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The silence of eternity, interpreted by love
A sermon preached at the funeral of Barbara Dews, 11 April 2024. Barbara went to church and sang hymns through her long life. So they got woven into her heart and mind. They gave her language which made some sense of her experience, encouraged her, giving direction. And so it is not surprising that near her end, she…
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Forgiveness as Permission to Live
Originally published in Wounds that Heal: Theology, Imagination and Health, ed Jonathan Baxter, SPCK, 2007, pp79-98. The Framework Words in the forgiveness family are used in many different ways. That needs sorting out. One reason why it does not get sorted out is that many assume they know instinctively what forgiveness is. So our talk…
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Transforming society – or merely making it
a theological discussion with the Bible in one hand and a very particular newspaper in the other Society for the Study of Theology 1995 What is this paper about? I have been asked to write a paper about theology and the transformation of society or transformation in society. I can only make this a manageable…
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The Politics of Forgiveness
Published in The Third Way, c.1979 There is, at present, a great and growing interest amongst Christians in this country in political matters. They feel responsible and concerned. This is a good development – a waking up to reality. But all that we do is not well: the man struggling out of deep sleep goes…
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Sin drops us in it at the threshold of forgiveness
1 Introduction: This sketch is significant for me, since it is the first time I have got near to defining sin as what brings us to the threshold of forgiveness. That may not be a new idea altogether, but I can’t remember finding it plainly anywhere. Luther and Barth give me some encouragement in that direction, but…
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Forgiving Constitutes the Person
This paper is a meandering comment on a part of James E. Loder’s The Logic of the Spirit, which caught my fancy. I have thought much about human development, having lived through a lot of it myself, seen and messed about with it in other people, but I have no competence in the science of…
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Power and the history of the Gospel in the church
This is the third of a three part series. You can read part one here and part two here. Friendship is not the only category we need to trace the history of the Gospel in the church. No doubt there are many other themes of heuristic utility to be explored. In this discussion, we will…
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Writing local church history
John Briggs and I met as freshmen reading History at Cambridge nearly half a century ago. Now in our active retirements we have, besides our pensions, stores of experience to mull over. Perhaps we should give ourselves the leisure to do that – if mulling can be saved from being pointless self-indulgence. I think of…
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Politics and forgiveness
POLITICS AND FORGIVENESS is an unlikely combination. One senior Baptist world leader said to me, “There isn’t much forgiveness in politics”. That gives us no excuse for rejecting it as our task and responsibility as Christian human beings. After all, the combination of God and Humanity is unlikely, and seems implausible in the world as…
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With my missing hands
Note: This essay is a revision of a chapter originally published in 2008 in Remembering to Forgive: A Tribute to Una O’Higgins O’Malley ed Enda McDonagh, pp141-148. Una O’Higgins O’Malley was a remarkable Irish woman, who worked for peace and reconciliation in Ireland. She founded the Glencree Reconciliation Centre, where I met her in 1978…
While it is yet day
Haddon Willmer