While several significant monographs have been written recently on the theology of Isaak Dorner, the oft-neglected nineteenth-century German Lutheran theologian-most notably, H. Walter Frei's I. A. Dorners Christology und Trinitätslehre, Thomas Koppehl's Der Wissenschaftliche Standpunkt der Theologie des Isaak August Dorners, and Christine Axt-Piscalar's Der Grund Des Glaubens-Jonathan Norgate's Isaak A. Dorner: The Triune God and the Gospel of Salvation brings a substantial work on a significant theological figure to the English-speaking world. Dorner, besides being important on his own terms, as Norgate ably illustrates, is a significant figure connecting the theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher and Karl Barth.

Norgate examines the connection between Dorner's doctrine of God and five other loci of theology: the God/world relationship, anthropology, hamartiology, Christology, and soteriology. As he puts it, “we wish to measure the extent to which key aspects of his [Dorner's] account of God's essential being play out in the explication of God's relation to the world, culminating in the work of atonement” (p. 8). Through his analysis, Norgate claims both that Dorner is a significant Trinitarian theologian and “an evangelical theologian whose account of the Gospel of Jesus Christ displays the earnest endeavour of a dogmatician seeking the consistent (if not always successful) connection between the triune God and the cross of Christ” (p. 9). In the introduction, Norgate gives a brief overview of Dorner's theological method and provides a succinct biographical sketch that helps historically situate the figure for those unfamiliar with his work.

Because the doctrine of God functions as a “dogmatic control” for Dorner's project, Norgate addresses it in chapter 1, noting how Dorner moves from the general concept of God to the specifically Christian concept. Dorner thinks that “the Christian idea of a triune God is that to which a general idea of God . . . leads” (p. 10), and this conviction serves an important apologetic function for Dorner to demonstrate the necessity and certainty of the incarnation. Through his discussion of the proofs for God's existence, Dorner concludes that, on the general idea of God, God's being is an ethical, Absolute Personality. Moving to the specific, Christian doctrine of God, Norgate highlights how, for Dorner, all of the divine attributes find their culmination in the triune persons subsisting in relations of holy love.

It is noteworthy that Norgate takes issue with Dorner's methodological starting point, claiming that the material content of Dorner's Christian doctrine of God is critically shaped by his treatment of the general doctrine of God. As Norgate sees it, “A consequence of this is that he is exposed to the charge that he treats the doctrine of God not primarily in terms of how God saves, but how God solves the problems of His own Being” (p. 39). Among other things, Norgate thinks this weakness leads Dorner to an insufficient treatment of the distinct divine hypostases of the triune God.

After describing the “immanent completeness” (p. 48) of the triune God in chapter 1, Norgate moves on in chapter 2 to discuss Dorner's conception of the triune God's relationship with the world. Significantly, Dorner treats the economic trinity within his doctrine of God; who God is in himself-a being of holy love-serves as the ground for how God relates to creation. As Norgate sees it, one of the major contributions of Dorner's project is in the way he uses aseity to maintain “the priority of God without detriment either to the independent integrity of the world nor its concomitant dependence on God. God relates to the world because He is in Himself self-sufficient; and the world is free to relate to God because it depends on God” (p. 64). God's being of holy love, serving as the ground of creation, corresponds to-yet is distinct from-what God posits in creation. This allows Dorner to tread lightly between the two opposing “enemies of orthodoxy” (p. 83) of his day: pantheism, in which God's being is tied to the world process, and deism, in which God has no real relation to the created order.

Following the discussion of creation, Norgate turns to God's relationship to humanity. Where one would expect a robust doctrine of humanity-in the trend of nineteenth-century anthropocentric theologies-Dorner instead gives an account not of humanity as such, but of the God-man. “It is the demonstration of the necessity of the Incarnation for the world's perfection rather than the doctrine of the creature,” Norgate says, “which represents the dénouement of Fundamental Doctrine” (p. 84). This obviously supralapsarian account, as Norgate notes, is not simply a choice between several available doctrinal options but instead the inevitable result of Dorner's chosen starting point. Jesus Christ, then, as the realization of the divinely appointed relationship between God and humanity, safeguards the non-competitive account of the relationship between God and man, and Norgate sees this as a valuable contribution.

Norgate carefully handles Barth's critique of Dorner, in which Dorner is criticized for focusing on the deification of the creature over and against the creature's reconciliation. Norgate claims that, while Dorner underplays the significance of the fall (or, as Norgate puts it, the “stumble” [p. 96]), he avoids Barth's overstated accusation of deification through implementing the concept of communion. Nonetheless, Norgate observes “a systemic problem concerning the extent to which the soteriological import of the incarnation is reduced because of the supralapsarian structure of the project” (p. 115). It is important to view this chapter in light of Norgate's larger project, namely, that of expositing the way in which Dorner's doctrine of God shapes other loci of theology within his system.

Moving on to the doctrine of sin, Norgate suggests, “It is the point of connection between the idea of the God-man and His historic manifestation; between the motivation for the incarnation and the cause of its modification” (p. 117). Sin serves the role, in Dorner's theology, of introducing Christology; yet Norgate worries that while Dorner does not intentionally minimize the dogmatic function of sin in a construal of Christ's person and work, “because of Dorner's supralapsarianism, his account of sin is exposed to the charge that it fails to provide sufficient justification for the God-man to come as Saviour” (p. 120).

Norgate treats Dorner's Christology in chapter 5, noting that he “is not inappropriately described as the Christologian par excellence of the nineteenth century” (p. 142). Like the doctrines of creation and sin, Dorner's Christology is intimately connected to his doctrine of God. The Logos, for Dorner, is God's mode of being that becomes incarnate, and neither the Father nor the Holy Spirit could have done so. Further, in his treatment of the hypostatic union, Dorner makes an attempt to bridge the gap between the Reformed and Lutheran traditions. The notion of Christ as the “Second Adam” plays a significant role in Dorner's formulation of Christ's person; it connects creation and incarnation and allows Dorner to state the significance of Christ's personal humanity as the fulfillment of human nature as such, which was always fit for receptivity of the divine nature. Oddly, Norgate fails to see (or at least to point out) the continuity between Dorner and Schleiermacher's use of Second Adam language. Dorner's Christology, viewed against a backdrop of divine aseity and supralapsarianism, has the resources to resolve a number of tensions in traditional Chalcedonian Christology. But Norgate worries that Dorner does not give sufficient attention to the role of the Holy Spirit's role in Christ's incarnate work, namely, the “continual upholding of this humanity for its telos” (p. 172).

Finally, chapter 6 moves to Dorner's account of Christ's atoning work and justification by faith. Once again, Norgate argues that this topic, like all the others in Dorner's system, is shaped by his account of the doctrine of God. Dorner makes unique use of the munus triplex as a tool for explicating Christ's redeeming work, locating Christ's atoning work properly under the office of priest. As Norgate notes, “Dorner's intentions for his account of the doctrines of atonement and justification is the representation of salvation as that which corresponds with the ethical constitution of the divine Absolute Personality as holy Love” (p. 214). Once again, however, Norgate notes a lack of the Spirit in Dorner's doctrine of Christ's work and suggests that the Spirit is essential to an account of the ethical life of the believer and the triune God.

In concluding his work, Norgate asserts once again his thesis that Dorner's doctrine of God orients the rest of his doctrinal treatments. Notwithstanding the several problems mentioned above (viz., moving from a general account of God to the triune God, the lack of role of the Holy Spirit, the downplaying of sin as a result of supralapsarianism, etc.), Norgate maintains that Dorner “provides himself with the resources to depict the saving significance of Jesus Christ as inimical neither to the ideas of divine justice or love” (p. 221). Dorner's account of God's ethical constancy (immutability) and his use of the munus triplex, among other things, secure him as a figure in church history whose theology ought to be a subject of retrieval for theologians doing constructive dogmatic work in the twenty-first century.

Norgate's work is exceptional on a variety of levels. He deals with a vast amount of primary-source material from Dorner's work and is competent in both English and foreign-language secondary sources. Norgate nimbly and judiciously-and cautiously!-summarizes and evaluates the intricacies of Dorner's thought in a way that those interested in the serious study of dogmatic theology will appreciate. Admirably, Norgate successfully accomplishes his goal of showing how Dorner's doctrine of God shapes the entirety of his dogmatics. However, one would have liked to see Norgate tease out the connection between Schleiermacher and Dorner a bit further, specifically with regard to the extent to which Dorner's theology is significantly shaped by the work of the father of modern theology. Nonetheless, this minor quibble in no way undermines the top-notch work Norgate has provided.

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