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The Faith and Dr Gilbert Murray

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

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Dr Gilbert Murray (1866—1957), one of the most distinguished academics of his time, was well known for his incisive criticisms of Christianity. His reconciliation to the Catholic Church shortly before his death stirred up quite a lot of controversy and the truth of it was even questioned. Canon John Crozier, who ministered to Murray during those weeks, feels he can now write a full account of how it happened.

The Aquinas Lecture at Blackfriars, Oxford, on ‘Worship and Theology’, was delivered by the Revd. Dr Maurice Wiles, the Regius Professor of Divinity in the University. In the course of it he touched on the agnostic’s prayer, so movingly described by Dr Anthony Kenny in his book The God of the Philosophers. Dr Kenny had written:

There is no reason why someone who is in doubt about the existence of God should not pray for help and guidance on this topic as on other matters. Some find something comic in the idea of an agnostic praying to a God whose existence he doubts. It is no more unreasonable than the act of a man adrift on the ocean, trapped in a cave, or stranded on a mountainside, who cries for help though he may never be heard or fires a signal which may never be seen. Such prayer seems rational whether or not there is a God: whether, if there is a God, it is pleasing to him or conducive to salvation is quite another question.

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Copyright © 1991 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers