Extending a Legacy and Vision for the World
 
Fuller Seminary’s new David Allan Hubbard Library will be dedicated at a grand opening celebration on May 18. In the picture banner, members of the library staff are gathered around a large portrait of the library’s namesake, David Allan Hubbard, which features prominently in the new building’s lobby. Below, some history about this esteemed leader and past president in whose honor the library was built.

David Allan Hubbard: Scholar, Minister, and Visionary

David Allan Hubbard (1928-1996) was the third president of Fuller Theological Seminary, serving from 1963 to 1993. During these three decades he led the school to become one of the world's largest multidenominational seminaries, adding in 1965 the School of Psychology and School of World Mission (now School of Intercultural Studies) to complement the School of Theology.

Hubbard, only 35 when he assumed the presidency, went on to earn wide respect as a leader in theological scholarship. He was an effective and innovative administrator, cultivating a Board of Trustees at Fuller that was itself highly esteemed in American theological education.  Well known as a theological scholar, Hubbard wrote 36 books, including four commentaries on the Old Testament, and served as general editor of the Word Biblical Commentary until his death.  An ordained minister of the American Baptist Church, he was in constant demand as a speaker and lecturer.

Hubbard is widely recognized for playing a key role in bringing together previously separate segments of the evangelical community into new coalitions. He recognized the leadership gifts of women and instituted the use of inclusive language at Fuller.  As a statesman for evangelicals, Hubbard built bridges with Jewish and Catholic communities and led Fuller through the inerrancy-infallibility debates of the 1960s, and then had a prominent role once again in the discussion over creationism in school texts in the early 1970s.

“A man of unlimited peripheral vision” was David Allan Hubbard, says Max De Pree, trustee chair emeritus and longtime personal friend of Hubbard’s. “His was the mind of a scholar, the soul of an artist, and the heart of a pastor,” says another trustee chair emeritus, Merlin W. Call. The adept leadership that Hubbard brought to Fuller for 30 critical years left a legacy of faithfulness and influence in theological education that will endure well into the future.