Reason and faith are not in conflict, because although they inhabit the same physical space, they are concerned with different realms of time: When God called Amos "what province did God claim as the area in which His creative and redemptive power would move unconfined? ... the future ... God's salvation, from now to eternity, from here to Paradise, is all our future, but the world of scientific enquiry is always the past."14 Farrer's sermon about simple Amos and wise Paul who discounted his learning moved from a consideration of the conflict between reason and faith to an affirmation of the grace of God who justifies us: "Christ banishes the shadow with His immortal light and calls us into a future which is simply His."15

Farrer's sermons were sometimes influenced by his New Testament studies. "St. Mark," a sermon which must have been preached on the feast of St. Mark, contains some of his most perceptive remarks on the theology of Mark's Gospel: "Shall we reduce St. Mark's Gospel to three lines?

God gives you everything.

Give everything to God.

You can't.

True, there is a fourth line: Christ will make you able, for He has risen from the dead."16 What Farrer meant by his three line formula is that the pattern in Mark's Gospel is three-fold. First, Christ's healings and works of power are recounted. Second, Christ teaches about suffering and sacrifice. Third, there is the disciples' abandonment of Christ, of which the most dramatic incident is Peter's denial:

Perhaps the Mark of the gospel was the John Mark of Acts after all. And perhaps all this emphasis on desertion, running away, the failure of good intentions has something to do with that most painful text in the Book of Acts: "Barnabas wished to take John called Mark with them; but Paul thought it not well to take with them him who had turned back from them in Pamphylia, and not gone with them to the work."17

Another remarkable feature of Farrer's sermons is the consistency of his theology. Although he never wrote a systematic theology, one could reconstruct one just from his sermons. What is most distinctive about the theology Farrer preached is his unification of two basis Christian themes: resurrection and grace. Farrer seems to have brought together patristic Greek theology and the characteristic theology of the Reformation.

For Farrer, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ was (and is) the paradigmatic example and the source of grace. Christ's resurrection frees us not only from death but also from the deadly power of the temptation to construct our own salvation.

For example, in Farrer's sermon "Sabbath and Sunday," he wrote: "Very early in the morning on the first day of the week, before anyone had done a stroke of work or acquired a jot of merit, He rose from the sepulchre, bringing new life to His disciples." But I think the best statement is in "St. Mark" which I have already cited: "... Christ will make you able, for he has risen from the dead."

In Mark, Farrer found the message of grace which Luther and Calvin located primarily in Paul. In the darkest portrayal of the Resurrection, Farrer found the gleam of the Bible's great Good News: Christ's resurrection shattered the power of the Law by which sin and death had bound us.

1. Austin Farrer, St. Matthew and St. Mark, 2nd ed. (Dacre Press, 1966).

2. Quoted in Philip Curtis, A Hawk Among Sparrows, (London: SPCK, 1982), p. 24. NB: This is the only biography of Farrer, and I have drawn on it for these details of Farrer's life.

3. Ibid, p. 130.

4. Ibid, p. 163.

5. Ibid, p. 231.

6. Austin Farrer, The Brink of Mystery, ed. Charles Conti (London: SPCK, 1976), p. 1.

7. Farrer, The End of Man, ed. Charles Conti (London: SPCK, 1973), p. ix.

8. Brink, p. 57.

9. Farrer, A Faith of Our Own (New York: The World Publishing Co., 1960), p. 6.

10. Faith, p. 31.

11. Brink, p. 71.

12. Ibid, p. 73.

13. End, p. 137.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid., p. 138.

16. Faith, p. 112.

17. Ibid., p. 113.