N. P. Williams

The Reverend N. P. Williams
Born	Norman Powell Williams (1883-09-05)5 September 1883[1] Durham, England[1]
Died	11 May 1943(1943-05-11) (aged 59)[2] Oxford, England[2]
Spouse	Muriel de Lérisson Cazenove ​ ​ (m. 1927)​ [1]
Children	Charles Williams, Baron Williams of Elvel
Ecclesiastical career
Religion	Christianity (Anglican)
Church	Church of England
Ordained	1908 (deacon)[2] 1909 (priest)[2]
Academic background
Alma mater	Christ Church, Oxford
Academic work
Discipline	Theology
School or tradition	Liberal Anglo-Catholicism[2]
Institutions	Magdalen College, Oxford Exeter College, Oxford Christ Church, Oxford

Norman Powell Williams (1883–1943), known as N. P. Williams, was an Anglican theologian and priest. Educated at Durham School and at Christ Church, Oxford, he enjoyed a succession of appointments at that university: Fellow of Magdalen (1906), Chaplain of Exeter (1909), Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church (1927).^[2] In 1924 he was Bampton lecturer.^[2]

His 1924 Bampton Lectures were published in 1927 under the title The Ideas of the Fall and of Original Sin, which continues to be an influential source for students of original sin to this day and was included in Ronald W. Hepburn's 1973 entry on the "Cosmic Fall" in the Dictionary of the History of Ideas. Williams argued for a "transcendental" or "pre-cosmic fall" that occurred in the "life-force" and "during an 'absolute' time" prior to the "differentiation of life into its present multiplicity of forms and the emergence of separate species."^[3][4]

He served as the Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity at Oxford, from 1927 until his death in April, 1943. Also in 1927, he became the Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. A collected edition of his works was published by Eric Waldram Kemp in 1954, entitled simply N. P. Williams. On the flap jacket of this edition, N. P. Williams was given this description:

The young cleric cocking a snook at dignitaries -- the powerful controversialist -- the brilliant, sometimes perhaps too brilliant theologian with his sesquipedalian eloquence -- beneath these and more essential than these was a good friend, a devoted husband and father, a true priest with pastoral zeal and wide charity. This was the man. The memoirs in this book, by his widow and former pupil, and yet more clearly Dr Williams' own addresses, show us this man. A shy, diffident person, not easy to live with but easy to love, and certainly worthy of being remembered and honoured for himself.

Williams married Muriel, daughter of Arthur Philip Cazenove, of a landed gentry family;^[5] their son was Charles Williams, Baron Williams of Elvel.^[6][7]

Selected works

• The Christian Doctrine of the Last Things, 11 December 1927
• The Ideas of the Fall and of Original Sin (Bampton Lectures 1924), 1927
• The Grace of God, 1930
• Northern Catholicism; ed. by N. P. Williams & Charles Harris. London. S.P.C.K., 1933
• Deaconesses and "Holy Orders", 1938
• Judicial Authority in the Church of England, 1940
• Sermons and Addresses, Compiled with a Memoir, SPCK, 1954

References

Footnotes

1. Kemp 2004; "Williams, Rev. Norman Powell" 2007.
2. Kemp 2004.
3. Hepburn, Ronald W. (1973). "Cosmic Fall". In Wiener, Philip P. (ed.). Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas: Volume 1. New York, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 504–513.
4. Williams, N. P. (1927). The Ideas of the Fall and of Original Sin: a Historical and Critical Study. London, UK: Longmans, Green and Co. p. xxxiv, 523-524.
5. Burke's Family Index, ed. Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd, Burke's Peerage Ltd, 1976, p. 28
6. Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 107th edition, vol. 3, ed. Charles Mosley, Burke's Peerage Ltd, 2003, p. 4182
7. Who's Who, 90th edition, H. O. Addison et al, A. & C. Black, 1938, p. 3632

Bibliography

• Kemp, E. W. (2004). "Williams, Norman Powell (1883–1943)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/36927.
• "Williams, Rev. Norman Powell". Who Was Who. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2007. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U233496.

Further reading

• Cross, F. L.; Livingstone, E. A., eds. (2005). "Williams, Norman Powell". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (rev. 3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acref/9780192802903.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-280290-3.
• Kemp, E. W., ed. (1954). N.P. Williams: Sermons and Addresses, Compiled with a Memoir. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

Academic offices
Preceded by Walter Lock	Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity 1927–1943	Succeeded by F. L. Cross