Simon Says ...

So I did it:  All six books on the Michael Ramsey Prize shortlist have been read and reviewed.  The reading was fairly constant, the reviewing was a bit rushed towards the end! The reviews are here: Faith and Struggle on Smokey Mountain Healing Forgiveness Children in the Bible Unapologetic Dementia God's Presence I've thoroughly enjoyed it.  They are a set of excellent books, and not necessarily ones I would have read otherwise.  It leaves me in very good heart regarding the health of theology written in English. But on the Sunday of Greenbelt , one and only one of the books will be declared the winner.  So I thought I'd give it a go and pick the single title that I think should win. But first, something I have noticed from previous years shortlists.  For the past two shortlists, I have found bookmarks featuring all the shortlisted titles.  On both occasions, the book in the bottom left-hand place has won. This is 2011: ...

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...