THE General Synod gathered on a sweltering Sunday afternoon in York. David Jenkins, Bishop of Durham, rose to deliver an impassioned response to widespread criticism of his recent widely broadcast observations on certain doctrinal issues — especially the Virgin birth and the resurrection of Jesus. He spoke at some length and with barely a pause for breath — one member said listening to him was like trying to get a drink from a fire hose.

Though some sat on their hands, prolonged applause reflected respect for his passion, compassion, and erudite commitment to the truths of the Christian tradition refracted through the lens of today’s challenges and tomorrow’s opportunities for the Church and its standing in the public square — “transcendence in the midst”.

As Richard Truss puts it in his preface to this admirably lucid and engaging appreciation of Jenkins’s authorship and public pronouncements, Jenkins “offers a theological methodology together with particular insights and questions which need to be heard again today”.

He was not a systematic theologian as such, but Truss shows how it is possible to trace a clear trajectory for the evolution of Jenkins’s thought over time, with the twin strands of academic and applied theology consistently intertwined.

In five carefully curated chapters, Truss traces Jenkins’s thought through a recurring pattern: the personal, incarnate, and transformative presence of God. As chapter one explains, Jenkins’s foundational belief, as expounded in his Bampton Lectures of 1966, grounds his theology and, particularly, his Christology in the foundational beliefs of the Christian faith as codified, e.g. at Chalcedon, but freed to engage with the pressing concerns of our own day and age.

Personhood emerges as key to his theological journey — our personhood, and God’s, entailing “the pattern of God’s personalness” embodied in “the obedience and service of love” shown in Christ, and giving shape and substance to what it means to be a fully realised human being. So, the foundations are laid for an evolving faith, so that “an authoritative and lively faith is always now.” This allows for “God’s open engagement in the contingency of human history” — the subject of chapter two.

Here, we find Jenkins wrestling with the tension between post-modern undermining of grand narratives — Christian historicism among them — and that “transcendence in the midst” so central to the “recurring pattern” informing theology’s part in assuring a place for a God of presence and action in the public space.

The practical, political, and social implications of this pattern are explored in chapter three with an emphasis on Jenkins’s dual embrace of Anglicanism’s pragmatic social theology, as inherited from Charles Gore and William Temple, and the radical dynamism of liberation theology so much to the fore in the late 20th century.

It was not easy to ride these two horses at once, and the latter took over the reins in his radical critique of capitalism’s socio-economic policies decimating mining communities in his diocese, and all too prevalent in the Church as well as the political Establishment. Here, we find Jenkins “putting theology to work” with a vengeance.

AlamyJenkins at Durham Cathedral in 1993 for his last Christmas sermon there

Central to his critique was the use and abuse of power, which is the subject of chapter four: “Church, Politics and Power”. Here, Jenkins’s experience with the World Council of Churches in the early 1970s, leading to the publication of The Contradiction of Christianity, is crucial “as he faces issues of discrimination, latent imperialism, and oppression within the Council itself and within churches worldwide”. Given the recent safeguarding crisis in the Church, and the rise of authoritarian governments around the world, we encounter Jenkins here at his most provocative — and prophetic.

The final chapter homes in on the core themes of Jenkins’s theology, with the pattern of God clearly revealed as personal, spatial, temporal — and a model for all Christian mission and ministry. His legacy is secured in a synthesis of theology and spirituality which issues in a way of being and in practical action.

Here, we meet him, back in the day, by turns revered and reviled — Margaret Thatcher’s “cuckoo in the nest” — but, above all, as that passionate advocate for an adventurous faith, rooted in the Christian tradition, but always alert to the practical implications of belief in God as personified in Christ — and active in the public space “where faith and action are entwined”.

The Rt Revd Dr John Saxbee is a former Bishop of Lincoln.

The Pattern of God: David Jenkins’ theology in Church and public space
Richard Truss
Sacristy Press £16.99
(978-1-78959-411-9)
Church Times Bookshop £15.29