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Dogmatics: Volume I - Christian Doctrine of God (Library of Theological Translations)

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Heinrich Emil Brunner (1889-1966) was a Swiss Reformed theologian, who (along with Karl Barth) was the leader of the Neo-Orthodox theology movement.

He states in the Preface to this first of three volumes (the others are Dogmatics: Volume II - Christian Doctrine of Creation & Redemption (Library of Theological Translations) (v. 2) and The Christian doctrine of the church, faith, and the consummation (Dogmatics, Volume III)), "Dogmatics is not the Word of God. God can make His Word prevail in the world without theology. But at a time when human thought is so often confused and perverted by fantastic ideas and theories, spun out of men's minds, it is evident that it is almost impossible to preserve the Divine Word without the most passionate intellectual effort to re-think its meaning and content."

Here are some representative quotations from this volume:

"In so far as the Bible speaks about subjects of secular knowledge, it has no teaching authority. Neither its astronomical, cosmological picture of the world, nor its geographic view, nor its zoological, ethnographical or historical statements are binding upon us, whether they are in the Old Testament or in the New." (Chap. 6)
"Above all the teaching of the Church, even above all dogma or doctrinal confession, stands Holy Scripture. This is the source of revelation for the Church; for the Church knows the fact of revelation simply and solely through the Holy Scriptures. Scripture ... is also its norm, in so far as the original witness is the source of all the testimony of the Church." (Chap. 11)
"The God in whom we believe cannot be `proved,' and the God who can be proved is not the God of faith." (Chap. 13)
"How often, and at how many points, has the doctrinaire temper of orthodox theology driven men into Rationalism, who would perhaps otherwise have been ready to listen to a truly Biblical theology." (Appendix to Chap. 16)
"The reason does not grasp God, but the reason is derived from God, and possesses its own divine justification." (Chap. 21)
"(I)n Calvin's theology the doctrine of Predestination has been wrongly equated with the actual heart of his belief ... How did our Fathers in the Reformed Churches manage to teach this terrible theological theory in the name of the Biblical Gospel?" (Chap. 23)
"The Biblical doctrine of Election ... teaches the doctrine of the Holy and Merciful God, who in Jesus Christ has chosen all who believe in Him from all eternity, but who rejects those who refuse this obedience of faith." (Chap. 23)