Thursday, April 30, 2009

From Ian Robinson

Peter Toon was one of the best minds of the Anglican tradition in modern times. Gifted with a very good and well-stocked memory, he was a relentlessly efficient thinker, able to produce everything from scholarly works to comments on issues of the day at a great pace without loss of coherence or depth. He was as near as we have come to a reliable, faithful and reasonable guide to the Christian way in times when it is often obscured.

During his long and debilitating final illness the frequent emails in which he made sometimes daily comments continued almost as before. Characteristically his experience of approaching towards death turned him to the problem of suffering, and how it relates to faith, and his thinking was as clear and profound as ever.

Without pre-empting judgement one may surely hope for Peter to hear “Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”

It is harder for those of us still in the field that this shepherd is taken from us in his intellectual prime, though Peter would have been the first to remind us of “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Ian Robinson
The Brynmill Press and Edgeways Books

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