Not all of the essays in Wrestling with Angels command comparable attention, however. For example, there is a piece from 1984 on Don Cupitt, a thinker little known outside the UK, whose attempt to construct a kind of post-theistic theology is simply too slight and slapdash to bear the weight of much serious scrutiny. Read now, when the discussions that prompted them have long faded from memory, many of Williams’s objections to Cupitt’s project look more or less obvious, and the essay in which they appear seems of little more than archival interest. For quite different reasons, Williams’s reflections on Gillian Rose, in many ways a brilliant and original philosopher, are more likely to provoke consternation from his readers than to aid them in understanding Rose’s thought; for those unfamiliar with her work, Williams’s discussion will probably seem somewhat elliptical and vague; and, for those few who have read her, it will not necessarily be clear how Williams has further illuminated the questions he addresses.
Taken as a whole, though, this is a marvellous collection, full of riches, in equal measures provocative and profound. It is testimony to a lively and subtle mind, one unusually adept at penetrating far beyond the surfaces of texts, and at finding curiosities and rewards where most of us would not have thought to look. It is, as I have said, only a fragmentary portrait of Rowan Williams the theologian, but it is enough to mark him out as a thinker of great stature and imagination. It is, moreover, resplendent proof that there is far more to this man than a beard ”“ however luxuriant it may be.
Rowan’s intellect is not in question.
Agreed, #1. May I suggest a nice sinecure for Dr. Williams in a remote Welsh college where he may scribble his exegeses uninterrupted? Starting Monday?
I appreciated this article. David Bentley Hart is, himself, one of the finest theological minds around (the Beauty of the Infinite is … simply … amazing). We are fortunate to have an Archbishop who is his own man, and not easily swayed, and has the intellectual fortitude to do so. The world is asking hard questions, and ++Rowan has the ability to answer them. Hart is also fair and charitable.
I’m glad that occasionally brilliant people are trusted in positions of authority.
I too appreciate everything I’ve read by David B. Hart. In this piece he shows that Rowan Williams can’t use lack of understanding or knowledge as an excuse.
Fortunately, Alice, +Rowan hasn’t used those excuses. Unless one means, he overestimated the media and continues to hope (wrongly, perhaps) that people will hold him charitably.
But the media – and most of his detractors – could use a “lack of understanding” justifiably as a description of their reading of Rowan.
So it is not deep wonderful rolling fog?