The news that Professor Paul Helm (1940-2025) passed away at the end of the year caused much sadness in the Evangelical world as he was an outstanding scholar and significant theological influence in the church.
I knew Paul in the 1990s when I served with him as the secretary to the Tyndale House Philosophy of Religion Fellowship. Although I lost touch with him in later years, I always followed his work, as best I could, and respected his opinion. Particularly in the discipline of philosophy there were few like him.
I first met him when I graduated in Philosophy from Southampton University. I visited him at King’s College, London, to get his advice on doctoral studies. Sadly, the world of philosophy can generate an arrogance of spirit and a rather abstract attitude to learning which, for many, kills the discipline. Paul Helm exhibited none of that. I was immediately struck by his warm, friendly, and engaging manner. He knew his subject matter to a depth that will forever be far beyond my own and yet spoke to me as if I were an equal.
Blackpool
Paul Helm was raised at the Baptist Tabernacle in Blackpool, where he would meet his future first wife, Judith. The Calvinist Evangelicalism of his childhood would remain his settled conviction throughout his life. Paul didn’t mature to go wider in his theology, he went deeper. His academic training was in philosophy at Worcester College, Oxford where there was an atmosphere of atheism. From there he went to the University of Liverpool teaching philosophy for three decades. He wrote widely on the philosophy of religion and epistemology (the theory of knowledge), specialising in the works of John Calvin and John Locke.
Influence on philosophy
After 30 years teaching at Liverpool University, Paul succeeded Keith Ward as Professor of the History and Philosophy of Religion at King’s College, London. During this time he had a profound influence on the academic study of philosophy in the UK. In 2000 he moved to Regent College, Vancouver, to become the J.I.Packer Professor of Philosophical Theology. Though supposedly retired, he went on to serve at Highland Theological College in Scotland.
Paul Helm’s written output was prodigious to say the least, and that ranged from brief popular-level writings to detailed academic studies. His Banner of Truth work The Callings: The Gospel in the World (1987) was an explanation of the Reformation insight that valued all of life as a calling before God. At a more popular level was his formidable response to a claim by Westminster Chapel’s pastor R.T. Kendall. Kendall had argued that the later followers of John Calvin had distorted and hardened their founders’ theological position. In effect, Calvin would not have been a Calvinist. Helm’s book Calvin and the Calvinists (1982) gave a convincing counter-argument.
Scholarly works
Paul was highly productive in his academic-level writing. Eternal God: A Study of God without Time (OUP, 1988) is highly regarded as a defence of the classical theological claim that God exists outside of time. He wrote several important scholarly works on John Calvin, including Calvin at the Centre (OUP, 2009). But Paul was also able to articulate his ideas in an accessible way for any thoughtful Christian. His ideas on God and time are helpfully articulated in The Providence of God (IVP, 1988). Regarding Calvin he even wrote a series of articles for The Guardian newspaper to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Reformer’s birth. Routledge has recently published Reason in the Service of Faith: Collected Essays of Paul Helm (2004), which has brought together over 30 of his articles and deserves to be widely known.
Man of convictions
Daniel J. Hill, another University of Liverpool philosopher, noted that Paul “once joked that the volume How Helm Has Changed His Mind would be a slim one”. Helm’s convictions were always Augustinian – a robust commitment to the sovereignty of God. However, he was not predictable. He wrote an intriguing article on the fate of the unevangelised (those who have never heard the gospel) which argued for a wider hope of salvation. On Calvin, Paul Helm presents many fresh ideas that demonstrated how philosophically astute Calvin was. Helm’s breadth of knowledge enabled him to explain Calvin’s ideas in the context of the wider intellectual world of Augustine, John Chrysostom and Thomas Aquinas.
Philosophy at its best
As celebrity speakers come and go on the Evangelical circuit, Paul Helm’s life and work stands as a shining example of consistent, patient and faithful scholarship. Regardless of whether we agree with him, Paul Helm represented philosophy at its best – not philosophy as the love of a good argument using obscure Latin terms, but philosophy as the love of a wisdom that leads us closer to God.
Paul’s first wife, Judith, sadly died in 1989. He is survived by Angela, whom he married in 1994.
