P&R just published J. van Genderen & W. H. Velema’s Concise Reformed Dogmatics, which the publisher describes as “a crystallization of the best confessionally Reformed Dutch thought in a single, manageable English-language volume.” The translation is the merger of Gerrit Bilkes’s and Ed M. van der Maas’s separate English translations of the original 1992 Dutch edition, Beknopte Gereformeerde dogmatiek.
It is the product of a multistep process of comparing the two translations and combining their strengths. With an eye for clarity and theological integrity, a team of readers—including W. H. Velema, the lone surviving author, together with Lawrence W. Bilkes and Gerald M. Bilkes—checked the entire work.
One might be tempted to question if this nearly 1,000-page tome rightly bears the descriptor concise. Compared to many systematic theology books, 1,000 pages is by no means brief, but held to the standard of other Dutch works like those of Bavinck (3,024 pp.), Kuyper (3,486 pp.), and Vos (≈1,900 pp.), it is definitely on the smaller side.
This volume is composed of 15 chapters covering the following topics:
- Introduction . . . 1
- Revelation . . . 20
- Holy Scripture . . . 58
- Concerning God . . . 117
- God’s Counsel . . . 193
- God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth . . . 246
- God’s Providence . . . 283
- Man as the Image of God . . . 314
- Sin . . . 385
- Christ, the Mediator . . . 437
- The Covenant of Grace . . . 539
- The Doctrine of Salvation . . . 573
- The Church . . . 677
- The Means of Grace . . . 753
- Eschatology . . . 819
You can read the TOC, prefaces, and part of the introductory chapter as well as a portion of chapter 3 at the Westminster Bookstore site and a handful of endorsements at the Westminster Bookstore Blog.
Another book that caught my eye recently is Douglas F. Kelly’s forthcoming Systematic Theology I: The God Who Is—The Holy Trinity (cf. WTSBooks). Karl Trueman shared some brief thoughts on a review copy that he received. The information on this volume is scant, so I don’t know much about it beyond what Trueman shares. No mention of it on the publisher’s website. At any rate, I’m eager to take a look at it and am excited to see an entire volume in a systematic theology set devoted to the doctrine of the Trinity—especially from the evangelical camp, which has been notorious for giving insufficient attention to the doctrine.
HT: James Grant
