In memory of John Heywood Thomas FLSW
9 November 1926 – 6 April 2025
John Heywood Thomas was one of the most accomplished theologians of his generation. Having been based in four universities: Durham, Manchester, Nottingham and the University of Wales, he established his reputation as a major interpreter of the thought of two key twentieth century religious thinkers, Søren Kierkegaard and Paul Tillich. Although he spent the greater part of his career in England, he contributed to philosophical and theological studies in Wales and published regularly in Welsh.
Born in Llwynhendy, Carmarthenshire, on 9 November 1926, one of the four sons of David Thomas, a blacksmith, and Ann, his wife, after early education at the village primary school and the Llanelli Boys Grammar School, he proceeded to the University College of Wales Aberystwyth where he graduated in Philosophy in 1947. Following ministerial training at the Presbyterian College, Carmarthen, where he gained distinctions in Christian Doctrine and the Philosophy of Religion in the BD degree, a scholarship took him to Cambridge where, under the supervision of H. H. Farmer, the Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity, he embarked on a research programme on Kierkegaard, founder of the philosophical school of existentialism. A fellowship at the Swenson-Kierkegaard Academy allowed his to continue his studies at Copenhagen while the result of this activity was his groundbreaking volume Subjectivity and Paradox: A Study in Kierkegaard (1957).
Ordained into the Congregational ministry at his home church of the Bryn, Llanelli, in 1952, Thomas felt that his calling would be as a teacher rather than the pastor of a settled congregation. Having been awarded the Mills Scholarship to the Union Seminary in New York, he spent 1952-3 studying under the existentialist theologian Paul Tillich who has escaped Nazi tyranny in Germany during the 1930s. A series of publications which appeared in the late 1950s and mid-1960s showed Thomas to be an astute critic as well as a gifted interpreter of the theologian’s work. By that time, he was regarded as the one of Britain’s principal authorities on Tillich’s thought. In 1965 the University of Wales awarded him the Doctorate in Divinity based on his published works, the third ever to be awarded that degree.
Having returned from the United States (where he had married Mair Evans, a native of Llanelli) he spent 1954-5 teaching Scripture in the Cardigan Grammar School while a research fellowship in Philosophy took him to Durham for two years before he was appointed lecturer in the Philosophy of Religion in Manchester in 1957. He returned to Durham in 1965 as reader in Theology before being appointed professor and head of the Department of Theology at Nottingham in 1974. Along with teaching and research, he became much involved in university administration, serving as dean of the faculty of Arts and between 1979 and 1983, as pro-vice chancellor.
On retiring from Nottingham in 1992, he was appointed honorary professor at the University of Wales, Bangor, thus fulfilling a long-held ambition of returning to teach in his native land. He and Mair moved to Menai Bridge, Anglesey, and latterly to Bonvilston in the Vale of Glamorgan. A long and fruitful retirement afforded him the opportunity to contribute to the activities of the Philosophical and Theological branches of the University of Wales Guild of Graduates and to the work of the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol. An avid eisteddfodwr, he was initiated into the Gorsedd of Bards in 1972 and elected Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales in 2012. His wife Mair, passed away in in 2021, followed in 2023 by the untimely death of their only child, the broadcaster Nicol Heywood-Thomas.
Throughout his long career Thomas remained faithful to his ecclesiastical commitments, most recently as honorary minister of the Trehill Presbyterian Church, St Nicholas, where he and his wife were members. It was there that the memorial service was held on 1 May 2025.
D. Densil Morgan FLSW