Convinced, Concise, and Christian: The Thought of Huw Parri Owen

Convinced, Concise, and Christian

The Thought of Huw Parri Owen

Alan P. F. Sell

Convinced, Concise, and Christian

The Thought of Huw Parri Owen

Copyright © 2012 Alan P. F. Sell. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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isbn 13: 978-1-61097-208-6

eisbn 13: 978-1-63087-582-4

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Sell, Alan P. F.

Convinced, concise, and Christian : the thought of Huw Parri Owen / Alan P. F. Sell.

x + 118 pp. ; 23 cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

isbn 13: 978-1-61097-208-6

1. Owen, Huw Parri. 2. Theology—Wales—History—20th Century. I. Title.

bt30 g7 s44 2012

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

To Anna, Peter, and David Robbins

Experiundo scies

—Terence

Give me that knowledge pure, divine,

To know and feel that Thou art mine.

—William Williams, Pantycelyn

Preface

With this book I salute the memory of the Welsh theologian-philosopher, Huw Parri Owen (1926–1996), who taught me briefly in Manchester, and who began his regular teaching career in Aberystwyth, where I completed mine. Owen made a significant, but all too quickly forgotten, contribution to the quest of a reasonable, experientially-grounded, Christian faith. In the course of so doing he variously endorsed and challenged the views of prominent theologians and philosophers of his day, and this on the basis of a solid background in both biblical scholarship and the history of Christian thought. I believe that many of his discussions of particular topics are of continuing interest and relevance, and in expounding his writings I have been able to draw upon the typescripts of two books which remained unpublished at the time of Owen’s death, and which are now in my possession.

I am most grateful to Dr. K. C. Hanson, the editor-in-chief at Pickwick Publications, for his willingness to publish my book, and to his colleagues on the production and marketing side of that enterprising business, a number of whom I have come to know over the years.

As ever, Karen, my wife, has interrupted her own researches in order to show an interest in mine, and her support is invaluable.

I dedicate this book to a family of Baptists. I first taught Anna Robbins and met Peter, her husband, at the Divinity College of Acadia University, Nova Scotia, Canada. They then removed to Wales, where Anna prepared her doctoral thesis under my supervision while Peter ministered at Newtown. On gaining her doctorate, Anna secured a lectureship at the London School of Theology. Shortly afterwards Peter accepted the call to Beechen Grove Baptist Church, Watford, and I had the pleasure of delivering the charge at his Induction Service. Then along came David A. A. Robbins, among whose names is mine. I was delighted to conduct his Service of Infant Dedication, during which I constantly reminded myself that this was not the sacrament of infant baptism. For the friendship of all three—and not least for the great surprise of an Anna-edited Festschrift—Karen and I are most grateful.

Alan P. F. Sell

Milton Keynes, UK

1

Introduction

Some forty years ago I participated in an informal conversation between a number of theologians. The name of H. P. Owen came up, whereupon one of his junior colleagues, who had at that time scarcely begun to emerge from the Barthian cocoon, blurted out, Oh! He’s just in a Thomistic time-warp! My immediate reaction was that this judgment was inaccurate and unfair, and now at last I wish to demonstrate the point in some detail. I do so because in face of a creeping and troubling anti-intellectualism in mainline Western churches which afflicts ministerial training and worship no less than popular religious literature; at a time when frequently unanchored, impressionistic and self-serving spirituality swirls all around us; and when even some theologians evince only the slightest grasp of the heritage of Christian thought, with the consequence that systematic theology becomes a sectarian pursuit restricted to the advocacy of favoured thinkers or the peddling of particular isms: at such a time, to recall the work of one who really knew the Bible, was conversant with the philosophy and theology of the ages, was alive to the theological tendencies of his time, and who remained a staunch churchman sustained by a deep spirituality, may constitute a salutary challenge. ¹

Huw Parri Owen was born in Cardiff on December 30, 1926. He went to Cardiff High School, and thence in 1944 to Jesus College, Oxford, where he read Classics and Theology. In 1949 he was ordained in the Presbyterian Church of Wales, and was immediately appointed to the Chair of New Testament in The United Theological College, Aberystwyth, where he remained until 1953. In the latter year, H. D. Lewis, then Professor at the University College of North Wales, Bangor, lured Owen (the word is chosen advisedly: the self-effacing Owen always had to be persuaded of his own ability) to the New Testament vacancy there. In 1961 Lewis intervened again. By now Professor at King’s College, London, he invited Owen to join him as Lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Religion. Two years later Owen was promoted to Reader and then, having begun in New Testament studies and continued in the philosophy of religion, he was appointed Professor of Christian Doctrine, holding that Chair from 1970 until his early retirement at the age of fifty-six in 1981.²

In his lecturing, as in his writing, Owen was clear and concise. He did not render complicated material more palatable by illustrations or humour, and he expected students to keep up. Of a shy and retiring disposition, he would always go out of his way to help students in difficulty, whether academic or personal.³ He was the last person to push himself forward. Stephen Williams recounts Owen’s steadfast refusal to send a copy of his book on W. R. Matthews, formerly Professor at King’s and Dean of St. Paul’s, to the Queen Mother, who had expressed an interest in it.⁴ For all that, He could be a very congenial and amusing companion, writes a colleague, but few people knew him well, and even his friends found that they hardly knew him.⁵ No lover of administration, Owen was nevertheless remembered as a conscientious colleague.⁶ London itself held few attractions for him, and for most of his time at King’s he commuted from Cardiff. He was a lifelong member of Plasnewydd Presbyterian Church, which he served as an elder and Sunday School teacher. He conducted services in South Wales, and presided at ministerial and devotional meetings. A longstanding friend recalled that a neatly turned argument delighted him, and he had the somewhat disconcerting habit of chuckling appreciatively over a passage of Aquinas and calling (unsuccessfully, I regret!) on his friends to join in such a rare intellectual treat. The same writer found Owen to be the enemy of pretentiousness and pomposity. His wit could deftly puncture affectation . . . He was the best of companions [and] a gifted musician and a brilliant executant who might well have achieved eminence as a pianist.⁷

H. P. Owen, who suffered from asthma and emphysema, died on October 26, 1996. He left a body of writings which, taken all together, clearly reveal his biblical rootedness, his philosophical acumen, his theological insight, his deeply-held Christian faith, and, it may respectfully be suggested, a few blind spots, as I shall proceed to show.⁸ A blow-by-blow account of the contents of his writings in the chronological order in which they were published would be cumbersome and repetitive because a number of topics recur throughout the writings. I shall therefore adopt a thematic approach, having recourse to chronology only when explaining that on the question of divine impassibility Owen’s opinion varied over time.

1. The unaccustomed swashbuckling in this paragraph may perhaps be explained, at least in part, by my recent immersion in the style of Owen’s sterner book reviews.

2. In addition to Lewis, his colleagues included the Anglican scholar E. L. Mascall, whose perceptive obituary he wrote. See Eric Lionel Mascall,409–18.

3. Thus my recollection of contact with Owen when he came from Bangor to Manchester to deliver a course on the text and canon of the New Testament during the absence through illness of T. W. Manson. He lodged at Lancashire Independent College. I was greatly encouraged thirty years on by his gracious and perceptive review of my book, The Philosophy of Religion 1875–1980, in Religious Studies 3 (1989) 402–3. I was pleased to repay the compliment in a short article on Owen in Brown, Dictionary.

4. Williams, Foreword, ix.

5. Knibb, The Rev Professor.

6. Ibid.

7. Morris, Professor Emeritus, 81. Morris adds ten years to the date of publication of Owen’s Revelation and Existence, while stating that Concepts of Deity appeared one year earlier than in fact it did. To Stephen Williams I owe the information that Owen’s older half-sister, a distinguished musician, married Ernest Jones, the biographer of Freud. See Williams, Foreword, ix.

8. He left more writings than those that saw the light of published day during his lifetime. Professor Williams, who must be thanked for rescuing The Basis of Christian Prayer, refers in his Foreword (viii) to three unpublished books, of which that on prayer is one. Another, he says, concerned Christianity and Platonism, and the third was a study of the basis and nature of Christian belief. These were not found among Owen’s literary remains, hence the not unnatural conclusion that almost certainly, he destroyed them. Not so! I have them in front of me in typescript, and I shall refer to them in what follows. The first is entitled, The Nature of Christian Belief, the second, The Christian and the Non-Christian. The latter includes a discussion of Plato vis à vis Christian thought.

2

Reason and Experience

No British academic author who wished to write on the existence of God during the middle decades of the twentieth century could responsibly overlook the challenges posed to the enterprise by logical positivists (whether weak or strong) and philosophers of language. Owen did not overlook them. He rose to the challenge, as may be illustrated from the gist of his discussion of A. G. N. Flew’s position as propounded in God and Philosophy (1966). ¹

Owen starts as he means to go on: This book, so far from being the scholarly and objective introduction which the author’s expressed aim and academic status lead us to expect, is a philosophically inadequate and emotionally charged attack on theism.² Among Owen’s many complaints the most serious is that Flew’s dismissal of the cognitive claims made for religious experience is unacceptable. He agrees with Flew that a person’s testimony to religious experience does not demonstrate the existence of God; that statements referring to God cannot be sensibly verified or falsified; and that many Christian theologians and apologists have either ignored or invalidly tried to attenuate the preceding point.³ But Owen nevertheless lodges five objections against Flew’s position, of which the first and most important is that He nowhere attempts to prove (what cannot be proved) that empirical verifiability or falsifiability is a condition of either the meaningfulness or the validity of the truth-claims inherent in religious experience. Yet on the last page he rests his case against theism on its empirical non-falsifiability.⁴ The upshot is that Flew has not said anything which makes it intrinsically less reasonable for a Christian to claim that he is aware of God than it is for an unbeliever to claim that he is aware of a table.⁵

Although in agreement with much in his approach, Owen was not entirely content with I. T. Ramsey’s view of religious language. It will be recalled that in his book, Religious Language (1957), and in subsequent works, Ramsey contends that the purpose of religious language is to evoke a situation which involves the discernment of something that is spatio-temporal and more. Thus, a model, such as wise, grounds a theological story in empirical fact, while a qualifier, such as infinitely, develops the model in a certain direction until the penny drops and a disclosure occurs that claims the appropriate but logically odd placing for the word God.⁶

Owen was especially concerned about the status of theistic terms in Ramsey’s position, namely, that they are not descriptions, but rules for consistent talking. The following is Owen’s carefully balanced response to this claim:

I agree with [Ramsey] wholeheartedly on three points. First, theistic terms do not describe God in the sense of making him intellectually comprehensible; secondly, we must not confuse linguistic analysis (a formal mode of speech) with dogmatic assertion (a material mode); and thirdly, all existential affirmations concerning God are invalid unless they are anchored in a disclosure. However, the basic fact remains that believers intend their statements to signify God as he actually is, even though they cannot give them ‘cash-value’ in terms of immediate vision. Thus they mean to assert that God really is changeless and loving although they do not claim to know the ways in which he possesses these attributes. Yet Dr. Ramsey’s disavowal of description and his preference for a formal mode of speech leave one wondering whether he has finally justified the objective reference which all Christians claim for their theistic terms.⁷ In fact I doubt whether a final justification is possible except through the doctrine of analogy.⁸

My purpose in quoting Owen is to draw out from his words three matters of great significance for our understanding of his intellectual stance. In justice, however, I first allow Ramsey his right of reply: "I do not intend to disavow description altogether, and on my