Austin Farrer, a name probably unfamiliar to most Americans, has been described by Richard Harries (bishop of Oxford, and a leading authority on both Farrer and C. S. Lewis) as the greatest mind produced by the Church of England in this century. Harries' judgment is not far from the mark.

Farrer was renowned as a philosophical theologian and in this capacity produced the incredibly abstruse Finite and Infinite. He was also a scholar of the New Testament and in his book St. Matthew and St. Mark1 defended the unfashionable view that Matthew had been written before Mark. In addition to being a philosophical theologian and a New Testament scholar, Farrer was also a great preacher.

Born in 1904, Farrer was the son of Augustus Farrer, a lecturer in church history at Regent's Park College in London. Regent's Park College is a Baptist theological college which subsequently moved to Oxford. As a student at the prestigious St. Paul's School in London, Farrer was early recognized as a brilliant student. In 1925, he "went up" to Oxford, where his early promise of academic achievement was realized in three first class degrees: in Classical Moderations, "Greats" (Arts and Letters), and Theology.

It was also at Oxford where Farrer made the most important decision of his life. Although raised in a staunchly Baptist family, when he matriculated at Oxford Farrer was not yet a member of any church. Oxford in the 1920s was hardly a place congenial to Baptists and other Nonconformists, and Farrer found himself inexorably drawn into the Church of England. In May of 1924, Farrer was baptized and confirmed in the Latin Chapel of Oxford's Christ Church Cathedral.

Unlike his near-contemporary C. S. Lewis, Farrer did not experience a dramatic conversion from atheism to theism to Christianity; the choice for him seems never to have been belief or disbelief in God. Rather, Farrer had to decide in which church he could best serve God. Although he never wrote of his decision to join the Church of England, years later his sermon, "On Being an Anglican," does illuminate the decision of his college days:

We are Anglicans not because of the psalms or the poetry of George Herbert or the cathedral, but because we can obey God here. The Church mediates Christ. To be a loyal churchman is hobbyism or prejudice unless it is the way to be a loyal Christian -- to see through the Church to Christ as a man sees through the telescope to the stars.2

In due course, Farrer was ordained a deacon (1928) and priest (1929) of the Church of England. After a year of parish work in northern England, Farrer returned to Oxford to become chaplain and tutor in St. Edmund Hall (1931-35). Further and more prestigious academic appointments were to follow, and he went on to become chaplain of Trinity College (1935-60) and, finally, Warden of Keble College (1960-68).

Farrer the pastor was never completely submerged in Farrer the theologian. Friends and students, recalling his years as an Oxford don, consistently note his faithfulness as a priest of the Church of England. One of his students from St. Edmund Hall writes: