Paul Nimmo

Career

Nimmo studied Engineering and Management Studies at Corpus Christi College at the University of Cambridge before qualifying as an Investment Manager. His studies in Divinity were undertaken at the University of Edinburgh, Princeton Theological Seminary, and the University of Tübingen. His first position was as an Associate Lecturer at the University of Cambridge as the Research Assistant to the Regius Professor of Divinity, David Ford. He was appointed in 2008 as Meldrum Lecturer in Reformed Theology at the University of Edinburgh, and was later promoted to Meldrum Senior Lecturer. In 2013 Nimmo was invited to a personal chair in Systematic Theology at the University of Aberdeen. He was translated to the 1620 King’s Chair of Systematic Theology in 2016, and is currently Head of Divinity at Aberdeen.

Professional activities

Since 2013, Nimmo has been an Editor of the International Journal of Systematic Theology, for which publication he served as Managing Editor between 2007 and 2014. He is a Fellow of the Center for Barth Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, a Member of the Center’s Barth Translation Seminar, and a Member of the Steering Committee of the Reformed Theology & History Group at the American Academy of Religion. He also served as Treasurer of the Society for the Study of Theology between 2013 and 2016, having been a member of the Society’s Executive Committee between 2009 and 2012. Nimmo has been since 2014 the Adviser of the Learn initiative of the Church of Scotland. From 2008 to 2015, he was a Member of the Joint Commission on Doctrine of the Church of Scotland and the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland. From 2011 to 2013 he was a Member of the Action of Churches Together in Scotland/Church of Scotland ‘Why Believe?’ Group, and from 2009 to 2012 he participated in the Church of Scotland Working Group on Issues in Human Sexuality. He is an ordained elder at Kemnay Parish Church.

Publications

Nimmo was awarded a John Templeton Award for Theological Promise in 2009, for his book Being in Action: The Theological Shape of Barth's Ethical Vision (2007), which was based on his doctoral work at Edinburgh. He is also the author of Karl Barth: A Guide for the Perplexed (2016), and co-Editor with David Fergusson of the University of Edinburgh of the Cambridge Companion to Reformed Theology (2016). He is currently co-editing the Oxford Handbook of Karl Barth (2017) with Paul Dafydd Jones of the University of Virginia, and writing a monograph entitled Karl Barth and the Eucharist: Thinking With and After Barth on the Lord’s Supper (2019).

Research and teaching

Nimmo’s research interests lie primarily in the field of systematic theology, exploring the meaning, coherence, and implications of Christian doctrine. His particular areas of focus are in the theology of Karl Barth, in the theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher, in the history and theology of the Reformed tradition, and in the central loci of dogmatics in general. In 2008, he was a Guest Lecturer at the University of Göttingen, and in the same year, he delivered the Kerr Lectures at the University of Glasgow on "A Theology of Obedience". In 2011, his teaching was recognised by a University-wide Teaching Award from the Edinburgh University Students’ Association. He teaches at the Aberdeen Academy of Theology, and on events run by the Centre for Ministry Studies in Aberdeen, of which he is an Associate.