It took Christianity just over a hundred years to feel overburdened by its history. Writing in the 180s, bishop Irenaeus of Lyon bemoaned how far the Church was removed from its origins. He felt that he was living in a ‘middle age’. Neither was he one of the first disciples nor would he live to see the Second Coming. As a boy he had heard the old Polycarp preach, who was said to have been a disciple of the Apostle John. Yet even Polycarp was two steps removed from the first generation. We cannot tell whether Irenaeus had any idea just how many generations of Christians would follow after him. However, he laid the foundations for a kind of theological thinking which has enabled Christians ever since to make sense of this condition, of being members of a religion removed from its historical origins by many centuries but at the same time being able to experience those origins as closely as if they were happening right now.

Frances Young's God's presence is one of the most recent products of this kind of theological thinking. It takes its subtitle from one of Irenaeus' most original concepts. ‘Recapitulation’ is the brief summing up of a long series of past events, ‘to cut a long story short’, ‘to put it in a nutshell’. Irenaeus applied the concept to Christ. Christ is the recapitulation of the whole of history, from Adam to the end of days. Because of who Christ was and how he lived his life, history is also completely re-evaluated. All that is negative about it (because of the way in which humanity responded to it), has become positive. What was doomed, is being saved. Moreover, this reality is ‘re-capitulated’ in the life of every individual Christian who follows and imitates Christ in this way.

Young explains the specifics of this principle on pages 205–8, but the scope of her book is of course much broader. Based on the 2011 Bampton Lectures and drawing on a series of earlier publications it develops an incredibly wide range of themes in historical and systematic theology. It really imitates Irenaeus' style, in that it makes the reader feel the full weight of a historically and philosophically rich and erudite tradition while it conveys at the same time the freshness of the Gospel preached from the abundance of a live evangelical spirituality.

The book is divided into eight chapters: chapter i, ‘From pondering Scripture to the first principles of Christian theology’ (pp. 7–43); chapter ii, ‘From cosmology to doxology: reading Genesis alongside Plato and Darwin’ (pp. 44–91); chapter iii, ‘From creation to re-creation: nature and the naked ape’ (pp. 92–145); chapter iv, ‘From image to likeness: incarnation and theōsis’ (pp. 146–201); chapter v, ‘From Adam and Eve to Mary and Christ: sin, redemption, atonement’ (pp. 202–59); chapter vi, ‘From inspiration to sanctification: discerning the work of the Holy Spirit’ (pp. 260–312); chapter vii, ‘From the church to Mary: towards a critical ecumenism’ (pp. 313–68); chapter viii, ‘From dogma to theōria: the Christian God’ (pp. 369–424). An epilogue (pp. 425–37) and an extensive bibliography (pp. 438–56) and index (pp. 457–74) conclude the volume.

The apparent size and weight of this volume belie its freshness and accessibility. Despite its erudition, the stunning breadth of historical knowledge and the depth of theological reflection, this is a piece of contemporary theology written for a broad readership. There are poems, sermons, meditations, prayers, comments on current events and a whole range of types of writing which are broadly experimental. But all these different parts are firmly held together by a systematic ‘programme’, which is briefly outlined in the introduction. For Young the biblical and other literature which she introduces (mostly patristic, but also other relevant writings) has a transformative role. It is not a burden for Christianity, piled up by centuries, but a source of renewal, while theology is exploratory rather than explanatory (‘faith seeking understanding’: p. 2). The context of theology as an exploratory activity informed by that rich and long literary tradition is ‘life’, ‘ecclesial life’, ‘public life’, ‘personal life’ (p. 3). The literary expressions of these different forms of life are manifold. They include scholarly debate, public discourse and poetry. ‘But the primary genre of theological discourse’, Young insists, ‘must be preaching … It therefore lies at the very heart of this enterprise’ (pp. 4–5).

These programmatic reflections explain the thematic drive of the various chapters. If Scripture is essentially a transformative text, then its presentation of the Creator God ‘as constantly at work to bring order out of chaos’ and ‘good out of evil’ (p. 5) does not just amount to a theoretical statement, but it transforms its human readers so that they become agents or actors joining God in that activity. The analogy of God as ‘craftsman’ (‘demiurge’) is consequently inadequate. This has ‘consequences for’ a concept such as ‘intelligent design’ (p. 5), and more deeply, for the way in which humanity is actually relating to nature and to itself. ‘Creatureliness’ and ‘giftedness’ are basic characteristics of life that need to find expression in liturgical and ethical responses. Intellectual and scientific achievements have to be contextualised accordingly. The full extent of the implications of God's will to ‘accommodate the divine self to the human level’ has to be realised. What we experience as the greatness, beauty and power of the universe, is in fact God's self-diminution. The full recognition of this reality, i.e. the fact that there is someone wholly ‘other’ (who reaches out to us by means of self-negation), is equally terrifying and reassuring. It can only be realised by also letting go of oneself (apatheia, detachment: p. 6), which is also the true nature of love: recognition that the other is truly other, which also includes the recognition that I am totally reduced to myself. There is no one else but I to occupy this place. God is the ultimate other, presently absent and absently present, a state of affairs which Young refers to in ecclesiastical terms as ‘universal episcopē’ (p. 5).

These few notes can only scratch the surface of an incredibly rich treasure trove of biblical and patristic learning, contemporary and practical theological reflection and beautiful writing. This book, as an epitome of many lectures, sermons and smaller pieces of writing, but also of a rich life as a theologian, a pastor and a Christian, will undoubtedly be a cherished companion not only for scholars and theologians, but also for more generally educated readers interested in theology not just as a scholarly but also as an intellectual and artistic endeavour and a spiritual exercise.