Christian Faith: Dogmatics in Outline by Brian A. Gerrish (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Christian Faith: Dogmatics in Outline by Brian A. Gerrish Mark Mattes Christian Faith: Dogmatics in Outline. By Brian A. Gerrish. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2015. xv + 352 pp. This book is the result of Gerrish’s year-long seminar in dogmatics, focusing on Calvin’s Institutes and Schleiermacher’s Glaubenslehre, taught for decades at The University of Chicago. It was my privilege to participate in this seminar in the late 1980s. Reading this book I am reminded of Gerrish’s voice reading earlier drafts aloud. For Gerrish, the point of dogmatics is to test the adequacy of beliefs for the purpose of comprehending the faith (but not defending it, which is the task of apologetics) (19). Each chapter begins with a summary statement which is explicated in the chapter through a detailed analysis of Scripture, voices within and without the Christian tradition, and ever an analysis of Calvin’s and Schleiermacher’s views, the lead voices of the “old” Protestantism and the “new.” While billed as an “outline,” this book is meaty and thorough. Gerrish has an uncanny ability to summarize complex ideas with brevity and objectivity. Obviously this is not the length of Pannenberg’s three-volume Systematic Theology, but no one looking for substance will be disappointed in Gerrish’s work. Gerrish’s outline of dogmatics progresses in three phases. First, we acknowledge an “elemental faith,” the confidence that humans encounter their environment as orderly, not chaotic, and that “moral order” likewise invites confidence for living well (9–10). Next, we affirm theism, belief in God. Finally, we affirm faith in Jesus Christ whose redemption is definitive of Christian faith. A guiding principle throughout is that faith works in tandem with a scientific outlook on the world, which for Gerrish spells naturalism; hence, [End Page 84] there is no room for miracles. God does not interrupt the regular course of things, but instead ordains it and steers it (55). In that light, Gerrish is drawn to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, and so proposes an “open future,” that is, that the “end” is not written in stone, but is contingent and could be played out in a number of ways (72), even though he is convinced that the terminus of humanity, in spite of the wish for personal survival beyond death, will coincide with the end of the world (317). This should not distress us because Christian existence is lived soli deo gloria and not for survival beyond death (319). Gerrish acknowledges that while the anthropomorphisms of Scripture help connect people with God, God is best understood not through magnification, that is, that God’s traits are incalculably vaster on an ontological continuum shared with humanity’s, but instead through ineffability, namely, that God completely transcends the human ability to encapsulate him (51). Insofar as we can affirm truth about God, the Bible singles out justice as a primary divine attribute (49). Hence, God’s wrath is no mere pique but a moral term and should not be downplayed (48). Nor should God’s will and human will-power be set at odds. Gerrish advocates a compatibilism between God and humans in which, like Augustine’s view, humans are not drawn against their wills by God but instead the mind is drawn by love and delight (71). Sin, or faithlessness, is best seen in two modes: (1) mistrust, in which humans find it challenging to trust God due to unhappy experiences and (2) open defiance against God (88). Instead of the law and gospel distinction advocated by Luther and acknowledged by Calvin, we should maintain that God provides one covenant of grace, a stance which accords better for Jewish-Christian relations (115). The work of Jesus is not to propitiate God’s wrath, but to expiate sin. Counter to Anselm, forgiveness and retributive justice are mutually exclusive (130). Likewise sin is best seen as a contagion and the church as offering the reign of God, the antidote to sin (136). Justification by faith is not to be seen as exclusively forensic but instead as enhanced by the “living presence of Christ within” (167). The church is a social organism that advances the message of God’s reign...