This year marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Charles Earle Raven, Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University, 1932-1950, and Master of Christ’s College, 1939-1950.
Eminent theologian, stirring orator, learned historian of science, ardent naturalist and diligent university administrator, Charles Raven was a quite remarkable man, possessed of boundless energy, extraordinary ability, and diverse interests. Arriving in Cambridge as a self-confessed "pure pagan" in the early 1900s, Raven soon 'discovered' his faith, switching from classics to divinity in his third year. During that time, under the auspices of the eminent Regius Professor of Divinity, James Bethune-Baker, Raven undertook the study of early Christian doctrine. Thereafter, positions followed as assistant secretary for secondary education under Liverpool county council, dean of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, assistant master at Tonbridge school, and, following the outbreak of World War, as one of the numerous army chaplains posted to the Western Front.
Following the restoration of peace, Raven was appointed rector of Bletchingley in Surrey, before a period of eight years from 1924 as the residentiary canon of Liverpool cathedral. Heralded works on the Early Church led to his appointment as the Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University in 1932, and shortly thereafter to a Fellowship at Christ's College, the Mastership of which he subsequently held for eleven years between 1939 and 1950. As Master, Raven offered a resolute lead during the years of war, despite his outspoken pacifism. He joined daily in the morning prayers in chapel and presided over the College boat club, forging an attachment with the students which led to his being carried back shoulder-high to his College residence following a valedictory dinner in 1950. As Vice-Chancellor of the University, 1947-49, he was said to have "brought grace and dignity to all ceremonial occasions", including the presentation of an honorary degree to the Queen (later the Queen Mother) as the first female graduate of the University. And running through all the various themes of Raven's life, in every post occupied, in every capacity enjoyed, in every task undertaken, was his deep, unerring love for the natural world and its myriad of flora and fauna.
Indeed, as this and a forthcoming blog post will seek to show, it was a concern to restore nature and the natural world to the Christian faith, most especially in light of the Darwinian revolution, that proved to be one of the most abiding and resonant themes in Raven’s varied and stimulating intellectual life. Raven's self-appointed task was simply put, if formidably challenging: how could the advances in modern science be reconciled with a relevant, reasonable, living Christian faith?
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| Charles Earle Raven (1885-1964) |
Uppingham and Cambridge
The natural world had been Raven’s first love: accounting for his relative disinterest in religious matters as a young boy at Uppingham School, Raven pointed to the delights of nature - "the wonderland of form and structure" - that had fired his youthful passions and preoccupied his youthful attentions: "...always there were the larches in the spinney and the starlings on the roof", he reminisced, "and on Sundays the fall of the hill over woodlands to the brook, and the squirrels and the magpies in the oaks; and in August the sands of the Dee...". Raven’s conversion to the Christian faith during his years at Cambridge University seems merely to have heightened and enriched his passion for nature. Writing in his autobiographical work of 1927, A wanderer's way, of his annus mirabilis in 1906, when "Suddenly the whole world seemed transformed", Raven recalled that,
But Raven’s delight in nature was neither purely aesthetic nor sensual. From an early age, he had developed a passion for moth-hunting, a hobby which he pursued voraciously at Cambridge and which drew him into attending the then cutting-edge lectures on genetics delivered by Professor William Bateson (1861-1926).
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| Passage from A wanderer's way (1927), p.47 |
"At such times", Raven later mused,
there would come to me something of what Wordsworth and the mystics have made familiar – the sense that for a moment time had stopped, that suddenly the visible world had become transparent, that the eternal reality, beyond and behind things of sense had been unveiled and in an instant of rapture had enfolded me into union with itself.
But Raven’s delight in nature was neither purely aesthetic nor sensual. From an early age, he had developed a passion for moth-hunting, a hobby which he pursued voraciously at Cambridge and which drew him into attending the then cutting-edge lectures on genetics delivered by Professor William Bateson (1861-1926).
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| English geneticist, William Bateson (1861-1926), whose lectures Raven attended whilst studying at Cambridge. |
It was these experiences in the lecture room, and his subsequent experimentation in the university laboratories, which convinced Raven of the pressing need to "annul the divorce" which he saw as having been effected between religion and science. For Raven, any such division appeared hideously anachronistic: at root, religion was representative of man’s response to the universe "as over against himself" and, thus, any such response could only but be "conditioned by his experience and knowledge of that universe". Physics, metaphysics; natural, supernatural; faith, reason were axioms complementary, not antagonistic. That they had become widely perceived as separate was a regrettable result of the Enlightenment, maintained Raven. At that critical historical juncture, he continued, science had renounced its spiritual, holistic dimensions in favour of matter, mechanism and empiricism alone. However religion too had to bear some of the 'blame' for separation, argued Raven: in its all too often Puritan-coloured focus upon the supernatural realms of heaven and hell, faith had forgotten its fundamental root in the revelation of God in nature and history.
The Creator Spirit
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| Title page from The Creator Spirit (1927) |
Raven’s first efforts at securing such reconciliation took the form of the Hulsean and Noble lectures, delivered at Cambridge and Harvard universities respectively, and subsequently published together under the title of The Creator Spirit: a survey of Christian doctrine in the light of biology, psychology and mysticism (1927). This latter work, which broke new ground in its efforts to grapple with recent advances in science from a theological standpoint, argued:
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| Passage from The Creator Spirit (1927), p.vii |
Although deeply read in all scientific fields, Raven's passion for the intricacies and delights of the flora and fauna of the natural world ensured that it was biology, and above all evolutionary theory, that he strove principally to unite with theology. In particular, Raven sought to assail the views of his previous teacher, William Bateson, whose pioneering theories on the evolution of species by genetic heredity alone were incompatible with his own which stressed use-inheritance, and the presence of mind and purpose as propelling agencies, allowing species to take control of their own lives. For Raven, such opinions were built upon hours of careful observation of animal behaviour, most especially of birds. During the 1920s, he published three books on ornithology, each of which contained his own detailed observations and pioneering photography of birds, and which were replete with instances, as Raven maintained, of species displaying intelligence and initiative over and above mere 'mechanical' instinct.
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| During the 1920s, Charles Raven wrote three works concerned with birdwatching and ornithology: In praise of birds (1925), The ramblings of a bird lover (1927) and Bird haunts and bird behaviour (1929) |
To date, Raven's published works had grappled chiefly with the tensions and divisions between religion and science in the modern, post-Darwinian, era. In writing such volumes, however, Raven came to appreciate that any effort to reconcile these allegedly estranged disciplines would necessitate a close and acute understanding of their relationship over time, and, in particular, of that fateful juncture in the late seventeenth century, when their paths had seemingly first diverged. So it was, then, that from the late 1930s, Raven increasingly turned his attentions to the history of science, his preoccupations with which shall form the subject of the second part of this article.
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| Raven in his natural habitat (from In praise of birds (1925), p.145) |
To date, Raven's published works had grappled chiefly with the tensions and divisions between religion and science in the modern, post-Darwinian, era. In writing such volumes, however, Raven came to appreciate that any effort to reconcile these allegedly estranged disciplines would necessitate a close and acute understanding of their relationship over time, and, in particular, of that fateful juncture in the late seventeenth century, when their paths had seemingly first diverged. So it was, then, that from the late 1930s, Raven increasingly turned his attentions to the history of science, his preoccupations with which shall form the subject of the second part of this article.
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