Biblical Dogmatics – Voigt, Andrew George (1917)
This is a good little Systematic Theology from the early 20th century. It is from a conservative Lutheran position so there were some perspectives I hadn’t encountered before, but that was, in large part why I read it. I’m exploring this branch of Protestant Reformation thought at the moment, so it was nice to find a concise but thorough summary of doctrine that was available on Archive.org. (Side note: reading PDFs on the iPad in LiquidText is a great experience.) One thing that I appreciated about his perspective, and of what I have encountered of Lutheran theology, is that they are prepared to stop with Chesterton and say, scripture says X and also appears-to-be-not-or-opposite-to-X , we bow before God’s prerogative to be beyond our comprehension and will not construct a theological system that explains how certain words or verses don’t mean what they seem to mean.
Two quotes for you:
As we know by experience of none but a sinful world, it is useless to speculate how God’s design in creation would have been carried out if there had been no sin. (p.107)
The essential truth of this conception, namely, that God’s holiness forbids Him to compromise with sin even in exercising mercy, must be maintained. But it would be a mistake to conceive of a tension between the righteousness and mercy of God, as if they tended in opposite directions, and as if God had to be reconciled with Himself. The righteousness of God as well as His mercy demands the removal of sin; for the existence of sin is as abhorrent to the righteousness of God as the misery of the sinner is to His mercy. (p.115)