History of Dogma, Volume 1 | Page 9

and Luther, that its Christian character has in many respects gained, though in other respects it has become further and further alienated from that character. In proportion as the traditional system of dogmas lost its stringency it became richer. In proportion as it was stripped by Augustine and Luther of its apologetic philosophic tendency, it was more and more filled with Biblical ideas, though, on the other hand, it became more full of contradictions and less impressive.
This outlook, however, has already gone beyond the limits fixed for these introductory paragraphs and must not be pursued further. To treat in abstracto of the method of the history of dogma in relation to the discovery, grouping and interpretation of the material is not to be recommended; for general rules to preserve the ignorant and half instructed from overlooking the important, and laying hold of what is not important, cannot be laid down. Certainly everything depends on the arrangement of the material; for the understanding of history is to find the rules according to which the phenomena should be grouped, and every advance in the knowledge of history is inseparable from an accurate observance of these rules. We must, above all, be on our guard against preferring one principle at the expense of another in the interpretation of the origin and aim of particular dogmas. The most diverse factors have at all times been at work in the formation of dogmas. Next to the effort to determine the doctrine of religion according to the finis religionis, the blessing of salvation, the following may have been the most important. (1) The conceptions and sayings contained in the canonical scriptures. (2) The doctrinal tradition originating in earlier epochs of the church, and no longer understood. (3) The needs of worship and organisation. (4) The effort to adjust the doctrine of religion to the prevailing doctrinal opinions. (5) Political and social circumstances. (6) The changing moral ideals of life. (7) The so-called logical consistency, that is the abstract analogical treatment of one dogma according to the form of another. (8) The effort to adjust different tendencies and contradictions in the church. (9) The endeavour to reject once for all a doctrine regarded as erroneous. (10) The sanctifying power of blind custom. The method of explaining everything wherever possible by "the impulse of dogma to unfold itself," must be given up as unscientific, just as all empty abstractions whatsoever must be given up as scholastic and mythological. Dogma has had its history in the individual living man and nowhere else. As soon as one adopts this statement in real earnest, that medi?val realism must vanish to which a man so often thinks himself superior while imbedded in it all the time. Instead of investigating the actual conditions in which believing and intelligent men have been placed, a system of Christianity has been constructed from which, as from a Pandora's box, all doctrines which in course of time have been formed, are extracted, and in this way legitimised as Christian. The simple fundamental proposition that that only is Christian which can be established authoritatively by the Gospel, has never yet received justice in the history of dogma. Even the following account will in all probability come short in this point; for in face of a prevailing false tradition the application of a simple principle to every detail can hardly succeed at the first attempt.
Explanation as to the Conception and Task of the History of Dogma.
No agreement as yet prevails with regard to the conception of the history of dogma. Münscher (Handbuch der Christl. D.G. 3rd ed. I. p. 3 f.) declared that the business of the history of dogma is "To represent all the changes which the theoretic part of the Christian doctrine of religion has gone through from its origin up to the present, both in form and substance," and this definition held sway for a long time. Then it came to be noted that the question was not about changes that were accidental, but about those that were historically necessary, that dogma has a relation to the church, and that it represents a rational expression of the faith. Emphasis was put sometimes on one of these elements and sometimes on the other. Baur, in particular, insisted on the first; V. Hofmann, after the example of Schleiermacher, on the second, and indeed exclusively (Encyklop. der theol. p. 257 f.: "The history of dogma is the history of the Church confessing the faith in words"). Nitzsch (Grundriss der Christl. D.G. I. p. 1) insisted on the third: "The history of dogma is the scientific account of the origin and development of the Christian system of doctrine, or that part of historical theology which presents the history of the expression of the Christian faith in notions, doctrines and doctrinal