17 Facts About Austin Farrer

Austin Marsden Farrer was an English Anglican philosopher, theologian, and biblical scholar.

Austin Farrer served as Warden of Keble College, Oxford, from 1960 to 1968.

Austin Farrer's father was a Baptist minister and Farrer was brought up in that faith.

Austin Farrer served a curacy in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, after which he was invited to become chaplain and tutor at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, in 1931.

Austin Farrer was a Fellow and Chaplain of Trinity College, Oxford, from 1935 to 1960.

Apart from his biblical scholarship, which was considered maverick, Austin Farrer's work was mainly philosophical, though again he was out of the mainstream.

Austin Farrer's thinking was essentially Thomist, not only in his being heavily influenced by Thomas's thought but in the dialogical way in which he presents his arguments, playing as he said, "out of dummy" the views and objections of real or imaginary opponents of the thesis he was advancing at the time.

Austin Farrer took the last sacraments to Lewis before his death.

Austin Farrer has been more studied and more admired since his death in the United States than in his own country.

Austin Farrer described God for such purposes as "intelligent act".

Austin Farrer presented his own solution to the synoptic problem, the so-called Farrer hypothesis in a short essay entitled "On Dispensing with Q".

Austin Farrer argued against the possibility of reconstructing Q noting that while it might have been impossible to reconstruct Mark from the other gospels had it been lost, Mark had not been lost.

Austin Farrer averred, against them, that without the concept of miracle, the Christian project was fatally flawed, preferring the forms of existential defence of the faith of such as Gabriel Marcel to that of the Germans.

Austin Farrer's teasing style is indicated by his suggestion that Bultmann had freed the gospel from its fetters by amputating its limbs.

Austin Farrer was known as a fine preacher and several books of his sermons were printed, all but one posthumously.

Austin Farrer's style was always to be generous to the despisers of the faith, illuminating his defences with glimpses into his own spiritual life.

Austin Farrer had the gift of marrying considerable scholarship with profound spirituality.