In his masterful, sustained enquiry into the methods, steps and tenets of Schleiermacher's doctrine of God, Logan Hoffman demonstrates how otherwise intractable controversies in the history of reception of The Christian Faith can be resolved. The first chapter on Kant's critical philosophy outlines the intellectual context and the concise tools which the Glaubenslehre will apply to justify 'religion' through a transcendental analysis of subjectivity. Hoffman's thoughtful, disciplined and resourceful interpretation of the reasons and results of devising Christian dogmatics in an 'Introduction' and two material parts offers most perceptive insights, unravels quandaries, highlights translation problems, and provides a model of clarity and depth also for teaching a theology that is up to Schleiermacher's still inexhausted, groundbreaking work.

Maureen Junker-Kenny, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

Logan Hoffman's careful study presents an important corrective and intervention within English-speaking studies of Friedrich Schleiermacher's theology. The contemporary reception of Schleiermacher's landmark Christian Faith has largely followed one of two paths. Some interpreters read the work's original theological reconstructions through the notorious analysis of feeling set out in the introduction; others read the introduction through the lens of the work's later treatments of grace and sin. This text's central contribution is to underscore the thoroughgoing consistency and non-reductive character of Schleiermacher's method, in which these two moments are never collapsed but always held in productive tension. In this respect, Hoffman recovers an insight too often obscured in modern and contemporary theology: Schleiermacher's theological system, and particularly his doctrine of God, signals an unrivalled achievement in methodological consistency and clarity.

Kevin M. Vander Schel, Gonzaga University, USA