Berkhof’s loyalty to the well-defined lines of the Reformed Faith, his concise and compact style and his up-to-date treatment have made this work the most important twentieth century compendium of Reformed Theology. ‘The work seemed particularly important to me’, writes the author, ‘in view of the widespread doctrinal indifference of the present day, of the resulting superficiality and confusion in the minds of many professing Christians, of the insidious errors that are zealously propagated even from the pulpits, and of the alarming increase of all kinds of sects. If there ever was a time when the Church ought to guard her precious heritage, the deposit of the truth that was entrusted to her acre, that time is now’.