When David Jenkins became Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Leeds University, I recall Fr Benedict Green, then Principal of the College of the Resurrection at Mirfield, saying how good it was that someone of such undoubted orthodoxy should be appointed to the post. Five years later, the Professor became Bishop of Durham and all hell broke loose. But Fr Benedict was right, because (as Patristic history shows) the essence of Christian orthodoxy is not to impose a single, dogmatic way of thinking and speaking about God but to hold the fort against all one-sided theories which would seek to reduce talk about God to a single system and thus depersonalize the absolute personhood of the God Who transcends every image that we form of God. Furthermore, Christian orthodoxy is about safeguarding the paradigmatic revelation of God in the real humanity and the really human history of Jesus who was crucified and died, whose resurrection is not a reversal of his death but the definitive affirmation that here indeed, in this life lived as a human being from beginning to end, is none other than the God Who transcends all things.

That, as this masterly exposition demonstrates on several levels, was the orthodoxy of David Jenkins. An important part of this book’s success lies in showing how Jenkins himself epitomized this theology by his resistance to being pigeon-holed into any neat category, in any of the various aspects of his life and work. He believed in the omnipresence of process but resisted being categorized as a process theologian. He came out of the Anglican tradition of social theology epitomized by Charles Gore and William Temple but went beyond that tradition in his belief (along with the proponents of liberation theology) that the present economic order needs radical, even revolutionary change. As Bishop of Durham, he occupied what has been described as the loftiest episcopal throne north of the Alps, but he was known – and widely loved within his diocese – as a champion of the powerless, a position flowing naturally out of his theology of the powerlessness of the cross as the true place of the power of God.

To be in David Jenkins’ presence and hear him speaking, especially when unscripted, was like watching the sort of firework that consists of several rockets bound together in a circle so that, when all are lit, it goes round in an endless circle of fire – an image that well symbolizes his style of theology, in which any theory we might devise or image we might form can take us just so far but will fly off into nowhere if left by itself, so that all the partial and conflicting approaches need each other if they are to encompass the ever-shifting truth of reality.

The same image can serve as a symbol of what it means to be a person, and Truss shows with abundant clarity that what he calls, ‘The personal pattern’, is at the heart of Jenkins’ theology. This came through strongly in an experiential way when on one occasion soon after his arrival in Durham he was invited to lead a residential weekend for the North-East Ordination Course, whose membership encompassed every shade of churchmanship and theological opinion in the Church of England and the United Reformed Church, not a few of whom were already primed to object to whatever he might say. He chose to speak about sources of truth and argued at length that, as believers in the Incarnation of God within history, we are bound to welcome every source of enlightenment, whether within the Church or outside, and whether from those apparently ‘with us’ or ‘against us’. It was a theme designed to raise the hackles of several of his hearers, but what emerged as the weekend proceeded was his deep conviction of the reality of God and his commitment to finding truth from any source precisely because of the omnipresence of God. At one point, this reality moved him so close to tears that the session had to be adjourned for him to recover. The personal God was indeed deeply personal to him.

In an age of increasing polarization, when people seem to find it increasingly hard to relate as persons to those from whom they differ, and an age in which fresh developments in science, medicine and technology are compelling us to re-evaluate in quite radical ways what it means to be a person, this book is a timely reminder of a style of theology that could, if attended to, not provide us with answers but enable us to stay with the hardest of questions in a humane and therefore godly way.