After Brentwood (Mo.) High School he attended Northwestern for a year and then transferred to Princeton, joining the Special Program in Humanities. He acted in Intime, the Savoyards, and McCarter, and his thesis, an interpretive dramatization of The Brothers Karamazov, was performed with 60 cast members in the Chapel. After a year at King’s College in London, David earned a master’s degree at Yale, where he met and married Marlyne. He returned to Princeton for master’s and doctoral degrees in systematic theology. During those summers he pastored at Congregational Old Brick Church in Clarendon, Vt.

He enjoyed a 44-year career of teaching Christian theology at Mary Washington University in Fredericksburg, Va., having published many articles at the intersection of religion and theology. He also was an ordained United Church of Christ minister. David’s illustrated book, An Evocation of Kierkegaard, offered a contemporary view of the theologian’s Denmark. He also edited volumes of the work of scholar Arthur C. McGill, his teacher at Princeton and later a professor at Harvard. 

The class shares its sadness with Marlyne, daughters Sarah Naylor and Kristin Geary, and five grandchildren.