Scripture, Metaphysics, and Poetry: Austin Farrer's The Glass of Vision with Critical Commentary

Abstract

This article reviews two books by Robert MacSwain, Assistant Professor of Theology and Christian Ethics at the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, which present and examine the work of Austin Farrer, perhaps the greatest Anglican theologian of the twentieth century. In Scripture, Metaphysics, and Poetry, MacSwain offers a critical edition of Farrer's 1948 Bampton Lectures, The Glass of Vision, printed with six essays which assess and examine the Lectures. In Solved by Sacrifice, he considers how Farrer's conception of what faith contributes to reasoned reflection on the study of God changed over the course of his lifetime. After drawing on the work of Henri de Lubac, E.B. Pusey, and contemporary critics, to reflect on The Glass of Vision, this article will suggest how Farrer's presentation of the form of divine truth in the human mind can illumine MacSwain's discussion of Farrer's religious epistemology.