History of Dogma, Volume 1 | Page 5

of Dogma.
III. On Neoplatonism Literature

I
PROLEGOMENA TO THE DISCIPLINE OF THE HISTORY OF DOGMA.
II
THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF THE HISTORY OF DOGMA.
CHAPTER I
PROLEGOMENA TO THE DISCIPLINE OF THE HISTORY OF DOGMA.
§ 1. The Idea and Task of the History of Dogma.
1. The History of Dogma is a discipline of general Church History, which has for its object the dogmas of the Church. These dogmas are the doctrines of the Christian faith logically formulated and expressed for scientific and apologetic purposes, the contents of which are a knowledge of God, of the world, and of the provisions made by God for man's salvation. The Christian Churches teach them as the truths revealed in Holy Scripture, the acknowledgment of which is the condition of the salvation which religion promises. But as the adherents of the Christian religion had not these dogmas from the beginning, so far, at least, as they form a connected system, the business of the history of dogma is, in the first place, to ascertain the origin of Dogmas (of Dogma), and then secondly, to describe their development (their variations).
2. We cannot draw any hard and fast line between the time of the origin and that of the development of dogma; they rather shade off into one another. But we shall have to look for the final point of division at the time when an article of faith logically formulated and scientifically expressed, was first raised to the articulus constitutivus ecclesi?, and as such was universally enforced by the Church. Now that first happened when the doctrine of Christ, as the pre-existent and personal Logos of God, had obtained acceptance everywhere in the confederated Churches as the revealed and fundamental doctrine of faith, that is, about the end of the third century or the beginning of the fourth. We must therefore, in our account, take this as the final point of division.[1] As to the development of dogma, it seems to have closed in the Eastern Church with the seventh Oecumenical Council (787). After that time no further dogmas were set up in the East as revealed truths. As to the Western Catholic, that is, the Romish Church, a new dogma was promulgated as late as the year 1870, which claims to be, and in point of form really is, equal in dignity to the old dogmas. Here, therefore, the History of Dogma must extend to the present time. Finally, as regards the Protestant Churches, they are a subject of special difficulty in the sphere of the history of dogma; for at the present moment there is no agreement within these Churches as to whether, and in what sense, dogmas (as the word was used in the ancient Church) are valid. But even if we leave the present out of account and fix our attention on the Protestant Churches of the 16th century, the decision is difficult. For, on the one hand, the Protestant faith, the Lutheran as well as the Reformed (and that of Luther no less), presents itself as a doctrine of faith which, resting on the Catholic canon of scripture, is, in point of form, quite analogous to the Catholic doctrine of faith, has a series of dogmas in common with it, and only differs in a few. On the other hand, Protestantism has taken its stand in principle on the Gospel exclusively, and declared its readiness at all times to test all doctrines afresh by a true understanding of the Gospel. The Reformers, however, in addition to this, began to unfold a conception of Christianity which might be described, in contrast with the Catholic type of religion, as a new conception, and which indeed draws support from the old dogmas, but changes their original significance materially and formally. What this conception was may still be ascertained from those writings received by the Church, the Protestant symbols of the 16th century, in which the larger part of the traditionary dogmas are recognised as the appropriate expression of the Christian religion, nay, as the Christian religion itself.[2] Accordingly, it can neither be maintained that the expression of the Christian faith in the form of dogmas is abolished in the Protestant Churches--the very acceptance of the Catholic canon as the revealed record of faith is opposed to that view--nor that its meaning has remained absolutely unchanged.[3] The history of dogma has simply to recognise this state of things, and to represent it exactly as it lies before us in the documents.
But the point to which the historian should advance here still remains an open question. If we adhere strictly to the definition of the idea of dogma given above, this much is certain, that dogmas were no longer set up after the Formula of Concord, or in the case of the Reformed Church, after the decrees of the Synod of Dort.