David Tracy was born in 1939 in Yonkers, New York. A noted Roman Catholic teacher, scholar, priest and theologian, he received his licentiate (1964) and doctorate (1969) at Gregorian University in Rome. From 1967 to 1969 Tracy taught at Catholic University of America, his first teaching assignment. He then moved to the University of Chicago Divinity School, where he was named Distinguished Service Professor in 1985 and Distinguished Service Professor of Roman Catholic Studies in 1987. He has served on the university’s Committee on the Analysis of Ideas and Methods and on the Committee on Social Thought. He was a fellow, with John Cobb, at John Carroll University in 1976–1977, delivering the Tuohy Lectures on ‘the Problem of God’.

The recipient of several honorary doctorate degrees, Tracy was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1982. He has lectured in around forty universities around the world.

His publications include: The Achievement of Bernard Lonergan (1970); Blessed Rage for Order: The New Pluralism in Theology (1975); The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (1981); Talking about God: Doing Theology in the Context of Modern Pluralism, with John Cobb (1983); A Short History of the Interpretation of the Bible, with Robert Grant (2d. ed., 1984); A Catholic Vision, with Stephen Happel (1984); Plurality and Ambiguity (1987); Dialogue with the Other: The Inter-Religious Dialogue (1990); and On Naming the Present: God, Hermeneutics, and Church (1994).