May 20 1996

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God the Almighty: Power, Wisdom, Holiness, Love,by Donald G. Bloesch, (InterVarsity, 329 pp., $24.99, hardcover). Reviewed by David W. Gill, professor of applied ethics at North Park College in Chicago.

"God the Almighty" is volume 3 of Donald G. Bloesch's projected seven-volume systematic theology, "Christian Foundations." Bloesch, emeritus professor of theology at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, has already received enthusiastic reviews for volume 1, "A Theology of Word and Spirit: Authority and Method in Theology," and volume 2, "Holy Scripture: Revelation, Inspiration, and Interpretation" (for a review of both volumes, see CT, June 20, 1994, p. 37). God the Almighty achieves the same high standard set by its predecessors.

Bloesch himself suggests that "God the Almighty" is "perhaps the most important" volume in his series. While wishing to "counter the inveterate tendency in so much traditional theology to make God remote from the human creation," Bloesch's greater concern is with various modern and postmodern theologies that propose a God who is finite or culpable for human sin and misery. God the Almighty is a magnificent tour guide through a nearly 2,000-year-old theological forest. The major thinkers of the past, from Augustine to Barth, are treated respectfully but critically. More recent thinkers (Pannenberg, Moltmann, feminist and process theologians, et al.) are also an important part of Bloesch's landscape.

The primary agenda for Bloesch's theology, however, is not set by professional theologians past or present. This is a theology anchored in Holy Scripture and addressed to the whole church. Bloesch positions himself as a "centrist evangelical" building on the "core of the faith." He insists that ...