Thanks are due...

My interest in the topic of human identity – and the thought that Christian martyrdom might have some bearing on it – was provoked in the first instance by my daily encounters with the teenage skeptics that inhabited the classrooms of St Andrew’s Cathedral School in Sydney, Australia, where I was School Chaplain from 2000-03. They were adamant that they were not going to accept a thin gruel of moralism from me as an alternative to the freedom to choose who to be on their own terms. Clearly, different ways of being a self were at issue. Thanks are due to them for not allowing their resident theologian to be happy with the glib answers that came immediately to mind.

I have been richly blessed by having, in Professor Oliver O’Donovan and Dr Bernd Wannenwetsch and more latterly Professor Nigel Biggar, teachers of the finest calibre in the field of moral theology. I am grateful in particular for the direction and stimulus given by my supervisor Dr Wannenwetsch throughout the writing of the thesis; and for his scholarly and personal example.

I would not have been able to consider coming to Oxford at all if not for the remarkable generosity of Mr Vanda Gould. In addition, he has been a source of prayerful encouragement and pastoral care to the whole family in his regular visits, emails and phone calls. I would like also to thank the Trustees of the Joan Augusta Mackenzie Travelling Scholarship, and the Principal, Bursar and Council of Moore Theological College, Sydney, for the Roberts Prize and other discretionary funds that were made available to us during our time in the UK. We have been truly blessed in this regard.

Friends new and old have been an integral part of the mostly solitary experience of writing a thesis. In particular, Kosta Milkov, Christopher Barnett and Guido de Graaff have been magnificent fellow travellers, along with Russ Dawn, Jonathan Brant, Matheson Russell and Charles Byrd. Reading new theological texts with the members of OXCAT on Friday afternoons has kept me going; and it was a joy to rediscover Calvin and more with Sam Allberry. We will never forget the welcome and support of the staff and members of St Ebbe’s Church of England. Justin Moffatt and David Höhne kept chivvying me along; Alan Lukabyo and Stephen Jacobs kept writing real letters, on actual paper. Bec Watson and Karen Beilharz sent Campos coffee beans. My sister, Anna Cox, and her husband Matthew brought me a new computer when the old one died. There were people I hardly know - and some I do - who stopped by my blog to give me helpful advice or pointed me to an overlooked reference.

My parents-in-law, Richard and Jackie Wallder, did not live to see the end of this project, though they were instrumental in it coming to pass. We miss them. To my own parents I owe an inestimable debt of gratitude. My mother, Christine Jensen, made more than one trip from Australia to keep us all going. My father, Peter Jensen, has read and re-read my work, often telling me what it was that I was trying to say when it had become unclear even to me. I don’t know what I would have done without him.

These years, though not without trials, have been happy ones for a young family. The joy of my life continues to be that I share it with my four intriguing and wonderful children, Simon, Sacha, Matilda, and our very own English rose, Freya; and with Catherine, who bore the load more than anyone, and to whom this thesis is dedicated, with love.