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Review of Frances Young, God’s Presence: A Contemporary Recapitulation of Early Christianity (Cambridge University Press, 2012). The final book on the Michael Ramsey Prize shortlist for 2016 is a work of systematic theology.   Frances Young is a very distinguished theologian.   Her writing on the New Testament and early Christian theology is well known and is part of a corpus of writing that dates back to the 1970s.   This book is an integration of all the different concerns of her theological life, as an academic, a theologian of both the New Testament and the early church, a Methodist, a preacher and the mother of a profoundly disabled child, Arthur.   All of these different aspects to Young’s work and writing inform and shape this book. That theme of integration is also the way in which Young approaches the topics of her theology in this book.   In each chapter she offers a prelude of snapshots, showing the way the subjec...

A Sermon for Trinity 20 2 Kings 5.1-3,7-15c ; Luke 17.11-19 Our Old Testament reading this morning has something of a Hollywood blockbuster about it.  You can imagine the trailer: Naaman, commander of the most powerful army in the world, yet afflicted with an incurable disease. How will he rid himself of this dreadful illness?  A tale of passion, of strength and of wonder.  Naaman, coming to a cinema near you, certificate 15. So let me ask you to imagine the story we heard this morning as a Hollywood film.  It begins with an introduction to Naaman, a great man, a mighty warrior, in high favour with the king, commander of the army.  A force to be reckoned with.  And then the great tragedy of his life – his leprosy.  Cut then to a quiet timid servant girl, the spoils of one of Naaman’s great triumphs.  ‘There is a prophet in Israel who could heal you,’ she tells him.  Cut again (the bit this morning’s reading ...

A Sermon for Trinity 4 Isaiah 65.1-9 ; Luke 8.26-39 The late, great theologian Douglas Adams , in the fourth book of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy introduces us to the character of Wonko the Sane .  Wonko is a virtual hermit, who lives “ Outside the Asylum ”. Wonko has decided that the whole world is mad, and confined it to the asylum.  As a sane person, he lives outside the asylum.             It is hard, sometimes, to argue with Adams (or Wonko)’s view.  We live in a time of austerity, and yet we are prepared to spend billions on a nuclear weapons programme.  We have been through a financial crisis, and yet nothing has changed, except that bankers continue to draw big bonuses and the poorest have their support cut or removed.  We were told that we were all in it together, but seems that we don’t all need to pay our tax.  Clear thinking seems far, far away.  ...