Born in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, on August 7, 1926, McGill moved to Brookline, Massachusetts, later that year[1] where he attended Rivers Country Day School, still extant today.
He is mentioned in The Lustre of Our Country The American Experience of Religious Freedom, by prominent Senior Circuit Judge John T. Noonan Jr.
But at Rivers I thought of Arthur as my chief academic rival, doubly formidable because his uncle, Austin Chute, was our Latin teacher".
[1] In 1961 he completed a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Yale[1][5] with his dissertation titled The Place of Dogmatic Theology in the University.
[8][9] In 1971, McGill was elected to the position of Bussey Professor of Theology at Harvard Divinity School where he taught until his death at 54.