David Braine

David Dimond Conway Braine (2 September 1940 – 17 February 2017) was a British analytic philosopher with interests in the analytic philosophy of religion and metaphysics, who sought to marry the techniques and insights of analytical philosophy and phenomenology to the metaphysics of classical Thomism. Braine attended Magdalen College, Oxford University, where he was influenced by the analytic philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe. At Oxford, he completed Honour Moderations in Physics (1959) and degrees in history (B.A.1962; M.A. 1965) and Philosophy (B.Phil. 1965). From 1965 to 1989, he was a lecturer in the School of Divinity, History and Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen. Braine was the son of Edith Braine, a teacher, and Charles Dimond Conway Braine, a civil engineer. His older brother was the British-American psychologist Martin Braine. Due to a car accident in 1977, he became paralyzed from the chest down. Braine was opposed to the legalization of euthanasia, and based some of that opposition on his own personal experience of living with a disability. Braine is buried at Pluscarden Abbey, near Elgin, Scotland. His book *The Reality of Time and the Existence of God* argued for the existence of God based on the continuity of time. His book *The Human Person: Animal and Spirit* provided a philosophical analysis of human beings that allowed for life after death, defending the views of Thomas Aquinas. Braine's work addressed issues including the nature of God's presence in the world, secondary causation, and the compatibility between an eternal God and the idea that God created time.