Paul S. Fiddes

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Paul S. Fiddes (born 30 April 1947) is Professor of Systematic Theology in the University of Oxford and Principal Emeritus and Professorial Research Fellow of Regent's Park College. His most important work to date, The Creative Suffering of God (1988), is widely considered to be one of the major contributions to theology in the last decades of the twentieth century.

Fiddes was educated at Drayton Manor Grammar School.^[1] In 1965 he went up to St Peter's College, Oxford to read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. He quickly changed his course and ended up with a Triple First in English Language and Literature and Theology. The relationship between these disciplines has formed a major part of his subsequent scholarship. He then embarked on a doctoral thesis entitled The hiddenness of wisdom in the Old Testament and later Judaism, which he completed in 1976, before spending a year at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen undertaking post-doctoral studies with Jürgen Moltmann and Eberhard Jüngel.

Meanwhile, Fiddes had studied at Regent's Park College (the Baptist Permanent Private Hall at Oxford) for ordination as a minister in the Baptist Union of Great Britain. In 1977 he returned to Regent's Park as Fellow and Tutor in Christian Doctrine and from 1979-85 he was additionally Lecturer in Theology at St Peter's. He has been a member of the Oxford Theology Faculty Board since 1989, serving as Chairman 1996-98. He was appointed Principal of Regent's Park in 1989 and Professor of Systematic Theology in the University of Oxford in 2002.

In 2004 Fiddes was elected an Honorary Fellow of St Peter's, on which occasion he was described as being 'recognised internationally as one of the leading scholars in the fields of theology and literature'.^[2] Later in that year, he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Divinity, the highest that the University confers. In 2002 he was chosen to preach the University Sermon on the Grace of Humility, and in 2005 he was appointed to deliver the Oxford Bampton Lectures, choosing as his topic Seeing the world and knowing God: ancient wisdom and modern doctrine. In 2004 he became an Honorary Doctor of the University of Bucharest.^[3]

Fiddes has served as Chairman of the Doctrine and Worship Committee of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, Convenor of the Division for Theology and Education of the European Baptist Federation, Vice Chair of the Baptist Doctrine and Inter-Church Cooperation Study Commission of the Baptist World Alliance, and Co-Chair of the Anglican Communion-Baptist World Alliance International Conversations. He is a member of the editorial board of Ecclesiology: The Journal for Ministry, Mission and Unity, a consultant editor for Studies in Baptist History and Thought, published by Paternoster Press, and a series editor of New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies (Ashgate).

[edit] Publications

Sole author (books)

Charismatic renewal: a Baptist view: a report received by the Baptist Union Council with commentary (London: Baptist Publications, 1980)

A leading question: the structure and authority of leadership in the local church (London: Baptist Publications, 1986)

The creative suffering of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988)

Past event and present salvation: the Christian idea of atonement (London: Darton, Longman, & Todd, 1989)

The Trinity in worship and preaching (London: London Baptist Preachers' Association, 1991)

Freedom and limit: a dialogue between literature and Christian doctrine (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991; Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1991)

Participating in God : a pastoral doctrine of the Trinity (London: Darton, Longman, & Todd, 2000)

The promised end : eschatology in theology and literature (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000)

Tracks and traces: Baptist identity in church and theology (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2003)

Sole author (chapters and articles in books)

'The theology of the charismatic movement', in David Martin and Peter Mullen, eds., Strange gifts? a guide to charismatic renewal (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), pp. 19-40

'Covenant - Old and New', in idem., R. Hayden, R. Kidd, K. Clements, and B. Haymes, Bound to love: the covenant basis of Baptist life and mission (London: Baptist Union, 1985), pp. 9-23

'Process Theology', in A. E. McGrath, ed., The Blackwell encyclopaedia of modern Christian thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), pp. 472– 6

'"Where Shall Wisdom be Found?" Job 28 as a Riddle for Ancient and Modern Readers', in John Barton and David Reimer, eds., After the Exile, Essays in Honour of Rex Mason (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1996)

'Baptism and the process of Christian initiation', in , Stanley E. Porter and Anthony R. Cross, eds., Dimensions of baptism: biblical and theological studies (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), pp. 280-303

'When text becomes voice: You've got mail', in idem., ed., Flickering images: theology and film in dialogue (Oxford: Regent's Park College; Macon, Georgia: Smyth & Helwys, 2006), pp. 97-112

‘Salvation’, in John Webster, Kathryn Tanner, and Iain Torrance, eds, The Oxford Handbook to Systematic Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)

Sole author (articles in journals)

'God and History', Baptist Quarterly 30 (1983), pp. 85-88

'Baptist ecclesiology: a respone to David Carter's article review of Tracks and Traces', Ecclesiology 1 (2005), pp. 87-100

Co-author

Something to declare: a study of the declaration of principle of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, with Brian Haymes, Richard Kidd (ed.), and Michael Quicke (Oxford: Whitley, 1996)

On the way of trust, with Brian Haymes, Richard Kidd, and Michael Quicke (Oxford: Whitley, 1997)

Editor

Reflections on the water: understanding God and the world through the baptism of believers (Oxford: Regent's Park College, 1996)

The novel, spirituality and modern culture: eight novelists write about their craft and their context (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000)

Faith in the centre: Christianity and culture (Oxford: Regent's Park College; Macon, Georgia: Smyth & Helwys, 2001)

Flickering images: theology and film in dialogue (Oxford: Regent's Park College; Macon, Georgia: Smyth & Helwys, 2006)

Editor (with others)

Gemeinschaft am Evangelium: Festschrift für Wiard Popkes zum 60. Geburtstag, with Edwin Brandt and Joachim Molthagen (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1996)

Pilgrim pathways: essays in Baptist history in honour of B.R. White, with William H. Brackney and John H.Y. Briggs (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1999)

[edit] References