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To many people, James Douglas was Jim or JDD ("Call me JD squared"). Following his death on August 13 at age 80, we celebrated a memorial service for him; celebrate is the right word, for Jim would not want us to be solemn or pompous. Thirty years ago I wrote thanking him for being so gracious (I was a late contributor to one of his dictionaries). He wrote back from St. Andrews (on a card from the Roxburghe Hotel, Edinburgh): "Please, oh please, let it not be known that I have been 'gracious.' … It would spoil my maverick reputation."

He signed himself "Anne-Marie's friend, Jim."

It was so often such little things that revealed the man. No one, for example, was ever so assiduous in writing to acknowledge services rendered as he was. His declining activity must have had something to do with the Post Office's financial woes. Jim was in some ways a back-room boy, not often in the limelight but for all that very widely known, successful and influential. He did not always get the credit when bigger names were involved.

James' first years were spent in Glasgow. His father was a shipyard laborer, and his mother died when he was 2. His only sibling, his elder brother Alex, died 18 months ago. Alex's widow Doris and two daughters, Jess and Sandra, were latterly James's closest family. His humble beginnings—he recalled moving house to Scotstoun with the family's belongings in a cart—included his first school, one for PDs: "Physically Deficients." No PC in these days!

While at Hyndland Secondary School, several of his lifelong friendships began. After a couple of years of clerical work he joined the RAF in 1941, serving in the Signals for five years in places like Malta and Gibralter. While in the Forces he took exams which got him into Glasgow University. After one year he was able to transfer to St. Andrews, where by 1953 he had completed studies.

Jim remained strikingly proud of his lowly origins. These years left him with not only an addiction to fish and chips but also an aversion to the high-falutin', to self-important conceit, and to empty show. He became a master at puncturing pretentiousness, at pricking inflated balloons, often playfully but never cruelly. It was while at Hyndland Secondary that he was taken in hand by Jim Meiklejohn, leader of Hyndland Crusader Class—"Boss" Meiklejohn, later head of the Scripture Union in Scotland, to whom above all our Jim owed those Christian and evangelical convictions which would determine the course of the rest of his life.

Jim rarely wore his evangelicalism on his sleeve (and he liked to expose evangelical foibles), but he retained a strong biblical faith to the end.

After St. Andrews, masters (STM) and doctoral study took him to Hartford Theological Seminary in Connecticut—presumably the first of numerous visits to the United States. (He won several cups for table tennis while traversing the Atlantic in the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth). He graduated Ph.D. magna cum laude in 1955 for a thesis on the Covenanters, which became his most substantial single-author book, Light in the North (1964). It is still the most accessible scholarly introduction to the Covenanters.

After his return to Scotland, a year lecturing in church history at St. Mary's College, St. Andrews, and less than that as minister of St. John's Kirk Rothesay, both proved to be cul-de-sac experiences for Jim. He moved south to become librarian of Tyndale House, Cambridge (1958-1961), where I first met him around 1960. His main occupation was planning and editing the New Bible Dictionary (1962), a landmark achievement for InterVarsity Press, for British evangelical scholarship and above all for JDD. He was thereby launched on a career that would make him one of the most highly regarded religious editors in the English-speaking world of the later 20th century.

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September (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47