Edinburgh divinity professor wins international prize

A divinity lecturer at the University of Edinburgh has won an international theology prize in recognition of his position as one of the world’s most promising young theologians.

Dr Paul Nimmo, a native of Edinburgh and recent addition to faculty staff, won the John Templeton Award for "Theological Promise." He will receive a prize of $10,000.

A regular guest lecturer in reformed theology at the Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen, Germany, Dr Nimmo will be given an additional $10,000 to fund a series of lectures at international universities.

The official prizegiving ceremony will take place at the University of Heidelberg in May.

The prize was awarded to Dr Nimmo for his doctoral research and book on Swiss theologian Karl Barth, Being in Action: The Theological Shape of Barth’s Ethical Vision.

Karl Barth is considered to be one of the 20th century’s most important thinkers. His sense of liberal Protestantism’s ethical failure in responding to the First World War greatly affected his theology.

Barthian ethics resist the expansion of particularity to generality in moral principles, making them both refreshing to the realist while remaining palatable to the idealist.

Established in 2005, the John Templeton Award for Theological Promise is given annually to 12 scholars from any area of religious studies.

The awards are assigned jointly by the Research Centre of International and Interdisciplinary Theology at the University of Heidelberg and the John Templeton Foundation.

This year, Dr Nimmo was the only UK entrant to win an award in this prestigious competition.

The John Templeton Foundation states that the prize is awarded to “identify 'entrepreneurs of the spirit' – outstanding individuals who have devoted their talents to those aspects of human experience that, even in an age of astonishing scientific advance, remain beyond the reach of scientific explanation.

“All have been seekers of wisdom, humbled by the complexity of the human condition but determined, with their ideas and deeds, to chart fresh paths forward."