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Doing Theology Metaphysically: Austin Farrer
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
Extract
In the two decades since publication of Finite and Infinite made him visible from afar, Austin Farrer has exported from Oxford some thirty writings of uncommon range, acumen, and wit. By 1959 a reviewer in the TLS judged that “in Dr Farrer the academic world has one of the most interesting minds of the century….” His books, several of which issued from major lectureships, have been widely reviewed and cited in print; it has become an open secret that, in private, they have evoked fascination, puzzlement, and exasperation. Yet little sustained examination of his work has appeared. At a convergence of import and quandary such as this, I propose to examine the phase of Farrer's thought that has remained central for him, despite excursions into other genres — his philosophical theology. This article will center on his insistence upon doing that discipline metaphysically. For his insistence upon doing that, even out of season, provides a key to both his thought and its larger significance. After glancing at his response to opponents of this attempt, I shall inquire how certain metaphysical elements function in his account of our discourse about God and, in conclusion, essay some judgments about his achievement to date.
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- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1966
References
1 Austin Farrer, Finite and Infinite. A Philosophical Essay (Westminster [London], 1943), hereafter abbreviated as FI. (About its second edition, see infra, note 24.) Works cited in the following notes are by Farrer himself, unless otherwise stated. GV will signify his The Glass of Vision (Westminster, 1948), and FW, The Freedom of the Will (London, 1959). (The second edition of FW [New York, 1960; London, 1963] differs from the first only in the addition of a “Summary of the Argument,” pp. 316–30.)
2 The other genres include Biblical studies, sermons, verse, and devotional literature.
Biblical studies: “Eucharist and Church in the New Testament,” The Parish Communion: A Book of Essays by W. S. Baker [et al.], ed. A. G. Hebert (London, 1937), 75–94; A Rebirth of Images: The Making of St. John's Apocalypse (Westminster, 1949; Boston, 1963, with a new preface by Kenneth Burke); A Study in St. Mark (London, 1951); [Review of B. C. Butler, The Originality of St. Matthew], The Journal of Theological Studies, N. S., 3 (April, 1952), 102–06; “A Liturgical Theory about St. Mark's Gospel. A Review,” The Church Quarterly Review 153 (October-December, 1952), 501–08; “Loaves and Thousands,” The Journal of Theological Studies, N. S., 4 (April, 1953), 1–14; St. Matthew and St. Mark (Westminster, 1954); “On Dispensing with Q,” Studies in the Gospels: Essays in Memory of R. H. Lightfoot, ed. D. E. Nineham (Oxford, 1955); “An Examination of Mark XIII:10,” The Journal of Theological Studies, N. S., 7 (April, 1956), 75–79; “Important Hypotheses Reconsidered. VIII. Typology,” The Expository Times 67 (May, 1956), 228–231; “An English Appreciation,” Kerygma and Myth: A Theological Debate, ed. Hans Werner Bartach, trans. Reginald H. Fuller (London, 1953, 212–23; “Messianic Prophecy and Preparation for Christ,” The Communication of the Gospel in New Testament Times: Some Recent Studies by Austin Farrer [et al.]. Theological Collections (London, 1961), 1–9; The Revelation of St. John the Divine. Commentary on the English Text (Oxford, 1964).
Sermons: Said or Sung. An Arrangement of Homily and Verse (London, 1960), published in U. S. A. as A Faith of Our Own, with a preface by C. S. Lewis (Cleveland & New York, 1961); also Christopher Evans and Austin Farrer, Bible Sermons. A Course Preached in the Chapel of Pusey House, Oxford (London, 1963), 32–57.
Devotional literature: The Crown of the Year. Weekly Paragraphs for the Holy Sacrament (Westminster, 1952); Lord, I Believe (London, 1955; 2nd ed., London, 1958); and his popular editions of the Authorized Version, A Short Bible (London & Glasgow, 1956), published in U. S. A. as The Core of the Bible (New York, 1957), and The New Testament, with a General Introduction and Note to Each Book (London & Glasgow, 1957).
3 GV, 66. Cf. ibid., Lecture I, and FI, vi, 1–3.
4 In his elucidation of that dependence he has not, so far, engaged explicitly those theologians who, after Heidegger, distinguish metaphysics from ontology and, while rejecting metaphysics, wish to do theology ontologically. The nearest he has come is probably his comment upon Bultmann's early formulation of demythologization, “An English Appreciation,” Kerygma and Myth: A Theological Debate, ed. H. W. Bartsch, trans. R. H. Fuller (London, 1953), 212–23. There, he noted some of the same theological limitations of the existentialism used by Bultmann that some of Bultmann's successors have sought to overcome by appropriating Heidegger's later ontology.
5 Different vintages of empiricism have engaged them, however. It was Tennant's fate to have formulated his views in relation to the kind regnant at Cambridge just before “the revolution in philosophy,” whereas Farrer began to publish shortly after its outbreak. Less than fifteen years elapsed between Tennant's Philosophical Theology (Cambridge, 1928–30) and Finite and Infinite. Marked differences in their constructive views, as well, reflect other changes brought by those years.
6 Cf. FI, 70–71, and “The Extension of St. Thomas' Doctrine of Knowledge by Analogy to Modern Philosophical Problems,” The Downside Review 65 (January, 1947), 21–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See esp. GV, chap. IV, for Farrer's “parable” about metaphysics as description of mysteries, not a science that solves problems. A year after he published these reflections on Marcel's distinction between problems and mysteries Katharine Farrer, his wife, published her translation of the text for that gloss — Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having (Westminster, 1949; Boston, 1951).
7 For the temper of his traditionalism in theology compare his Saving Belief: A Discussion of Essentials (London, 1964) with contributions to the same discussion, mostly by Cambridge men — Soundings, edited by A. R. Vidler (Cambridge, 1962), Bishop Robinson's Honest to God (London, 1963), and Objections to Christian Belief, by D. M. MacKinnon [et al.] (London, 1963). Farrer's more recent essays in this vein are “The Christian Apologist,” Light on C. S. Lewis, ed. Jocelyn Gibb (London, 1965), 23–43, and A Science of God? (London, 1966), published in the USA as God Is Not Dead (New York, 1966).
8 FW, 13–19.
9 The Crown of the Year: Weekly Paragraphs for the Holy Sacrament (Westminster, 1952; New York, 1953), 64–65.
10 FI, 76–78.
11 “A Midwinter Dream,” University: A Journal of Enquiry 1 (Spring, 1951), 86–90Google Scholar; reprinted as “A Theologian's Point of View,” The Socratic, No. 5. Contemporary Philosophy and Christian Faith (Oxford, 1952), 35–38.
12 They focus on the peculiar form of inspired thinking in Biblical writers. See, especially, A Rebirth of Images: The Making of St. John's Apocalypse (1949), A Study in St. Mark (1951), and St. Matthew and St. Mark (1954). Analogies between such inspired thinking and theology, metaphysics, and poetic inspiration are sketched in GV (1948).
13 “The Queen of the Sciences,” The Twentieth Century 157 (June, 1955), 489–95Google Scholar.
14 Love Almighty and Ills Unlimited: An Essay on Providence and Evil containing the Nathaniel Taylor Lectures for 1961 (Garden City, N. Y., 1961; London, 1962); and Saving Belief (1964).
15 “A Starting-point for the Philosophic Examination of Theological Belief,” Faith and Logic: Oxford Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. Basil Mitchell (London, 1957), 9–30.
16 What FI and FW made obvious was evident even in his early essay, “The Christian Doctrine of Man,” The Christian Understanding of Man, by T. E. Jessop [et al.] (“The Church, Community, and State Series,” Vol. II; London, 1938; “The Official Oxford Conference Books,” Vol. II; Chicago & New York, 1938), 179–213.
17 For Farrer's relation to Descartes on this issue see FI, 7–8 and, for the manner in which Hume confirms the decision, 65–68. The common habit of placing Farrer among Thomists (e.g., John Macquarrie, Twentieth-Century Religious Thought: The Frontiers of Philosophy and Theology, 1900–1960 [New York & Evanston, 1963], 289–90) may still be legitimate, however, in view of the ponderable company of those who follow St. Thomas and also, after Joseph Maréchal, grant epistemological primacy to the self. But the adequacy of classifying Farrer in this way is limited by the fact that, especially since FW (1958), his writing has tended to shed one after another of the specifically Thomist features of FI.
18 Julian N. Hartt has stated this distinction as one between empirical generalization and metaphysical analysis and has applied it to Farrer in his “Dialectic, Analysis, and Empirical Generalization in Theology,” Crozer Quarterly 29 (January, 1952), 1–17Google Scholar.
19 Op. cit., 51.
20 The locus classicus of the analysis is FI, chap. XXI, to which pp. 28–34 are an important supplement.
21 FI, 28.
22 FI, 241.
23 FI, 239.
24 FI, vi. Cf. the second edition, Finite and Infinite: A Philosophical Essay (London, 1959), ix. The editions of 1943 and 1959 are identical, except for a few paragraphs in the Preface. From the first edition most of p. vi and the top of p. vii have been deleted. The “Revised Preface to the Second Edition” substitutes for that deleted material some second thoughts of Farrer's, expounded at greater length, which now appear on pp. viii–x. Although brief, this revision is significant. Hereafter, it will be referred to as “FI, 2nd ed.” Otherwise, FI references to pages numbered in Arabic numerals can be found in either edition, for the body of the text remains the same.
25 FI, 249. For his account of the seventeenth-century rejection of substantial form see “Editor's Introduction,” Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil, by G. W. Leibniz, ed. with intro. by Austin Farrer, trans. E. M. Huggard (London, 1951; New Haven, 1952), esp. 14–21. The range of his agreement with recent critiques of form is most clearly stated in FW, chap. XV.
26 Beyond FI, 251–53, see FW on invention, 291–94, 298–301, 315; GV on poetic imagination, esp. chap. VII; and “Editor's Introduction,” Theodicy …, 32–33.
27 FI, 255.
28 On poetic imagination, see GV, chap. VII, and the analysis of Farrer in Ray L. Hart, The Role of the Imagination in Man's Knowledge of God (Yale Ph.D. dissertation, 1959). On theodicy, see Love Almighty and Ills Unlimited, esp. chap. II.
29 FW, chap. XV.
30 FI, 265.
31 FI, 2d ed., viii.
32 Ibid., ix.
33 Ibid., ix–x. This is elaborated in FW, esp. chaps. VII, IX, and X.
34 FI, 2d ed., ix.
35 FI, 58.
36 Ibid., 7; cf. 32.
37 “Analogy,” Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, ed. Lefferts A. Loetscher (2 Vols.; Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1955), I, 40. Hereafter cited as “Analogy.” Analysis of Farrer's handling of the problem may be found in these unpublished Ph.D. dissertations: James F. Day, Austin Farrer's Doctrine of Analogy: A Study in the Metaphysics of Theism (Yale University, 1959), and John Edward Thomas, Analogy and the Meaningfulness of Religious Utterances (Duke University, 1964).
38 Loc. cit.
39 Ibid., 38. By ignoring this major feature of Farrer's position Ferré vitiates the bearing upon it of his own critique of the logic of analogy. Cf. Frederick Ferré, Language, Logic and God (New York, 1961), 69, 73–77. Hepburn grasps the point that Ferré slights and thus comes closer to understanding Farrer, but his reading neglects the polar theme of “likeness” on which Ferré fastens. Cf. Ronald W. Hepburn, Christianity and Paradox (London, 1958), 174–78. Taken together, these two readings are instructive, if not heartening, examples of the difficulty of doing justice to the delicate balance inhering in the point at issue.
40 FI, 31.
41 Ibid., 40.
42 The contrast lies between finitude understood as composite participation in perfect simplicity and as limited participation in unlimited plenitude. Within participation theory, it is a contrast between formulations modelled on the one-many and the part-whole models, respectively. For review of the problem and literature see Clarke, W. Norris S.J., “The Limitation of Act by Potency: Aristotelianism or Neoplatonism,” The New Scholasticism 26 (1952), 167–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
43 On this assumption, see “Analogy,” 39; on the procedure, FI, chaps. III–V.
44 GV, esp. chaps. III and VI–VIII.
45 FI, 53. In an extended and appreciative analysis of FI, Mascall confessed that Farrer's handling of proportionality struck him as “somewhat cavalier.” (E. L. Mascall, Existence and Analogy. A Sequel to “He Who Is” [London, New York, Toronto, 1949], 174.)
46 On the former, see FI, 7; on the latter, ibid., 34, 35, 96, and “Analogy,” 38.
47 FI, 291.
48 Ibid., 264.
49 FW, chap. XV. In explicit dependence upon FI, M. C. D'Arcy has developed such anthropological argument in No Absent God: The Relations Between God and the Self (New York, 1962).
50 FI, 263, 262.
51 Cf. Hawkins, D. J. B., “The Philosophy of Theism,” The New Outline of Modern Knowledge, ed. Pryce-Jones, Alan (London, 1956)Google Scholar, where Farrer's cosmological argument in FI is discussed in this context, esp. 54–59. His later reflections on criteria of revelation (“Revelation,” Faith and Logic, ed. Mitchell [1957], 84–107) also prompted Smart to read him as an exponent of an emerging natural theology, “softer” than the old demonstrative sort but “harder” than revealed theology. (Smart, Ninian, “Revelation and Reasons,” The Scottish Journal of Theology 11 [December, 1958], 352–61Google Scholar.) Farrer's discussion of faith and evidence, in chap. I of Saving Belief (1964), seems to exhibit a softer, more Augustinian stance than did FI (1943).
52 FI, 60–61, 262–63. Compare the heightening of this grasp in the exceptional case of the saints, according to Farrer, in Lord, I Believe: Suggestions for Turning the Creed into Prayer (2d ed.; London, 1958), 10.
53 FI, 61.
54 Ibid., 262.
55 On irreducible analogy, see GV, chaps. IV–VIII, where the difficulty is spread from rational theology to metaphysics, revealed theology, and poetic, prophetic, and apostolic inspiration. On paradox, see FW, 312. On obscurity of apprehension, see FI, chap. IX, and “The Extension of St. Thomas's Doctrine of Knowledge by Analogy to Modern Philosophical Problems,” The Downside Review 65 (January, 1947), esp. 21–24.
56 Ibid., 26–32.
57 FI, 104.
58 Ibid., 104–05; cf. op. cit., 21–22.
59 On this tradition and Farrer's identification of its modern critics, see “Being,” The Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, ed. Lefferts A. Loetscher (2 Vols.; Grand Rapids, 1955), I, 120–21. For his mapping of the tasks thus entailed for philosophical theology, see the prefaces of FI, both editions, and FW.
60 FI, 58. Farrer has yet to publish an examination of a case for the essential limitation of God, as thoroughgoing as Hartshorne's, for example.
61 “Editor's Introduction,” Theodicy, 33. On the other hand, one way of developing this suggestion is criticized at length in chap. III of Love Almighty and Ills Unlimited.
62 Op. cit., 32.
63 The 1964 Charles F. Deems Lectures, delivered at New York University.