IT BEGAN after I discovered the second (1949) edition of Christian Healing: A consideration of the place of spiritual healing within the Church of today in the sunshine of the doctrine and practice of the Ante-Nicene Church. In the foreword, the Revd T. W. Crafer, DD, referred to the writer as “Miss Frost”. The title page, nevertheless, identified her as “Evelyn Frost, Ph.D.”.
Could that be right? Was there a Miss Frost living at Bury St Edmunds within the Forties who not only wrote a formidably learned theological treatise, but who had also earned a Ph.D.? In the mid-Twentieth century, it was extremely rare for even a school member at a British university to have a Ph.D.
Internet searches did not turn up a biographical sketch. Frost, nevertheless, had written another book, Christ and Wholeness, which was published posthumously in 1985. It made no mention of a Ph.D. or every other degrees, but its transient account of the writer mentioned her “distinguished medical profession”. That made more sense. Presumably the 1949 book had things garbled: she was Dr Frost, but her degree was an MD.
It turned out, nevertheless, that the 1985 account was the one which was garbled. (Its errors have also gone into the Library of Congress catalogue.) Frost entered the doctoral programme at King’s College, London (KCL), in 1936, and was awarded a Ph.D. in theology from the University of London in 1940. Scotland had got there first. In 1934, Elizabeth Hewart became the primary woman to earn a Ph.D. in theology from a British university, when her degree was awarded by Edinburgh. Frost, nevertheless, appears to be the primary woman to have earned a Ph.D. in theology from an English university.
It is recorded within the King’s College London Calendar for 1940-41. That source names all the scholars within the Theology Department who had achieved anything during that academic 12 months — even just passing the intermediate examination on their option to a Bachelor’s degree — and yet Dr Frost is the one woman in an otherwise all-male list.
W. R. MATTHEWS, who had been Dean of King’s College, London, and went on to be Dean of St Paul’s, recalled one other student (who worked with him on a translation for publication of a piece by the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher): “Miss Sandbach Marshall was one among those women, more quite a few then than they’re today, who didn’t must earn their living and studied theology primarily since the subject interested them. At King’s in my time, there have been several.”
Frost was one among those several. In fact, the King’s College London Calendar for 1937-38 listed only two women pursuing postgraduate studies in theology: Sandbach Marshall and Frost. In 1933 (thus some years before she entered the Ph.D. programme), Matthews wrote of Frost: “She is one among the few women who’ve a first-rate equipment of all round theological scholarship, and has besides a great background of general culture. She is keenly alive to the issues of non secular thought of their relation to modern conditions.”
Best practice on the University of London at the moment was not only to put in writing a thesis, but to display that it was worthy of the awarding of a Ph.D. by having it published. Thus, the primary edition of Christian Healing appeared in 1940. It is impressively erudite. At the front is a “Chronological Table of Authors or Works”, which serves as a type of dramatis personae for the Early Church material.
There are 36 entries, starting from Clement of Rome to Lactantius, a few of whom are removed from being the standard suspects. For example, between the better-known Polycarp and Justin Martyr come Papias, Quadratus, Aristides, Hermas, and the Epistle to Diognetus; and the major text includes additional patristic figures and works beyond the 36.
Furthermore, church history and historical theology are just one portion of Frost’s achievement. Much of the work is systematic theology, which seeks to formulate doctrinal positions in the sunshine of contemporary thought on a variety of themes, including sin, guilt, the Fall, miracles, the sacraments, the Church, and the resurrection of the flesh. Finally, Christian Healing can be a piece of liturgics and pastoral theology, committed to discerning what the Church’s ministry to the sick must be.
FROST kept an eye fixed out for girls in history. She dismissed the old, rationalist rejection of the resurrection of Christ as prejudiced by a misogynistic assumption that girls were “too emotional” to be reliable witnesses. In Christ and Wholeness, she observed that, within the history of the Church, “women sometimes anointed the sick,” giving for example the ministry of the fifth-century saint Genevieve.
Frost had a passion for formal education. The 1940 edition identifies her as “Evelyn Frost, BA, BD, AKC, STh”. Either the AKC (Associate of King’s College in Theology) or the BD would have been considered sufficient theological education for a person in search of Anglican ordination. The STh (Student in Theology) was created by the Church of England to assist women to acquire a theological qualification. The prerequisites were a minimum of three years of preparatory study (in other words, a Bachelor’s degree or equivalent), and Greek: “The standard of the examination is roughly that of the Honours School of Theology at a University.”
Mucknell AbbeyCommunity on the Priory of Our Lady, Burford, 1953
The STh, in turn, was a prerequisite for applying to the Archbishop of Canterbury for a licence to show theology, which Frost eventually did in 1944. Despite her BD, AKC, STh, and Ph.D. in theology, her application for this licence was investigated with unbending, suspicious thoroughness.
The process involved obtaining a variety of additional references, including one from the Archdeacon of Middlesex, who explained that he was also speaking on behalf of the Bishop of Kingston. Strangely, these referees often didn’t mention the Ph.D. in any respect, and, even in the event that they did, continued in referring to her as Miss Frost. This type of address will be contrasted with the common custom at the moment by which bishops and other men — each clerical and lay — were often referred to by the title “Dr” on the strength of an honorary degree.
Indeed, it seems the incontrovertible fact that Frost really was a Doctor in Theology was often hard for people to assimilate. There was “an invidious London custom of recording the complete first name for females but initials just for men”. Evelyn, in fact, is a gender-neutral name, and Frost’s Ph.D. thesis was recorded within the University of London catalogue as by “Frost, E.”, revealing that the cataloguer assumed that she was a person.
Frost’s KCL student card was updated by hand as she modified addresses and collected degrees. The relevant addition says: “?Ph.D. Theology — July 1940”, the query mark apparently indicating that even the institution where she did her doctoral studies couldn’t quite consider it.
ONE reason for Frost’s obscurity is that — slightly than pursue a profession as a tutorial, scholar, teacher, or writer — in midlife she discerned a call to grow to be an Anglican nun in a contemplative community, Burford Priory. Frost had been lively within the healing ministry, through the Guild of St Raphael. Benedictine nuns at the moment took the title Dame as an corresponding to the male Dom. Thus, Frost’s recent identity became that of Dame Raphael.
Although serving only her enclosed community, Dame Raphael’s scholarly pursuits as a nun included “making an English translation of a giant a part of the Psalter, after comparison with Latin, Greek & Hebrew versions”.
In a 1948 lecture, Frost commended St Paul himself by observing that he ought to be viewed because the equivalent of “a university graduate with a research degree”. Through her degrees and writings, Evelyn Frost, Ph.D./Raphael Frost OSB (1903-1981) provided overwhelming proof that she had earned the suitable to take her place alongside the male theologians of her day.
Timothy Larsen teaches at Wheaton College. His books include The Fires of Moloch: Anglican clergymen within the furnace of World War One. He would welcome further details about Evelyn Frost, or other early examples of girls with theology doctorates. timothy.larsen@wheaton.edu.
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