| Frederick Robert Tennant | |
| Birth Date: | 1 September 1866 |
| Birth Place: | Burslem, Staffordshire, England |
| Death Date: | 9 September 1957 |
| Death Place: | Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England |
| Nationality: | British |
| Occupation: | Theologian |
Frederick Robert Tennant (1 September 1866 – 9 September 1957), best known as F. R. Tennant was a British theologian, philosopher of religion and author.
Tennant studied mathematics, physics, biology, and chemistry at Caius College, Cambridge (1885–89) prior to becoming a theologian. After hearing the 1889 Huxley lectures, Tennant's interest in religion grew in the 1890s ultimately leading him to prepare for ordination in the Church of England.[1] While he was ordained he taught science at Newcastle-under-Lyme High School (1891–94), and became a lecturer in Theology and fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge in 1913.[2]
As an Anglican theologian, Tennant assimilated much of Huxley's lectures culminating in the 1901–1902 Hulsean Lecture entitled Origin and Propagation of Sin where he integrated evolutionary ideas into a Christian synthesis.[3]
One of Tennant's goals in his writings was an integrative synthesis of the doctrines of the fall and original sin with Huxley’s claims of conflict between Darwinian thought and Christianity.[4]
Tennant believed that the existence of a god was needed to explain the alleged purposive quality of evolution. Tennant was the first theist widely known to put forward such an argument. In volume 2 of his book Philosophical Theology he says:
"The multitude of interwoven adaptations by which the world is constituted a theatre of life, intelligence, and morality, cannot reasonably be regarded as an outcome of mechanism, or of blind formative power, or aught but purposive intelligence."[5]
He was an advocate of theistic evolution. Tennant made an argument from design from the "quality of the evolution process".[6]