In this collection, Robert MacSwain issues an invitation to a tradition of Anglican theology that he calls Critical Catholicism. He traces this tradition from Austin Farrer, through Basil Mitchell and William Alston, and on to David Brown, while drawing in a supporting cast from the larger ranks of liberal Catholic Anglicanism. As MacSwain describes it, Critical Catholicism is a tradition committed to trinitarian and incarnational theology, shaped by (but not precious about) analytic philosophical methods, and attentive to signs of God’s presence wherever they may be found, not least in the natural world. MacSwain himself began his academic theological career writing a doctoral thesis on Farrer under the supervision of Brown, and his identification of this tradition is clearly an attempt to articulate and name the stream of theology within which he has found his feet.
It seems apt to call this book an invitation. MacSwain opens a door and waves us through it, describing some of what might be found by those enticed to venture inside, but contenting himself with offering glimpses rather than sustained examinations of the characteristic stances and arguments of this tradition. The book is unashamedly a collection of occasional pieces, originally produced without any thought that they would be gathered together like this, but they do work together to provide this invitation, and, though disparate in content, they are united in being winsomely written and enticing.
Three of the chapters provide deft sketches of key figures in this tradition – Austin Farrer, William Alston and David Brown – of the kind that one might look for in a textbook on twentieth-century Anglican theologians and philosophers. Two, both of them on Austin Farrer, take us on more detailed biographical journeys, exploring his decision to join the Church of England and his friendship with C.S. Lewis. (The former chapter, with its inclusion of the painful correspondence on the subject between Farrer and his parents, is deeply moving and was for me the highlight of the book.) The remaining chapters provide a sampler of arguments to which Farrer and Brown made contributions, or to which their work might now speak. In relation to Farrer, we get glimpses of disability theology, theological epistemology and saints as evidence for the existence of God; in relation to Brown, we touch on the apparent hiddenness of God in creation, approaches to biblical interpretation and sacramental theology broadly conceived. All of these chapters involve dialogue with figures from beyond Critical Catholicism as MacSwain construes it, from Joseph Butler to Eleonore Stump and Stanley Hauerwas.
The book is not held together by an extended argument, or even by a sustained exploration of persistent themes. It is held together instead by the way in which the pieces circle around Farrer and Brown, and by MacSwain’s claim, presented most fully in the book’s introduction and conclusion, that the pieces together breathe the air of a coherent tradition. To put it another way, the book is unified primarily by the theological style or atmosphere that pervades it, something that owes as much to MacSwain’s generous labour as to the works of Brown, Farrer and others upon which that labour has been carried out.
MacSwain’s claim to name a distinct tradition of Anglican theology is, however, as yet only partly successful. He has certainly identified some telling resemblances between Brown and Farrer and has traced some of them out, plausibly enough, into the works of a wider range of authors. It is less clear at this stage, however, whether these strands of resemblance are numerous or strong enough to warrant naming this as a distinctive tradition, or to make this way of dividing up the theological landscape preferable to others that, trading on other resemblances, would bind these figures into other constellations. The direct descriptions of Critical Catholicism that MacSwain offers in the introduction and conclusion are somewhat diffuse: this is, he says, a tradition open to a wider range of interpretive approaches to the Bible than is Yale postliberalism, more receptive to empirical and analytic philosophical approaches than is Radical Orthodoxy, and open to a wider range of philosophical styles than is Analytic Theology; it is also indebted to liberation theologies as long as they are not taken in too reductionist a manner. There is something here perhaps, but it is difficult to get a grip on it, and it will be good to see, when MacSwain’s promised monograph on Critical Catholicism is published, how he manages to tighten up these gestures and provide a more robust description.
Nevertheless, the book serves its purpose as an invitation well – if not, yet, quite into the waters of a well-defined Critical Catholicism, then certainly into the work of Brown and especially that of Farrer. The book is well worth reading in particular for the service it provides in opening the door to Farrer’s neglected works, into the character of the man who wrote them and into the work of friends, students and followers who make clear something of the ongoing fruitfulness of his thought. MacSwain is a good guide to this territory and will rightly leave most readers wanting to explore further.
