It is curious, to say the least, that having missed the deadline for applications for the Bampton Lectureship, but with a reputation sufficient to have him elected nonetheless, Root should have delivered the Bampton Lectures for 1972, but never have made it an absolute priority to publish them – a clear requirement of the Lectureship. From the perspective of the Electors, this must have been wholly unacceptable. Their choice, after all, had fallen on a man who had delivered the Wilde Lectures in Oxford (1957–60), and had spent some time as an Anglican Observer at the Second Vatican Council. His distinguished record included having been appointed in 1966 as the first (and as it happened, the last) professor of theology at the University of Southampton, which in itself should have secured Root’s publishing a significant monograph. After all, his Inaugural Lecture in Southampton (Appendix 5, 133-44) had indicated the scope of his concerns as a philosopher-theologian with strong interests in the cultural life of his times. His understanding of his task took him well beyond the study of Christian origins which characterized Western UK departments of Theology as they had been re-established post-World War II, ignorant of the Orthodox East (139) while sensitive to ‘the religious phenomena of other ages and cultures’ (142).

The new professor was an ‘internationalist’ by birth and education in the USA, who had received an informal but profoundly important extension of his perspectives simply as a result of having found lodgings in the apartment of one of the teachers at the University of Southern California, a German Orientalist, one of a cluster of formidably well-educated Europeans who had managed to extricate themselves in time from the disastrous political environment of twentieth-century Europe. Looking at the ‘Timeline’ (xi-xii) however, one may surmise that neither Root himself nor anyone else in the University of Southampton could have foreseen just how much time would necessarily have to be spent in securing the structures to sustain Theology as a coherent programme in the variety of contexts and locations Root was required to coordinate. These included two institutions of rather different ‘churchmanship’ for the theological education of Church of England ordinands; a Roman Catholic seminary (in which candidates for ordination would lay philosophical foundations unknown to ordinands in the Church of England); and a Roman Catholic College of Education (for teacher training) in Southampton, which offered first degree courses in the Humanities, including Theology. Each of these would have academic and other staff different from one another with whom hours of negotiation would have to be undertaken if the new programmes in Theology were to succeed. It is worth recalling that it was by no means certain that either well-established universities nor those coming into existence with the expansion of university education post-World War II would develop departments of Theology, with or without ‘Religious Studies’. As it so happened, the brand new University of Kent – whose first Professor of Theology was appointed in 1965 – was one institution where the subject area became accepted over a half-century, though not without controversy over the years. This was not to be the case at Southampton, for reasons no doubt partly beyond Root’s control, and which may well be judged to have a significant impact on his years at Southampton which included the delivery of the Bampton Lectures, up to his resignation from the professorship in 1981. In addition, however, it must be said that Root’s ecclesial and ecumenical interests led him to accept a range of appointments simply incompatible with the production of a monograph which would need sustained, well-funded research time and which would satisfy him, the Bampton Electors and potential readers.

Root’s resignation from his professorship in 1981 signalled the end of the possibility of a serious programme in Theology developing in Southampton, and presumably he knew that would be the result. It may also have become clear that the university’s academic planners would not be prepared to fund the development of Theology in Southampton, beyond the task of coordination required, into a full-scale department able to recruit undergraduates and develop postgraduate programmes. As it happened, a position opened for Root which he could really enjoy – that of Director of the Anglican Centre in Rome, delivering lectures to major gatherings of Roman Catholic ecclesiastics and theologians. Root and his wife, Celia, would have had an especially invigorating if exhausting time in Rome. Yet in retirement, Root still did not work at his text and publish those Bampton Lectures, despite, one might well think, having secured much new and relevant material from the decade in Rome.

Dr Brewer happened to come across Root’s work while completing a doctorate in the School of Divinity in the University of St Andrews, Scotland. Dr Brewer’s energy, enterprise and determination has at last led to the publication of the 1972 Bampton lectures. Dr Brewer’s introduction locates Root in the world of the Oxbridge of his day and the importance of the publications of its theologians for the Church of England as an institution. He most helpfully steers readers through the major points Root makes in each lecture, so that they can be appreciated as a coherent whole (14-20). He takes an interesting tack, however, in that he – so to speak – puts Root into dialogue with David Brown’s work to elaborate Root’s lectures perhaps in the way Root himself might have done, though it has to be said, probably unable to match David Brown’s formidable range of examples, which of course he puts to his own constructive uses. Brown himself has developed through an educational track rather different from Root’s, as a graduate in Classics from the University of Edinburgh, Joint Honours in Philosophy and Theology from Oxford, and a Cambridge doctorate in ethics. His stint in Philosophy and Theology as a Fellow of Oriel College as well as responsible for the life of its Chapel, was followed by a move to the Van Mildert Canon Professorship in the University of Durham. This, as it happened, occasioned a major and most significant shift in the range of his published work from 1996 onwards, and which continued with his move to St Andrews. Brewer helpfully cites the range of Brown’s bibliography in relation to Root’s work (35-38) including the existing and forthcoming volumes of essays responding to Brown’s own work, which in turn may stimulate a rereading of Root. Brewer rightly identifies the crucial link between Root and Brown as being that of Root’s ‘constellations’, aligned with Brown’s ‘open tradition’ (25, 67). We may note also Root’s constructive suggestion about ‘accommodating temperaments’ in the quest for appropriate methods in theology (101-102). Root, we might say, exemplifies an intellectual charity which can interplay not only with Brown’s work, but could and should stimulate attention to the new theologies to which neither he nor Brown explicitly give attention, some of which arose directly from the work of the Second Vatican Council, and some of which have far outstripped it. It is fair to assume that Root would have challenged the limitation of theology to the repetitive analysis and critique of any one writer of theology, however significant. That would take theology far away from Root’s contention that ‘The limits of radicalism are those which end not in chaos but in the breaking of fresh ground. Let the voices speak. Let the contestants push to those limits they find for themselves’ (103).