On the Way from Schleiermacher to Barth: A Critical Reappraisal of Isaak August Dorner's Essay on Divine Immutability

The theme of this article is the reconstruction of the doctrine of God offered by the German theologian and historian of doctrine Isaak August Dorner (1809–84), in his treatise ‘On the Proper Conception of the Doctrine of God's Immutability, with Special Reference to the Reciprocal Relation between God's Suprahistorical and Historical Life.’ Although the theme of God's immutability has received wide attention in the last years, Dorner's essay has gone largely unnoticed, and its contribution to the current debate still awaits appreciation. The following argument shall provide some building-blocks for this goal. It presupposes that Dorner's theology was shaped in dialogue with the thought of Schelling, Hegel, and Schleiermacher, but it will extend this perspective and ask for the particular systematic-theological link between Schleiermacher and Karl Barth that Dorner's essay represents.