The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church

F.L. (Frank Leslie) Cross was born in 1900. He attended the local day school, which specialized in science. While at school, he passed the London Intermediate B.Sc. Examination and won the Domun Scholarship for Natural Science at Balliol College, Oxford University. After only one term at Oxford, Cross entered military service during the waning months of World War I, but the armistice was signed before he saw any action. After the war, he returned to Balliol where he took Honors in Chemistry and Crystallography in 1920. He was then sent to Keble to study theology. He took First Class Honors in Theology in 1922 and he pursued its study for the rest of his life. He went to Germany for a year to work on his doctoral dissertation and he eventually received his D.Phil. at Oxford in 1930. He later received honorary degrees from Aberdeen and Bond and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. Cross's first book, Religion and the Realm of Science, shows the influence of the scientific method on his thinking about religion and his interest in Catholic ceremony and sacramental religion. However, he is best known for his work on The Oxford Companion to the Christian Religion, which he was invited to co-edit in 1939. It was published in 1957 as the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church; it has become a standard reference tool in the field of theology. Cross died on December 29, 1968.