A. L. Graebner was one of the Missouri Synod's most brilliant scholars and the very first to work in English fluently and powerfully. Among the voluminous works he produced during his relatively short lifetime, this volume was designed to help English speaking students at the seminary master the basics of theology. The key focus of Graebner's work is providing the Biblical foundation of all of Lutheran theology, doing so, as he says in his preface, "With an emphatic refusal to apologize for having nowhere progressed beyond the theology of our orthodox fathers."