Today's Times has an obituary of Henry Chadwick - 'Formidably erudite historian of early Christianity who served Oxford and Cambridge colleges with humane distinction', who died this Tuesday, 17th June, aged 87. Every word of the title is correct. He was avuncular, benign, warm, instructive, and though he (!) 'erroneously believed himself incapable of preaching an intelligible sermon to an ordinary congregation', he served generations of students with his Pelican history of The Early Church and a headful of knowledge. His translation of Augustine's Confessions is beautiful, all his scholarship was measured and wise, he was a fine musician and organist, and he maintained an generous orthodox Christian faith while the tides of radicalism raged around him.
See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/2153316/The-Very-Rev-Professor-Henry-Chadwick.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/19/religion
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article4166998.ece
(Incidentally, and in large parentheses, I think Henry might have been quite amused that his obituary was on the same page in The Daily Telegraph as, and preceded in The Times by, that of Cyd Charisse, she whose 'simply fabulous legs', the 'longest legs in film', which 'went on for ever', dominated MGM in the 1950s, and were reputed to have been insured for $10 (or $1) million, and photos of whom (or which) have not surprisingly been filling the obituary pages of the last two days...).
http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2286137,00.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/cyd-charisse-dynamite-dancing-star-in-the-golden-era-of-hollywood-musicals-849945.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article4163507.ece
Last week, the death was also announced of Kwame Bediako, a Presbyterian African theologian of great breadth of mind and surpassing scholarship with doctorates in French and English. A Ghanaian by birth, his first and major contribution was his (big) book Theology and Identity. The Impact of Culture upon Christian Thought in the Second Century and Modern Africa (1992), in which he painted a magisterial picture of the way in which early Christian thought 'overcame the world' in its engagement with and resistance to Hellenistic thought, so providing a model for Christianity's engagement with the African world-view. He did not hold the negative picture that so many do of a second-century 'Hellenisation of Christianity'. His scholarship and life has been a major inspiration to hosts of African theologians and Christians, let alone Europeans. I have not been able to find his d.o.b., but he was not old.
See http://zondervan.typepad.com/zondervan/2008/06/kwame-bediako.html
On 29 April, The Daily Telegraph and The Times announced the death of The Rt Revd Hassan Dehqani-Tafti, the Anglican Bishop in Iran from 1961-1990, who had had to leave after the Revolution in 1979 and live in exile in England, where he became an Assistant Bishop in Winchester. 'Many considered that...he was one of the 20th century's saints...he seemed incapable of thinking evil of anyone.' 'He was entirely without guile.' At the time of the revolution he and his wife Margaret were shot at in their beds, and his son Bahram was murdered the following year. Bishop Hassan wrote a most moving 'A Father's Prayer upon the Murder of his Son'. He died at the age of 78.
See some beautiful obituaries:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1918728/The-Rt-Rev-Hassan-Dehqani-Tafti.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/21/anglicanism.iran
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article3918778.ece
Philip S
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Thanks for these obits, Philip. I was deeply saddened to learn of the death of the Bishop of Iran. I have come to know of him and his work through Rev Clifford Wright (Retd. Bishop Hassan had been one of his parishioners. The Bishop's faithful response to the brutal murder of his beloved son has been an inspiration to me. I recommend readers to seach out some of Bishop Hassan's poetry, esp 'A Father's Prayer' which is deeply moving.
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