Four Philosophical Anglicans

W.G. De Burgh, W.R. Matthews, O.C. Quick, H.A. Hodges

Alan P.F. Sell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351936019
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Professor Sell explores the lives and ideas of four unjustly neglected Anglican philosophers: W.G. De Burgh (1866-1943); W.R. Matthews (1881-1973); O.C. Quick (1885-1944); H.A. Hodges (1905-1976). This study fills an important gap in the history of twentieth-century philosophical and theological thought. Sell argues that these writers covered a wide range of philosophical topics in an illuminating way, and that a comparison of their respective standpoints and methods is instructive from the point of view of the viability or otherwise of Christian philosophizing. He discusses the challenges these four philosophical Anglicans issued to certain important trends in the philosophy and theology of their day, and argues that some of them are of continuing relevance.

1
Introduction

In this book the careers of four philosophical Anglicans are sketched, and their writings are discussed. W. G. de Burgh (1866–1943) was the first Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading; W. R. Matthews (1881–1973) was Dean and Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at King’s College, London, before becoming Dean first of Exeter Cathedral and then of St. Paul’s; O. C. Quick (1885– 1944) held various ecclesiastical appointments before becoming Professor of Theology at Durham University, and then Regius Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford; and in 1934 H. A. Hodges (1905–1976) succeeded his older colleague, de Burgh, as the second Professor of Philosophy at Reading. Of all of them it may be said that their primary academic interest was philosophical, though in the case of Quick and Hodges in particular it must be noted that their theological acumen was considerable. The same may be said of de Burgh, though in his case he tried hard, without always succeeding, to remember that he was a philosopher, not a theologian or an apologist, and he did not publish specifically theological works. Taking all of their publications together we find contributions to philosophy, theology, doctrine, psychology, apologetics and spirituality. Reference will be made to all of these.

Pride of place, however, will be given to philosophy, for the reason why these four philosophical Anglicans are of particular interest (and other Anglicans and non-Anglicans¹ might have been chosen) is that they illustrate some of the ways in which committed Christians charted their intellectual course during a period of philosophical upheaval.² The idealistic metaphysics in which they had been reared was under strong, if not always justified, attack. Science was held in high esteem by many, and scientific method, its abstractive nature notwithstanding, was deemed by some to be the sole method of arriving at truth. Barthian theology seemed to many to entail a retreat from reason into a circle of revelation, and logical positivists were branding religious, no less than aesthetic and moral, discourse nonsense. Through all of this de Burgh, Matthews, Quick and Hodges managed to keep their heads and maintain their faith. Our purpose here is to see how they went about doing this. This enquiry into their procedures and findings is by no means an antiquarian or a nostalgic exercise. It is offered in the expectation that since philosophical ideas cannot be constricted by time or space (which means that heresies as well as truths are long lived) we may find encouragement, rebuke, and certainly stimulus, in the contributions and methods of our intellectual forebears.

Notes

¹ Robert Franks the Congregationalist comes immediately to mind. See Alan P. F. Sell, Hinterland Theology. A Stimulus to Theological Construction, Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008, ch. 10 and passim.

² For an account of this see Alan P. F. Sell, The Philosophy of Religion 1875-1980, London: Croom Helm, 1988, Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1996.

2
William George de Burgh (1866–1943): Reason, Morality and Religion

[T]hose who are enlightened by religious vision possess an almost uncanny power of handling their own difficulties and those of others with efficiency, and of discerning, in the most unpromising quarters, the signs of God’s indwelling Spirit and of a desire for him akin to their own.¹

W. G. de Burgh could have been speaking of himself. Tall, slim, bespectacled, and of aristocratic features, he had an aloof air but, as we shall see, his students loved him, notwithstanding the dim view he took of some of their attainments and interests. Beneath all was a religiously-grounded optimism which looked for the best in others, and could write off no one. His friend, A. E. Taylor, supplies many of the basic family details:

William George de Burgh, born at New Wandsworth on 24 October 1866, was the son of William de Burgh, a barrister holding a post at the War Office, and of his wife, Hannah Jane Monck Mason, a great-granddaughter of Samuel Whitbread,² and granddaughter of the Lady Grey (great-grandmother to Viscount Grey of Falloden) who was well known in the Evangelical movement of her day.³ Of his paternal uncles, one, Maurice de Burgh, was Archdeacon of Ness, another, Hubert, became a priest in the Roman Catholic Church. Dean de Burgh, his paternal grandfather, was the builder of the church at Sandymount, Dublin. He was thus of mixed Norman-Irish and Northumberland strain, an ‘aristocrat’ in the proper sense of a much abused word … his mother (who lost her own father early) was much attached to her uncle, Sir George Grey, Home Secretary, and to her cousins, in particular to Thomas Baring, Lord Northbrook.⁴

With this pedigree it is all the more significant that de Burgh was able ‘to be natural and unconstrained in all company’, and that there was no ‘trace of social superiority or snobbery’ about him.⁵

Encouraged by his mother, daughter of Captain Thomas Monck Mason RN, whom Taylor describes as ‘devout and rather “Puritan”’, de Burgh enjoyed learning much of the Bible by heart – ‘an admirable practice which I could wish to see more common than it appears to-day’ declares Taylor, before drily adding, ‘it is not so easy to see why, in later life, he took the pleasure he is reported to have done in memorizing much of the information provided by Bradshaw’s [railway] Guide and Whitaker’s Almanac. … Nor do I know how to explain the keen delight which de Burgh has told me he found in the posting of accounts in neatly written columns with carefully ruled lines in red ink.’⁶

When de Burgh was 12, and still at preparatory school, his father died, leaving his mother in some financial difficulty. This was exacerbated by the fact that in 1880 de Burgh failed to secure a scholarship to Winchester College. Helped by a relative, however, he enrolled as a commoner. During the school holidays he went to stay with his Scots cousins, the Burn Murdochs, in Perthshire. There he immersed himself in music and became an ardent walker: ‘forty miles, including the climbing of a mountain, is said to have been his idea of a good walk’.⁷ He showed no interest in country sports and heartily disliked school games, though he was well versed in cricket and enjoyed watching the game. Among his school friends was the budding philosopher, H. W. B. Joseph, with whom he maintained contact throughout his life.⁸

To his own surprise de Burgh won a classical Postmastership at Merton College, Oxford, and was placed in the second class in Honour Moderations in 1887, and in the first class in Literae humaniores in 1889. In addition to Joseph, de Burgh’s Oxford classical-philosophical contemporaries included W. R. Hardie, H. H. Joachim and J. A. Smith.⁹ On leaving Oxford de Burgh was briefly an assistant master at Derby School, from whence he went to Toynbee Hall, London, where he became Censor of Studies at Balliol House, a residence for male city workers who wished to benefit from social and intellectual pursuits. Named after the academic and social reformer, Arnold Toynbee, and opened in 1884, Toynbee Hall was set in the heart of one of London’s poorest areas, noted for its large contingents of Jewish¹⁰ and Irish¹¹ immigrants. This was by no means the environment in which an aristocrat of the snobbier sort would have chosen to live. In 1895 de Burgh moved into lodgings in Stepney with his friend Patrick Duncan, who rose from being a lecturer at Toynbee Hall to become the first Governor-General of the Union of South Africa.¹² De Burgh became a lecturer in the University Extension system, a venture originated by the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and London during the 1870s, the objective of which was to provide lectures on a wide variety of subjects to working-class people in various parts of the country. As an extension lecturer de Burgh ‘became eminently successful, though he always rated his own work in this department as a mere retailing of the second-best at second-hand’.¹³ In 1896 he was appointed Lecturer in Greek and Latin at the University Extension College in Reading. The first University Extension lectures had been given in Reading in 1885, and the College had been opened in 1892.

On 26 January 1897 de Burgh married Edith Mary, daughter of William Francis Grace, Vice-Consul at Mogador. They had two daughters and a son, and their home at Southern Hill was open to staff and students alike. In the same year philosophy was added to de Burgh’s classical brief. In 1902 the institution became a University College, and when, in 1907, its complement of faculties was determined, he became the first Professor of Philosophy and Dean of the Faulty of Letters – positions he held until his retirement in 1934. From time to time he was invited to consider moving elsewhere – to a projected extension college at Worcester, to the Muslim University of Aligarh, to the Principalship of the Training College at Blackheath, London; but de Burgh stuck to his last and was deeply committed to the Reading enterprise. In 1910, on the arrival of P. N. Ure as the first Professor of Classics, de Burgh relinquished that subject.¹⁴ Henceforth he ‘managed Philosophy along with one lecturer’.¹⁵ This was still a formidable task, and it is more than likely th...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Author
• Dedication
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 William George de Burgh (1866–1943): Reason, Morality and Religion
• 3 Walter Robert Matthews (1881–1973): Experience, Rationality and Revelation
• 4 Oliver Chase Quick (1885–1944): Philosophy, Theology, Ecumenism
• 5 Herbert Arthur Hodges (1905–1976): Christian Philosopher, Believing Sceptic
• 6 Comparisons, Contrasts and Assessment
• Bibliography
• Index of Persons
• Index of Subjects