Coyne, and they currently have four children, names being: Pearse, Michael, Caroline, and Brigid. Following their marriage he returned to graduate studies in 1975, earning a M.A. from the University of Dallas and, more recently, the licentiate and doctoral degrees in sacred theology from the Lateran University in Rome.
From 1977 until his retirement in 2014, Marshner taught theology at Christendom College.