David Brown

Other Work on Doctrine and Philosophy of Religion

The first thing that needs to be said in this section is that the books referred to on the pages about Revelation and Experience through culture and the arts are no less concerned with doctrine. Thus they seek, among other things, to develop a new way of thinking about divine revelation, to draw parallels between incarnation and revelation in understanding divine action, and also explore the role of suffering in experience of God. Very specific doctrinal issues are also examined, among them, for instance, dogmas concerned with the Virgin Mary (the Assumption is defended, the Immaculate Conception rejected). It is important to state such facts at the outset as those who speak of the five volumes as simply an exercise in theological aesthetics have almost certainly failed to familiarise themselves with their content. My aim was to advocate a new way of doing theology, as it were, one in which religious practice was fully integrated into consideration of the more academic issues.

However, not all my writing has approached doctrine and philosophy of religion in this way. So the purpose of this section is simply to note some other kinds of writing.

 

Incarnation and Trinity

The book which created most stir in my earlier career was The Divine Trinity (1985). Intended as a response to various challenges to the doctrine of the incarnation that were occurring in England at the time, most notably through The Myth of God Incarnate, the tools of analytic philosophy were deployed to defend both the incarnation and the doctrine of the Trinity. Rather unusually for a theological work, there was extensive discussion of the book in the national press (including The Times and The Telegraph), some favourable, some hostile. Two of my responses to critics can be read in the 1986 article, `Wittgenstein against the Wittgensteinians` and in the 1989 essay `Trinitarian Personhood and Individuality` (full details in Publications - Essays in Journals). In retrospect I would now see that work as being more limited in its vision than it ought to have been. However, I have not changed my view on the importance of analytic approaches. It is just that I am now more aware of their limitations. That concern with incarnational issues has been renewed in recent years with the publication in 2010 of La tradition kénotique dans la théologie britannique (Mame-Desclée, Paris), a work that appeared in the following year in English as Divine Humanity (SCM in Britain; Baylor University Press in the United States). The reason why it appeared first in French was because it was commissioned by the then Archbishop of Strasbourg, Joseph Doré, who had been a professor at the Institut Catholique in Paris. It has two objectives. Chapters 2 to 4 trace the history of the modern idea of kenosis or divine self-limitation in the incarnation from its origins in Germany through advocates in Scotland and England. The remaining chapters offer a defence, in part through considering its more recent applications to the Trinity and to creation.

 

Sacramental Theology

Another long-standing area of concern has been sacramental theology. A significant expression of this was in two books jointly edited with a Durham friend and colleague, Ann Loades: The Sense of the Sacramental (1995) and Christ: The Sacramental Word (1996). The introductions to both volumes provide a good guide to our general thinking on the subject.

 

The Oxford Movement

This movement which so changed the Church of England in the nineteenth century began at Oriel College, where I once taught. So my interest in its continuing relevance is perhaps not altogether unsurprising. I edited a series on lectures under the title Newman: A Man for our Time (1990), delivered to celebrate the centenary of Newman's death in 1890. More recently, I have explored his adaptation of Aristotle's notion of phronesis, and, more controversially, attempted to defend Pusey as potentially the more creative thinker, despite his later retreat into an unyielding conservatism.

 

Christian philosophers

I have written more than once on St Anselm, on Joseph Butler and on Austin Farrer. My most recent thoughts on Anselm (more especially, his views on the atonement) are in the Cambridge Companion to Anselm (2004). His views are so often parodied, that a reconsideration does seem to me long overdue. The same applies to the writings of Austin Farrer. Partly because he usually wrote without footnotes and in his more philosophical writings can be unnecessarily obscure, he is at present greatly underestimated. Yet there are plenty of seminal ideas, which I have sought to develop in ways that helpfully reinforce my own type of approach.