Friday, January 09, 2009

Read Quality Dogmatics (with good suggestions) [i.e., not Grudem]

http://dogmatics.wordpress.com/2008/12/08/read-quality-dogmatics/

Read Quality Dogmatics

Frankly, it's depressing when faux-dogmatics like Grudem's Systematic Theology receive an incessant amount of praise and recommendations. Dogmatics should make you think intelligently and devoutly about God, exhibiting the logic of salvation as revealed. You should see the connecting necessities of Covenant, Incarnation, and Redemption. Why, not merely What, is the purpose, so that we can approach scripture with a more coherent image of it all. Grudem and company read like a list of What to believe, and the average Christian, ever-frightful of the imminent doom of the Church, is happy to give a five-star review of such works because they are on "our side" of the controversies (and surely a 1000 page book is substantive and genius!). So, I here humbly present a guide to those who want to study Christian doctrine that succors the mind and inflames the heart.

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Stage 1

The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love by St. Augustine

Essentials of Evangelical Theology by Donald Bloesch

Introduction to Christianity by Joseph Ratzinger

Psalms and Hymns by Isaac Watts

Stage 2

The Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin

Dogmatics (vol. 1, vol. 2, vol. 3) by Emil Brunner

Summa Theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas

Reformed Dogmatics by Herman Bavinck

Stage 3

A System of Christian Doctrine by Isaak Dorner

The Glory of the Lord, Theo-Drama, and Theo-Logic by Hans Urs von Balthasar

Church Dogmatics by Karl Barth

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