The Marxist Barthian significance of Lex Miller for Arthur Prior.

One of the most formative influences upon Arthur Prior from his arrival at Otago University and especially at Knox College in 1932, was theological student Alexander “Lex” Miller (1908-1960). This influence continued through to Miller’s untimely death and significantly drove Prior’s theological turn to Barthianism and also his engagement, for more than a decade, with Marxist thought.This article discusses the life and thought of Lex Miller and how Miller’s thought influenced Prior’s theology and politics. It concludes with the transcription of a letter from 1946 in which Prior sets out his response and reaction to Miller’s The Christian Significance of Karl Barth (1946b). In this letter Prior makes clear that Miller’s book has made him reconsider his own position as he has come to see that, in regard to Marxist economics, he “had been hoodwinked”.