The Very Rev Professor Henry Chadwick

Elizabeth Anne Lamb writes: Your obituary of Henry Chadwick (June 19 ) did not mention that he translated the proceedings of the Council of Trent. This, and his discovery of Berengar of Tours on transubstantiation, Ego Berengarius, are included in his collection Tradition and Exploration (1994), together with Truth and Authority; Justification by Faith; Lima, ARCIC and the Church of England; Ecumenical Stocktaking; three great essays on Newman; and Paul VI and Vatican II, a Review. These papers, previously published as lectures or in the Journal of Theological Studies, are foundations of Chadwick’s work at the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission: ARCIC.

Chadwick’s East and West: The Making of a Rift in the Church from Apostolic Times Until the Council of Florence (OUP, 2003), includes reference to diversity, and divergence between leaders, communities and theologians in Rome, Athens, Alexandria, Constantinople, Baghdad, Aachen, Basle and Canterbury. Councils are described with gentle and occasional shafts of lightning humour for their controversies.

The Council of Florence (1439) failed to achieve consensus. This left a vacuum which turned out to be a watershed. A 21st-century reader, post-Enlightenment, postmodern, may discern the context of Copernicus, Galileo and Newton. “Natural science” emerged to ventilate, seemingly to challenge, “moral science” and divinity. Nevertheless, “Religion when shared is one of the strongest of social bonds. When differences appear whether of rite or calendar or social custom or liturgy or, above all, basic allegiance, this powerful bonding becomes counterproductive and easily engenders deep divisions” — the first sentence of Chadwick’s succinct introduction to The Rift, a volume of contemporary relevance.

His epilogue: “What keeps pro-unionists from losing heart is the ineradicable belief that division brings evils in its train — evils to which we become insensitive by habit. Patient listening can uncover deep and wide agreement concealed by the polemics of the past. The most obvious characteristic shared in common by the anti-unionists on both sides in ecumenical conversation, whether at Florence or elsewhere, is that interpretation of the past defines the limits of what is possible in the present.”

Ken Cook writes: Henry Chadwick’s obituary omitted the fact that he had also been the Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, between Christ Church and Peterhouse. He thus had the very remarkable, perhaps unique, record of having been a head of house and the Regius Professor of Divinity at both places.