Paul S. Fiddes

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The Reverend Paul S. Fiddes, MA, DPhil, DD, (born 30th April 1947) is Professor of Systematic Theology in the University of Oxford. He will remain Principal of Regent's Park College until August 2007, when he will become a Professorial Research Fellow of the 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.

In 1965 Fiddes attended 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'.^[1] 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.

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 and a consultant editor for Studies in Baptist History and Thought, published by Paternoster Press.

[edit] Publications

Sole author

Charismatic renewal: a Baptist view (1980)

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

'The theology of the charismatic movement', in D. Martin and P. Mullen, eds., Strange gifts? a guide to charismatic renewal (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 (1985), pp. 9-23

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

The creative suffering of God (1988)

Past event and present salvation: the Christian idea of atonement (1989)

The Trinity in worship and preaching (1991)

Freedom and limit: a dialogue between literature and Christian doctrine (1991)

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

'"Where Shall Wisdom be Found?" Job 28 as a Riddle for Ancient and Modern Readers', in J. Barton and D. Reimer, eds., After the Exile, Essays in Honour of Rex Mason (1996)

Reflections on the water: understanding God and the world through the baptism of believers (1996)

Participating in God : a pastoral doctrine of the Trinity (2000)

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

'Baptism and the process of Christian initiation', in , S. E. Porter and A. R. Cross, eds., Dimensions of baptism: biblical and theological studies (2002), pp. 280-303

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

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

'When text becomes voice: You've got mail', in idem., ed., Flickering images: theology and film in dialogue (2006), pp. 97-112

Co-author

Something to declare: a study of the declaration of principle of the Baptist Union of Great Britain (1996)

On the way of trust (1997)

Editor

Gemeinschaft am Evangelium: Festschrift für Wiard Popkes zum 60. Geburtstag (1996)

Pilgrim pathways: essays in Baptist history in honour of B.R. White (1999)

The novel, spirituality and modern culture: eight novelists write about their craft and their context (2000)

Faith in the centre: Christianity and culture (2001)

Flickering images: theology and film in dialogue (2006)

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[edit] References