Andy has shared with us the very sad news of Dan Hardy‘s passing yesterday. He writes:

‘Rev Professor Dan Hardy was an outstanding Anglican theologian, who taught at Birmingham, Durham (where he was Van Mildert Professor), the Centre for Theological Inquiry (where he was the Director) and most recently, although retired, at Cambridge. He was editor of the excellent Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine (jointly with Colin Gunton until he died). He was the co-author of Jubilate (1984, reprinted recently as Living in Praise, 2005), God’s Ways with World (1996), Finding the Church (1999) and co-editor with Colin Gunton of On Being the Church (1989). In more recent years he was at the forefront of the scriptural reasoning movement with his son-in-law Professor David Ford and Peter Ochs. He will be sadly missed’.

Indeed. Dan was deservedly one of the most respected theologians in Britain. He was also, with Colin Gunton, a Forsyth fan. In his excellent essay, ‘Created and Redeemed Sociality’, he bore witness to this love, and to his deeper love for the Church and her Lord, and his world:

As few others have done, Forsyth recognised the social problem as primary for civilisation and for Christianity; there is an inseparable connection between the two. And the Church is called as an apostle and witness to society as a whole on behalf of One whose work was for the whole of society, its witness being determined by Christ’s achievement in securing the Kingdom of God through and ethical and spiritual victory’. – Daniel Hardy, ‘Created and Redeemed Sociality’, in On Being the Church: Essays on the Christian Community (ed. Colin E. Gunton and Daniel W. Hardy; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), 39.