Friday, December 29, 2023

It is the 29th of December, 2023. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

If you know the name, Austen Farrer, you know C.S. Lewis, but perhaps it doesn’t work the other way around. This is odd as Lewis regarded Farrer as perhaps the finest theologian of his generation, but understandable as many of Farrer’s works went out of print, and his curious blend of orthodoxy and the avant-garde didn’t sit well with his juniors.

Austin Marsden Farrer was born in 1904 in Hampstead, London- his father was a Baptist minister and tutor at Regents Park College. His father's role as a minister and academic would set the path for himself. He went to Balliol College Oxford in 1923. Having not been baptized, he embraced the Anglican tradition and was baptized at Oxford in 1923.  He was confirmed by the Bishop of Oxford the following year. Like C.S. Lewis, he took three consecutive “firsts”- a rare feat. They both received their degrees in the Greats (classics and philosophy) and then, unlike Lewis, Farrer took his final degree in theology. Austin went off to Cuddeson Theological College to prepare for ordination.  

He would serve as a curate before returning to Oxford, where he would spend the rest of his life- at St. Edmund Hall, as a Chaplain and fellow of Trinity College, and then as the Warden of Keble College until his death.

He would be passed over for a professorship- his work fell in between tastes. He was a high Anglican who admired Thomas Aquinas but was also well-regarded by the low-church evangelicals. J.I. Packer wrote of him: “He embodied a devotionally robust Anglican catholicism comparable to that of his peers.”  

He did not care for the “language games” of some philosophers and apologists but was also not fond of the metaphysics that dealt in the unverifiable. One author wrote, “Farrer had little sympathy for the God of language-games and frames espoused by D. Z. Phillips and his ilk.”

He famously dismissed the “search for Q” that is, the document on which many believe the Gospel of Mark is based. This dismissal of what was a progressive “holy grail” did not help his reputation in some circles at the university.

But he was regarded as a giant in Anglican theology with such praise as “the most important Anglican theologian since John Henry Newman…but of a rather different persuasion”. Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams wrote that he was “possibly the greatest Anglican mind of the 20th century”. And Leslie Houlden was “‘unmistakably Anglican and Oxford Anglican at that; yet there was no better spokesman for universal, deep-rooted, mature Christian orthodoxy.” This is what likely drew he and Lewis together in 1941 at the Oxford Socratic Club- a space for conversations between committed Christians and their detractors.

In the preface to Mere Christianity, Lewis mentions sending a manuscript to 4 theologians. Lewis’s biographer Walter Hooper believes Farrer was the unnamed Anglican.

When Lewis shocked many of his friends by marrying Joy Davidman, it was Farrer who served as the witness at their wedding and, with his wife Kay, one of the few couples that were friends to the Lewises. Lewis’s book on the Psalms is dedicated to Austin and Kay.

He would also give Joy her final communion and preside over her funeral. He also gave Lewis his final communion and preached at his funeral in 1963.

He published 15 works, and while many are out of print, there has been a stream of collections printed in the past decade with the theologian who took personal devotion seriously and whose theology deals with a broad Christianity. He was most interested in finding the revelation of God in Jesus and balancing both faith and reason. He believed reason could get us on the path to a “vague” God, and faith allows us to see God’s fullness in Christ. He believed that knowledge has a kind of poetry about it- with reason, imagination, and revelation all necessary.  I recommend the collection “The Truth Seeking Heart,” a collection edited by Ann Loades and Robert MacSwain.

Like Lewis, Farrer would die relatively young- he died on the 29th of December in 1968, born in 1904, he was 64 years old.

The last word for today is from the daily lectionary- from a Prophesy in Isaiah:

And now the Lord says—
    he who formed me in the womb to be his servant

to bring Jacob back to him

    and gather Israel to himself,

for I am[a] honored in the eyes of the Lord

    and my God has been my strength—

he says:

“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant

    to restore the tribes of Jacob

    and bring back those of Israel I have kept.

I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,

    that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”

This is what the Lord says—

    the Redeemer and Holy One of Israel—

to him who was despised and abhorred by the nation,

    to the servant of rulers:

“Kings will see you and stand up,

    princes will see and bow down,

because of the Lord, who is faithful,

    the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.” 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 29th of December 2023, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org. 

The show is produced by a man who knows why this is Sonic the Hedgehog's favorite Day of Christmas- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who knows that on the 5th day of Christmas, you get all the rings… I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.