Ian Thomas Ramsey (31 January 1915 – 6 October 1972) was Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at the University of Oxford, and Bishop of Durham from 1966 until his death in 1972. He wrote extensively on the problem of religious language, Christian ethics, the relationship between science and religion, and Christian apologetics. As a result, he became convinced that a permanent centre was needed for enquiry into these inter-disciplinary areas; and in 1985 the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion in the University of Oxford was set up to promote discussion on the problems raised for theology and ethics by developments in science, technology and medicine.
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Ramsey was born in Kearsley, near Bolton, Lancashire, an area noted for small industries and factories. He was the sole child born to Arthur and Mary Ramsey, and was raised by them in the Christian faith. He attended primary school at St. John's Church in Farnworth, Bolton, and then proceeded on a scholarship to Farnworth Grammar School where he studied Latin, mathematics, physics and chemistry. He won a scholarship that enabled him to study at Cambridge University in the 1930s and graduated with an M.A. in 1940. At Cambridge he was influenced by Charles Raven the Regius Professor of Divinity and A. C. Ewing. Raven spurred Ramsey's interests in the relationship between science and religion, while Ewing guided him into studying metaphysics.
After graduating from Cambridge, Ramsey then enrolled as candidate for ordination in the Church of England at Ripon Hall, near Oxford, and began his theological studies there. During his studies he served as an assistant curate at Headington Quarry and it was there that he met his wife Margretta McKay. In 1943, upon completing his theological degree and ordination Ramsey then took on the role of Chaplain at Christ's College, Cambridge. He was elected as a Fellow and Director of Studies in theology and moral science in 1944. It was also in 1944 that he was appointed as university lecturer in divinity and Canon Theologian at Leicester Cathedral. He held the role of Canon until 1966 when he was elected the Bishop of Durham.
Alongside of his role as a chaplain, Ramsey became widely known at Cambridge in the 1940s for his lectures in philosophical theology. In 1951 he accepted the chair of Nolloth Professor in the Philosophy of Christian Religion at Oxford University. His inaugural lecture was delivered on 7 December 1951 and published as Miracles: An Exercise in Logical Map Work. He served as a Fellow of Oriel College at Oxford and as chairman of the faculty of theology. During his tenure at Oxford Ramsey was invited to deliver various guest lecture series including the Forwood Lectures at the University of Liverpool (1957), annual theological lecture at Queen's University, Belfast (1960), the Frederick Denison Maurice Lectures at King's College, London University (1961–62),Whidden Lecturer at McMaster University in Canada (1963), Riddell Memorial Lecture at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne (1963), and the Zenos Lectures at McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago (1966). Most of these lecture series were subsequently published as books: Freedom and Immortality, Religion and Science, On Being Sure in Religion, Models and Mystery, and Christian Discourse.
Ramsey was an authority on the Christian apologetics work of both Bishop Joseph Butler, and of John Locke. He wrote a study of Butler's life and apologetic arguments that was published in 1969. Ramsey also wrote a critical introduction to an abridged edition of Locke's The Reasonableness of Christianity that was released in 1958. Both Locke's and Butler's texts were critical apologetic works that addressed the religious skepticism held to by various Deist thinkers in the late seventeenth century and eighteenth century.
As well as his duties as a college administrator and lecturer, Ramsey was also very active as a churchman. He served as the examining chaplain to the bishops of Portsmouth, Sheffield and Norwich, and acted as the director of the Lambeth Diploma in Theology designed for non-clergy students interested in theology. He also served on various Church of England commissions inquiring into ethical questions about birth control, suicide, and on the subject of divine healing. He wrote reports dealing with those topics for the church's Board for Social Responsibility. On 15 December 1966 he was installed at the ninetieth Bishop of Durham. He became chairman of the BBC's Central Religious Advisory Committee (CRAC) in 1970. At Easter in 1972 he had a heart attack and died on 6 October 1972 after having a meeting in London with CRAC.
Ramsey approached a number of philosophical problems concerning twentieth century theology. One of the significant topics concerned "God-talk" or the soundness of theological language. Much of this had been prompted by the philosophical writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein and also by philosophers such as Alfred Ayer who were involved in the mid-twentieth century movement known as Logical Positivism. The implications of Ayer's argument in Language, Truth and Logic (1936) were that religious or theological language was deemed to be analytically unscientific. Religious statements were considered to be technically meaningless as it was argued that claims such as "God exists" were observationally unverifiable.
Ramsey was concerned in his writings to argue that traditional theological language was empirically meaningful. His arguments were developed on a model of religious language grounded in personal experience and personal disclosure. As humans communicate with each other personal disclosure occurs. Ramsey used this point to argue that humans come to encounter God also by way of personal disclosure and so Ramsey offered an argument from analogy. Ramsey's theological work thus re-emphasized the traditional theological view that all religious language is analogical, and the religious words that humans create are always involving the language of analogy.
He was particularly effective in communicating with experts from a wide range of disciplines, inspiring them to work together on the problems raised for theology and ethics by developments in science, technology and medicine. As a result of his experience he became convinced that a permanent centre was needed for enquiry into these interdisciplinary areas, and it was in response to this that the Ian Ramsey Centre for the study of religious beliefs in relation to the sciences and medicine was set up in 1985 in the University of Oxford.
Bishop Ian Ramsey Primary School in Consett, County Durham, Ian Ramsey Church of England Comprehensive School in Fairfield, Stockton-on-Tees and Bishop Ramsey Church of England Secondary School in Ruislip in the London Borough of Hillingdon are also named after him.
| Church of England titles | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Maurice Harland |
Bishop of Durham 1966–72 |
Succeeded by John Habgood |