MacSwain, Robert Carroll
Although primarily historical in nature, this dissertation in philosophical theology also has modest constructive ambitions. Historically, it traces, analyses, and contextualizes the development of the religious epistemology of Austin Marsden Farrer (1904-1968). Constructively, it concludes by defending an interpretation of at least one phase of this development as still worthy of serious consideration. Historically, it argues that Farrer’s thinking on the proper relation between faith and reason oscillated over a forty-year span between rationalistic and fideistic poles, finally to stop at the time of his early and unexpected death in what may be called a ‘moderate methodological fideism’. Constructively, it argues that such moderate methodological fideism is not to be despised, particularly in light of the postmodern chastening of ‘reason’ and the increased contemporary interest in what is now often called ‘spirituality’.
While Farrer was constantly rethinking his philosophical and theological commitments on a wide range of issues—and so may well have continued to change and develop had he lived longer—his biographically final position was at least approximate to some of his earliest statements made in correspondence with his father while still an Oxford undergraduate in the late 1920s. So while there was oscillation there was also continuity. And while Farrer continually sought to fuse his philosophical, doctrinal, and devotional convictions into a single perspective, he was (inevitably) imperfectly successful in doing so, with one or another voice normally being dominant. However, in his final epistemological position we see an intensified drive toward a unified balance and harmony of all three.
The motivation and goal of this dissertation may perhaps best be seen by considering a review of the last major monograph published on Farrer, Charles Conti’s Metaphysical Personalism, written by Jeremy Morris.1 Morris begins by noting that although Farrer has ‘received relatively little serious scholarly attention,’ he remains ‘a fascinating figure, who cannot be bracketed easily in the European tradition of systematic theology, and yet whose oeuvre embraced almost the whole spectrum of Western theology, from metaphysics and philosophical theology to biblical studies and devotional writing.’2 Farrer’s singular and provocative work across a broad range of disciplines thus both deserves and needs further study.
Morris then turns to Conti’s book by highlighting its central question: ‘how was it that the austere metaphysics of [Farrer’s first book] Finite and Infinite (1943) had mutated into the much more personalist and (to some critics) fideist stance of the later works, especially [Farrer’s last book] Faith and Speculation (1967)? Conti’s central assumption is that, despite a change of emphasis, there was absolute continuity in Farrer’s theological method: he sought to demonstrate the conceivability of theism by uncovering the metaphysical presuppositions of being.’3 But Conti’s continuity thesis, however plausible it may prove to be, is prima facie challenged by the great difference between these two books. As Morris puts it, in Faith and Speculation Farrer ‘was read—by Basil Mitchell, initially, amongst others—as having transformed himself in effect into a fideist, renouncing the possibility of his earlier rational theology in favour of a defence of the believer’s subjective experience of God.’4
Morris confesses that he himself tends—or, at least, tended—toward this fideistic interpretation of the later Farrer.5 ‘But,’ he continues, ‘the great merit of Conti’s book is that it roots Faith and Speculation very firmly in the context of Farrer’s lifelong theological project, and demonstrates how its principal aim was not to subserve a subjectivist view of religion with a metaphysical apologetic—a view the “fideist” reading assumes—but instead to defend the intelligibility of religious language and the rationality of religious belief by demonstrating the identity of the metaphysical presuppositions of human being and divine being.’6 Thus, on Conti’s reading, Farrer’s method remained primarily metaphysical and traditionally rational. But Morris also notes that, while Conti argues for a fundamental continuity of method between the early and later Farrer, he is equally concerned to establish the precise nature of the unquestioned change in emphasis between 1943 and 1967. Specifically, Conti argues that while Farrer’s method remained metaphysical, he revised his metaphysics from a classical to a neo-classical position. As Morris puts it, in Conti’s view, ‘Farrer was awakened to the deficiency of his earlier, static conception of God by his reading of process theology, especially Charles Hartshorne.
Farrer received, and acknowledged, Hartshorne’s criticism of the unattainability of the Scholastic idea of God….[T]hus, Conti argues, Farrer’s later philosophical theology fitted in much more closely with a process “Becoming” model of God than with a static, Scholastic “Being” model.’7 Conti even has a very specific candidate to credit for this process influence on Farrer, namely John Glasse of Vassar College, New York, who engaged Farrer in correspondence and wrote a very significant essay on his work which Farrer read and commented on in manuscript prior to its publication.8 Farrer does indeed cite Glasse in the preface to Faith and Speculation, and Conti provides samples of correspondence from Farrer to Glasse in an appendix that confirms aspects of his argument.9
However, while accepting some elements of Conti’s thesis, Morris nevertheless thinks ‘it is possible that Conti rather overstates the similarity [between Hartshorne and Farrer], leaning too heavily on what seems to be largely his own importation of the language of “Becoming”’.10 In other words, Conti may have exaggerated the influence of Hartshorne’s process theology on the later Farrer. Another reviewer of Metaphysical Personalism, Charles Taliaferro, registers a similar concern, observing that Conti’s text ‘reflects the enthusiasm of a partisan’ and ‘seems decidedly aimed at the process camp.’11 And it is an entirely separate question, which I cannot begin to enter into here, whether Conti’s process perspective on the ‘static’ ‘Being’ model of so-called ‘classical theism’ is at all fair to that tradition; many would argue that it is not.12 But both Morris and Taliaferro acknowledge that, while Conti’s own commitment to process thought may well have coloured his judgement, he does not in fact argue that Farrer went all the way into the process camp himself, however much Conti may possibly wish that Farrer had.
Having summarised the themes and arguments of Conti’s book, Morris then wonders whether any kind of metaphysical argument, however revised, is sufficient to establish the rationality of religious belief in the way that Farrer—on Conti’s reading—apparently still thought that it both could and must. That is, the whole project of building philosophical theology on metaphysical foundations, process or otherwise, may well be a mistake. Morris begins the last paragraph of his review by stating that ‘Conti’s book makes large claims for the importance of Farrer’s work in healing the breach between philosophy and theology, and the continuing interest that some evince in it demonstrates how fertile [Farrer’s] approach may be. But it is significant in itself that [Farrer] remains, nevertheless, a minority interest in contemporary theology, and this reviewer at least regrets that the depth and complexity of Farrer’s metaphysical achievement did not result in a dogmatic structure of like richness and coherence.’13
More germane to the focus of this particular dissertation, Morris also worries that Farrer’s work implies ‘a reliance on a view of rationality that cuts little ice in a theological world dominated by the play of critical theory, hermeneutics, and contextual theologies.’ Morris thus concludes that Conti’s decision to focus his book on Farrer’s metaphysics ‘deprives the reader of what could be a very revealing analysis of Farrer’s admittedly slender dogmatic theology and its relation to his philosophical theology.’ Granting that Conti’s text ‘no doubt will become the standard guide to its subject and remain so for many years,’ Morris nevertheless holds that to ‘demonstrate convincingly the continuing relevance of Farrer’s approach would require a book rather different in scope from the one under review.’ 14
As stated above, Morris’s review of Conti’s Metaphysical Personalism is perhaps the best way to introduce the motivation and goal of this dissertation. First of all, it accurately summarises the argument of the last significant monograph on Farrer’s philosophical theology and so helps to establish the state of play in contemporary Farrer interpretation. Second, Morris well expresses some of my own reservations about Conti’s book, particularly its preoccupation with metaphysics a the controlling category through which to interpret Farrer’s thought, and its overemphasis on the influence of Hartshorne’s process theology on the later Farrer. I could add several other concerns of my own, not the least being that I believe Conti reverses the personal dynamic driving Farrer’s academic work. That is, Conti seems to see Farrer as a professional philosopher seeking somewhat awkwardly to make room for Christian faith (very oddly described by Conti as ‘a religion of [Farrer’s] youth’), whereas I tend to read Farrer as a Christian priest seeking to make room for philosophy.15 Third, Morris notes that while these metaphysical questions are indeed highly pertinent, they do not address all of the problems facing contemporary philosophical theology, leaving crucial epistemological and dogmatic issues untouched. Fourth, Morris raises the exegetical question—associated with Basil Mitchell—as to whether Farrer’s later work exemplified a ‘sort of fideism’. Fifth and finally, Morris’s review brings to the fore an important aspect of Conti’s argument, namely the role of Vassar’s John Glasse in bringing Hartshorne to Farrer’s attention.
In this dissertation, I address most of these issues identified by Morris as either problematic or germane to Conti’s interpretation of Farrer. In particular, I wish to move Farrer studies away from its metaphysical bias. Conti is hardly alone in this approach, as the only other major monograph on Farrer—Jeffrey Eaton’s The Logic of Theism—is also metaphysically focused, as are most other treatments of Farrer’s philosophical theology.16 Farrer was undoubtedly a great metaphysician, and it may well be that in historical terms his most significant original contributions will be seen to belong to that field. But as Morris and others have noted, despite the enthusiasm of devotees such as Conti and Eaton, expositions of Farrer which focus on his metaphysics have been singularly unsuccessful in convincing the wider theological and philosophical community to pay any attention to him. Of course, this may well be because in theology the anti-metaphysical tendency has only intensified in the past four decades, while in philosophy the discipline has undergone such a radical transformation that Farrer’s work is difficult for contemporary metaphysicians to appropriate. Whatever the explanation, the obvious failure of the metaphysical approach to Farrer to convince others of his value itself warrants another strategy.
I thus propose to approach Farrer from an epistemological rather than a metaphysical angle. In particular, I begin with the issue raised by Basil Mitchell and noted by Morris: namely, ‘did Farrer become a fideist?’ This question, I believe, is of greater value in the present theological and philosophical climate than the far more frequently canvassed discussions of Farrer’s theory of ‘double agency,’ or ‘Farrer’s shift away from essence-existence arguments to activity-existence arguments.’17 That there is indeed great value in these metaphysical questions I do not for a moment deny, and my intent here is not to disparage the work previously done by John Glasse, Jeffrey Eaton, Charles Conti, and many others. But it is work that has already been done, and the time is ripe for another interpretative strategy. This dissertation is thus meant to complement, rather than replace, these earlier studies. As will be seen in due course, I am hardly the first person to consider Farrer’s epistemology, but I believe this is the first full-length study primarily concerned with epistemological questions and which makes them the starting point and hermeneutic grid through which Farrer’s thought and significance is assessed.
This dissertation also seeks to complement Conti’s book in one other very specific way. As noted above, Conti argues that John Glasse of Vassar College convinced Farrer to take Hartshorne more seriously, and was thus instrumental in the transition from the ‘early’ to the ‘later’ Farrer. Farrer did indeed cite Glasse in the preface to Faith and Speculation, and Conti indeed provides corroborating samples of Farrer’s correspondence with Glasse in an appendix to Metaphysical Personalism. There is, I think, little reason to doubt the basic accuracy and significance of this account—but it tells only half the story. For in fact Farrer cites two figures in this preface:
Among the many philosophical friends who have given me food for thought I will mention Dr Diogenes Allen of Princeton [Seminary], and Professor John Glasse of Vassar. The latter persuaded me to do the rethinking of scholastic positions which runs through my seventh, eighth, and ninth chapters; the former I have plundered in my first.18
And in this first chapter, ‘The Believer’s Reasons,’ Farrer also does something he almost never does in any of his academic work: he provides a footnote, specifically to Allen’s article ‘Motives, Rationales, and Religious Beliefs’: ‘For a careful exposition of the believer’s sufficient reasons, see…’19
It is thus indeed striking that Conti does not mention Allen or Allen’s influence on Farrer even once in Metaphysical Personalism. This is particularly striking when one realises that—in addition to the evidence in Faith and Speculation itself—Conti also had access to Farrer’s correspondence with Allen, correspondence which specifies the extent of Allen’s influence on the first chapter of Faith and Speculation.20 While one may indeed wonder at this omission, there is a very simple possible explanation: Allen’s influence on the first chapter of Faith and Speculation does not fit into the metaphysical story Conti wants to tell in the aptly named Metaphysical Personalism. For Allen’s influence, while having metaphysical implications, is primarily epistemological. Nor, again, is Conti alone in neglecting Allen’s influence here—it is strangely, inexplicably, almost universally absent from Farrer scholarship, despite (like Poe’s purloined letter) being hid in plain sight. Indeed, after a thorough survey of the secondary literature, aside from a passing mention in Allen’s Festschrift and a footnote in Eaton’s Logic of Theism, the only discussion of it that I have seen is not in a study of Farrer at all but in a general work by the late Baptist theologian James McClendon. All other treatments of Farrer’s philosophical theology—its changes and influences—that I have read proceed as if Farrer had not publicly confessed to ‘plundering’ Allen in Faith and Speculation. 21
If for no other reason than this mysterious neglect over the past four decades, the story of Allen’s influence on Faith and Speculation needs to be told, and I do this in Chapter Four. Indeed, like Conti’s publication of Farrer’s letters to Glasse, I also provide an Appendix in which Farrer’s unpublished letters to Allen are for the first time made available for a wider audience. But Allen’s influence is significant here for two other reasons. First of all, it fits into my general desire to approach Farrer from an epistemological angle. By influencing ‘The Believer’s Reasons’—the first chapter in Faith and Speculation—Allen helped Farrer move to the possibility of a non-metaphysical foundation for philosophical theology, indeed perhaps to a nonfoundational position altogether. Thus, the starting point of Farrer’s last book may be perceived to shift, and the undoubtedly metaphysical chapters that follow may then be seen in a different light and serving a different function than either Conti or Morris assume. This has immense implications for both the question of Farrer’s possible fideism and for the rationality of religious belief.
Second, Allen later provided his own interpretation of Farrer’s religious epistemology, an interpretation that is important in its own right, but perhaps doubly so once Allen’s influence on Farrer is given due regard.22 Brian Hebblethwaite and Edward Henderson, two of Farrer’s most distinguished commentators, observe that ‘Allen does not claim here to give us a complete theological epistemology, of course. But inasmuch as his and Farrer’s Augustinian view appears importantly different from classical foundationalism, from the Wittgensteinian view that belief in God is a form of life, and from [Alvin] Plantinga’s view that belief in God is properly basic, the effort to develop the idea in the context of a larger epistemology would seem well worth making.’23 Hebblethwaite and Henderson’s comment thus neatly moves us from an exclusive concern with Farrer interpretation into the wider world of contemporary religious epistemology, and thus from the historical to the constructive ambition mentioned in the first sentence of this introduction. In the final chapter of this dissertation I seek to address this constructive aim by briefly exploring the coherence and strength of Farrer’s final position on ‘the believer’s reasons’ in relation to the other perspectives mentioned above. I conclude that one major advantage of Farrer’s position is the place it provides for a living spirituality and for the epistemic value of ‘saints.’
Morris says of Conti’s Metaphysical Personalism that to ‘demonstrate convincingly the continuing relevance of Farrer’s approach would require a book rather different in scope from the one under review.’ Morris’s own clear preference is for a book that takes greater account of Farrer’s ‘admittedly slender dogmatic theology and its relation to his philosophical theology.’24 While I indeed plan to take up that particular challenge in another, complementary research project, I hope that the present work, with its rather different scope from all previous monographs on Farrer, will at least ‘demonstrate convincingly the continuing relevance of Farrer’s approach’ to religious epistemology—if not yet to anything else.
1 Jeremy Morris, Review of Charles Conti, Metaphysical Personalism: An Analysis of Austin Farrer’s Theistic Metaphysics (Clarendon Press, 1995), in The Journal of Theological Studies 47 (1996), 792-796.
2 Ibid., 793.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid., 794.
5 Ibid. See Morris’s essay, which will be considered further in Chapter Five of this dissertation,
‘Religious Experience in the Philosophical Theology of Austin Farrer’, in The Journal of Theological Studies 45 (1994), 569-592.
6 Ibid., 795.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid., 794 and 795. See John Glasse, ‘Doing Theology Metaphysically: Austin Farrer’, in Harvard Theological Review 39 (1966), 319-350. Like Morris in 1996, Glasse wrote exactly thirty years earlier that, although Farrer’s brilliance was widely recognised, ‘little sustained examination of his work has appeared.’ (319) The situation remains much the same in 2009.
9 Austin Farrer, Faith and Speculation: An Essay in Philosophical Theology (A. & C. Black, 1967), vi; and Conti, Metaphysical Personalism, Appendix 2 (265-269).
10 Morris, Review of Conti’s Metaphysical Personalism, 795
11 Charles Taliaferro, Review of Charles Conti, Metaphysical Personalism, in The Journal of Religion 78 (1998), 143-144 (these two citations from 143).
12 See, out of very many examples, Fergus Kerr’s defence of a ‘dynamic’ and ‘active’ Thomism against standard critiques in After Aquinas: Version of Thomism (Blackwell, 2002).
13 Morris, Review of Conti’s Metaphysical Personalism, 795-796. Morris’s preference for a ‘rich’ dogmatic theology is indicative of the contemporary dominance of, e.g., Barth and von Balthasar.
14 All citations in this paragraph from ibid., 796.
15 See Conti, Metaphysical Personalism, vii. Taliaferro’s review also notes Conti’s reluctance to acknowledge Farrer’s respect for and basic commitment to orthodox Christian doctrine (144).
16 See Jeffrey C. Eaton, The Logic of Theism: An Analysis of the Thought of Austin Farrer (University Press of America, 1980); Glasse’s essay cited in note 8 above; and many other works that will be cited in due course.
17 Morris, Review of Conti’s Metaphysical Personalism, 795. The Aquinas-inspired ‘double agency’ is perhaps the concept most associated with Farrer in contemporary philosophical theology.
18 Farrer, Faith and Speculation, vi.
19 Ibid., 10. Allen’s article was published in American Philosophical Quarterly 3 (1966), 111-127, and will be discussed further in Chapter Four. Farrer’s commentators frequently bemoan the lack of references, notes, and indexes in his books. His biographer, Philip Curtis, says that ‘in writing he seldom refers to others by name—perhaps only Wittgenstein quotes less’ (‘The Rational Theology of Doctor Farrer’, Theology LXXIII [1970], 249). And in his contribution to Curtis’s biography—a chapter titled, ‘Farrer the Biblical Scholar’—Michael Goulder writes, ‘Farrer contemned [sic] the footnote. He wrote with authority and not as the scribes, and the scribes did not appreciate this’ (in Philip Curtis, A Hawk Among Sparrows: A Biography of Austin Farrer [SPCK, 1985], 193). Diogenes Allen has, in fact, helped to remedy the lack of indexes by providing them for eight of Farrer’s books in philosophical theology: see ‘Indexes to the Main Works of Austin Farrer’ in Brian Hebblethwaite and Edward Henderson (eds.), Divine Action: Studies Inspired by the Philosophical Theology of Austin Farrer (T. & T. Clark, 1990), 230-281.
20 See the ‘Study Notes’ to Austin Farrer, Reflective Faith: Essays in Philosophical Theology, edited by Charles C. Conti (SPCK, 1972), where Conti cites this correspondence twice, on 223 and 224.
21 See the introduction to Eric O. Springsted (ed.), Spirituality and Theology: Essays in Honor of Diogenes Allen (Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 3; Eaton, 68 note 126; and James Wm McClendon, Jr (with Nancey Murphy), Witness: Systematic Theology, Volume 3 (Abingdon Press, 2000), 278-281. I am very grateful to Diogenes Allen for bringing McClendon’s discussion of his work and his influence on Farrer to my attention, as I am sure I would not have found it otherwise. My conviction that Allen’s influence was both important and neglected in Farrer studies was formulated prior to reading McClendon, but McClendon’s brief analysis of it provided both confirmation and insight. It will be discussed further in Chapter Four.
22 Allen’s interpretation of Farrer’s religious epistemology is provided in his book Christian Belief in a Postmodern World: The Full Wealth of Conviction (Westminster / John Knox Press, 1989), and his essay ‘Faith and the Recognition of God’s Activity’, in Hebblethwaite and Henderson (eds.), Divine Action, 197-210. I discuss these texts further in Chapter One.
23 Hebblethwaite and Henderson, ‘Introduction’ to Divine Action, 18. Hebblethwaite does not, in fact, agree with Allen’s interpretation, either as a reading of Farrer or as a viable position in religious epistemology, as I will soon demonstrate in Chapter One.
24 Morris, Review of Conti’s Metaphysical Personalism, both citations from 796.
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