Four Philosophical Anglicans

Alan Sell explores the lives and ideas of four unjustly neglected Anglican philosophers: W. G. De Burgh (1866-1943); W. R. Matthews (1881-1973); 0. 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.Alan Sell has earned our warmest thanks for showing us the rich resources of Christian philosophy in these recent thinkers who were too early to be beholden to our current apologetic fashions. Anglicans should be proud of them.--Terence Penelhum, University of Calgary, CanadaWe should be grateful to Alan Sell for this thorough and detailed discussion of four largely unread twentieth-century philosophical theologians. This book, which is at once erudite and entertaining, reads like the account of a seminar in which the author is a sympathetic outsider who wants to understand what makes people think the way they do about God and the world--and then to see whether this can still inform the task of Christian theology and apologetics today.--Mark D. Chapman, Ripon College Cuddesdon and University of Oxford, UKAlan P. F. Sell, of the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and the University of Chester, is a philosopher-theologian and ecumenist with strong interests in the history of Christian thought in general, and of the Reformed and Dissenting traditions in particular. A minister of The United Reformed Church, he has held rural and urban pastorates, has served from Geneva as Theological Secretary of the World Alliance (now Communion) of Reformed Churches, and has held academic posts in England, Canada, and Wales. He has earned the rarely-awarded senior doctorates, DD and DLitt, is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and of the Royal Historical Society, and holds honorary doctorates from the USA, Hungary, Canada, and Romania. He is the author of more than thirty books, and the editor of others.