A Reverend Don

Abstract

H. P. Owen was a wonderfully systematic thinker, and his work is a joy to read. He was also a student of history; his moral argument is couched in what to this day remains one of the better cursory sketches of the history of the moral argument. On the shoulders of Newman, Sorley, Taylor, and others, Owen constructed an intelligent moral argument. Distinguishing between self-evidence and self-explanation, he argued that various moral phenomena, though they fall into the former category, don’t fall into the latter. In discussing the deliverances of morality and delineating their salient features, he patiently demonstrated their theistic implications, without pretending to have offered anything in the vicinity of a logical proof or demonstration. Significantly, he extended his case not just to theism generally but to Christianity particularly.