In the two decades since publication of Finite and Infinite made him visible from afar, Austin Farrer has exported from Oxford some thirty writings of uncommon range, acumen, and wit. By 1959 a reviewer in the TLS judged that “in Dr Farrer the academic world has one of the most interesting minds of the century….” His books, several of which issued from major lectureships, have been widely reviewed and cited in print; it has become an open secret that, in private, they have evoked fascination, puzzlement, and exasperation. Yet little sustained examination of his work has appeared. At a convergence of import and quandary such as this, I propose to examine the phase of Farrer's thought that has remained central for him, despite excursions into other genres — his philosophical theology. This article will center on his insistence upon doing that discipline metaphysically. For his insistence upon doing that, even out of season, provides a key to both his thought and its larger significance. After glancing at his response to opponents of this attempt, I shall inquire how certain metaphysical elements function in his account of our discourse about God and, in conclusion, essay some judgments about his achievement to date.

According to Aristotle himself, all the philosophers before him are agreed that the world was generated, which implies that he was the first to introduce the conception of an ungenerated world; but, according to John Philoponus, Aristotle was only the first among the natural philosophers who discovered a new method to establish the principle that the world had no beginning. Among the Church Fathers, Lactantius sometimes attributes the belief in the eternity of the world explicitly to Aristotle, but sometimes he refers it vaguely to “those who say that the world always existed.” Vague references to a belief in the eternity of the world, or to such a belief described as held by some people or by some philosophers, are to be found also in the works of such Fathers as Justin Martyr, Theophilus, Origen, Arnobius, Basil, Augustine, and Diodorus Tarsus. Two pre-Socratic philosophers are mentioned by some Fathers as exponents of the belief in the eternity of the world: Xenophanes by Hippolytus, Eusebius, and Theodoret of Cyrrhus; Pythagoras by Tertullian. Various arguments are used by the Fathers in their refutation of this view. These arguments, selected and grouped into six types, are the subject of discussion of the present paper.

The very conception of change in the social and cultural climate of the Christian society as providing a meaningful setting for an exchange of ideas between Jews and Christians in Germany during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries needs clarification. Some scholars characterize Jewish life and thought in that time and place as dominated by almost total social isolation and strict spiritual traditionalism. According to their view, this seclusion was as much self-willed as imposed by Christian society. It is admitted that there was defence against danger and refutation of libel on behalf of the Jews. The Shtadlan Josel von Rosheim, the great Jewish diplomat of those days, represents this Jewish response to external challenge. It is, of course, well established that Johannes Reuchlin acquired his Hebrew from Jewish teachers, but this is seen mainly as a feature of awakening European Hebraism. Very little has been done to ascertain what relation obtained between the cultures of the pupil and his teachers. Even his defence of the Talmud — beneficial to the Jews in its results — is seen as unrelated to their trend of thought.

Concerning the effort to recover rabbinic biographies, Professor Judah Goldin writes:

… Such works are hardly biographies in the serious sense of the word, … for not only do the primary sources disappoint us deeply in the amount of reliable historical detail they provide, but even as regards the opinions and teachings of the Sages, one is left to guess what is early and what is late. In short, there is practically no way to get at development, surely and desperately necessary for the historian and biographer. These books therefore are filled with speculation, sometimes plausible, sometimes not. As reflections of the author's own imagination and interpretation, however, and as collections of data about the specific sage, they are informative exercises.

My research exhibits, alas, the deplorable qualities to which Goldin points. At the same time, I have continued to reflect on what we know about Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai. Here are some of the results.

The accuracy of Max Weber's grasp of Puritan religious experience has persistently been called into question by the critics of the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Weber is alleged either to have misunderstood the sources of Puritanism, or to have overlooked the real character of Puritan belief and action, or to have misconstrued its social significance. In short, Weber is generally accused of failing to assess correctly the causes, content, and implications of Puritanism.

Scholars today are largely agreed that the Epistle to the Hebrews circulated independently for a lengthy period before gaining admission to the canon, which came about only through the fiction of Pauline authorship. The view that the Pauline corpus and Hebrews were known and used independently of one another prior to the latter's incorporation in the former is so widely accepted that one hesitates to question it. Yet, when the basis of this position is examined, it is a bit surprising to find how slender is the evidence on which the present consensus is based. Moreover, such evidence as there is does not point unequivocally to the conclusions now so commonly drawn, or is capable of other interpretations. Therefore, there may be grounds for a review and reappraisal of the evidence of the sources.