Church Doctrine, Volume 3

The present volume is the third in a five-volume study of church doctrine. The multivolume set covers the major parts of church doctrine: Canon, God, Creation, Reconciliation, and Redemption. The first volume begins with an introduction to the entire project on why doctrine matters, which stresses the ecumenical, global, and above all biblical horizons of church doctrine as a primary expression of Christian witness. The second volume discusses the doctrine of God. The purpose of this third volume is to reaffirm the traditional church doctrine of Creation, and yet to do so in a way that submits that tradition to the overruling, overpowering authority of Scripture. God the Creator, according to the Bible, owns the entire universe; it does not belong to humankind. We live in service of his covenant of grace; but we do so along with our fellow creatures in a common vulnerability and finitude. The volume addresses the question of how the church doctrine of Creation speaks to the manifold ecological crisis of our time. Church doctrine is not a luxury but a necessity for the living community of faith, by which its witness in word and deed is tested against the one true measure of Christ the risen Lord. "The writing of dogmatics is and always has been a rare undertaking in America. Rarer still are those equipped to do so well. With deep grounding in the ancient tradition of the church, profound awareness of the major fault lines in modern theology, and extraordinary insight into contemporary questions and the global situation, Paul McGlasson has produced a brilliant work on the doctrine of creation, which, like his first two volumes in this series, is refreshingly reformed, orthodox, and ecumenical. Clear, cogent, and compelling, it is a gift to the Christian Community." --Richard Burnett, Professor of Systematic Theology, Erskine Theological Seminary Paul C. McGlasson is pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Sullivan, Indiana. He received his MDiv from Yale Divinity School and his PhD from Yale University in Systematic Theology. He is the author of several books, including God the Redeemer, Canon and Proclamation, and Invitation to Dogmatic Theology. Before entering parish ministry, McGlasson taught theology for several years at colleges and seminaries.