Abstract
Härle’s Dogmatik, which has enjoyed a long career as a favoured textbook in German Protestant theological education, is here made available in English in a somewhat abbreviated and adapted form of its fourth edition, helpfully introduced by Nicholas Sagovsky. After an introduction on the nature of dogmatic science and its place in the circle of theological disciplines, the book is divided into three parts. There is a treatment of the essence of Christian faith, its basis in divine revelation in Christ, its scriptural sources, its authoritative confessional interpretation and its relation to the life-world in which it finds itself. This is followed by a treatment of the Christian understanding of the being and attributes of God, of God’s self-disclosure in Christ and God’s presence in the Spirit, and of the doctrine of the Trinity. A final block of material treats the Christian understanding of the world, through the doctrines of creation, sin, salvation and the last things.
As in most modern systematic theologies, the divine economy, and especially the work of reconciliation, is the centre of the whole. God considered in himself apart from creatures does not receive the same attention as do God’s outer works in the Son and the Spirit (this may be one reason for the book’s relatively light treatment of the first person the Trinity). The overall construal of the Christian faith is one which characterizes the essence and the external works of God in terms of love and relation: the subject-matter of dogmatics is not so much God and then by derivation all things in relation to God, but God in relation to all things.
The dominant rhetoric of the book is conceptual and analytical. Passages of direct exegetical or dogmatic description are relatively rare and customarily brief, and they are not expected to bear the burden of persuasion. This descriptive brevity is reinforced by the terse textbook style, with its numerous subdivisions. Though the book is clear that theology is an insider’s science, its stance is that of the insider seeking to give formal, critical expression to the knowledge of faith, in the light of the dominant features of its ambient intellectual and social world. It is written for a style of theology and church life which has a high sense of cultural responsibility and which values the place of theology in the university. This reinforces the ‘modern’ cast of the book. Moreover, though it accords weight to the confessional traditions of Christianity as a theological norm, it rarely draws on classical theological texts or allows them to prompt trains of thought which differ from those which have secured a place on the agenda of modern dogmatics.
Where might the book find its readers? Dogmatics remains a marginal affair in English theological education; mainstream Protestant seminaries in North America may find it attractive, though it has appeared at the same time as a number of other native systematic theologies (Hinlicky, Horton, Gerrish, Ottati and others). That said, this is a work of seasoned and penetrating theological intelligence, and attentive readers will be given much food for thought.