He was born and raised in Norfolk, Va. During World War Two, he had served in the United States Coast Guard.

He attended Harvard College, from which he graduated with a bachelor's degree in government, in 1948. He then attended the Episcopal Theological School, and received a bachelor's of sacred theology in 1951. It was after this that he was ordained as an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Massachusetts. He received a PhD in theology in 1957, from the University of Basel in Switzerland studying under Karl Barth. A professor at Temple University, he was considered a leader of the "Death of God" school or movement, although he himself rejected that name for the movement as a journalistic invention, and an exponent of "Secular Christianity".

Below is an incomplete list of his works :

• The Secular Meaning of the Gospel: Based on an Analysis of Its Language
• A Theology of the Jewish-Christian Reality (3 Volumes.)
• The Edges of Language:An Essay in the Logic of a Religion
• The Burden of Freedom
• Theological Explorations
• Christ in Our Place: The Substitutionary Character of Calvin's Doctrine of Reconciliation