The publication of D Broughton Knox: Selected Works, Volume 1: The Doctrine of God is a highly significant event. This fine volume is, quite simply, a joy to read.

It will be particularly treasured by those who had the privilege of being students under ‘DBK’, but more than that it will enable another generation to experience something of this outstanding teacher’s understanding and wisdom.

David Broughton Knox was the principal of Moore Theological College from 1959 to 1985. Sir Marcus Loane has said of him: “It is not too much to say that no other contemporary Australian Churchman has had a more original mind or has shown a more penetrating insight into questions of pure theology, and that insight was derived from his understanding of the supreme revelation of truth in the Bible.”

He was a persistent teacher. Beyond the lecture room and the pulpit, casual conversations, talking over a meal, even deliberations in a committee with DBK would very frequently (and often delightfully, I must say) become occasions of theological reflection and exploration. It flowed naturally from the reality of his personal knowledge of God.

This volume (the first of several planned) is a remarkable and varied collection. DBK’s best known work, The Everlasting God is incorporated as Part 1 (with the useful addition of numerous footnotes identifying biblical texts referred or alluded to).

Here readers encounter DBK’s thought at its clearest. While he did indeed explore ‘questions of pure theology’, that theology was necessarily at the same time ‘practical’ and ‘experiential’ because “as a person thinks about God, that is to say, as he thinks about ultimate reality, so his standards of behaviour, values and relations with other people are determined” (p 37).

The reader is therefore helped to understand not only what is true of God (his trinitarian personhood, his self revelation by words, his sovereign power, his goodness, his judgment, his mercy towards us in his Son Jesus Christ), but also why it matters to know these things. No one, for example, who learns the doctrine of the Trinity from DBK will think that this truth is unimportant for ordinary human living. The same can be said of the sovereign power of God, the doctrine of predestination, the propositional character of God’s revelation and the nature of Christ’s victory over evil. These and many other subjects are opened up with the warmth of one who knows profoundly and loves deeply the One of whom he speaks.

Part 2 is a collection of broadcast talks, sermons, published papers, and various unpublished essays and notes. These range from short pieces of less than half a page to much more substantial pieces. They vary from works that have been prepared for publication to notes that have the appearance of jottings from the theologian’s desk: thinking ‘in progress’.

Part of the delight in reading this second part of the volume is the sense of listening to this great teacher thinking through a wide range of subjects, and in some cases recapturing something of those casual conversations through which he taught so much to so many.