While it is yet day

Haddon Willmer

Theology

  • 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…

  • ‘Team God’ – a word for Trinity Sunday

    The doctrine of the Trinity states that God is ‘One in three persons’, but that should not lead us to think there are three gods, or even three parts of God, operating independently from one another, for God is one in a most perfect unity. Nowhere in the New Testament, the earliest Christian witnesses we…

  • A sermon for Trinity Sunday

    First published 14th June 2022 on the Network Leeds blog. I preached yesterday on the Trinity – a challenge and a joy. The text was the hymn, Thou whose almighty word we sang before and after to help us get into it. The hymn is a mosaic of biblical words and images, shaped by Trinity.…

  • Jesus Christ the Forgiven: Christology, Atonement and Forgiveness

    Paper given at at SST, April 2000. Published in Forgiveness and Truth ed Alistair McFadyen and Marcel Saroty T & T Clark, 2001, pp 15-29. You can also download the paper as a pdf at the link here. All three at once Not all christologies are shaped by concern for atonement, and not all ideas…

  • Saying the Lord’s Prayer from a different perspective

    Deliver us from the evil – of ever giving up praying this prayer whatever the pressure of temptation Deliver us from losing the ‘our’ to make the Father ‘mine’ Deliver us from claiming the Kingdom now rather than steadily praying for it to Come Deliver us from seeking the Father in heaven as though he…

  • Though I have a theological degree, but have not love, I am nothing

    Address given at Trinity College Bristol degree ceremony sometime in the late 1990s Do not assume that mere Reading will suffice without fervor, Speculation without devotion, Investigation without admiration, Observation without exaltation, Industry without piety, Knowledge without love, Understanding without humility, Study without divine grace. St. Bonaventure (1221–1274) Except for two good years, when the…

  • Ambition and the Gospel

    Mark 10.35-45: A sermon preached at Stainbeck United Reformed Church, 2018 We are given this morning an important and challenging reading, that points us to the heart of being Christian and being human. So I am glad to be called to speak about it.  I read this text and at the same time, I reflect…

  • ‘Vertical’ and ‘Horizontal’ in Paul’s Theology of Reconciliation in the Letter to the Romans

    This paper was written to honour Vinay Samuel, the first director of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies. I worked there for a dozen years after I retired from Leeds. I liked its vision and the students it brought me.  Corneliu Constantineanu was the first person I supervised at OCMS and he became a dear friend. He…