History of Dogma, Volume 1 | Page 7

sin and grace, freedom and grace,
grace and the means of grace. The number and importance of the
dogmas that were, in the middle ages, really fixed after Augustine's
time, had no relation to the range and importance of the questions
which they raised, and which emerged in the course of centuries in
consequence of advancing knowledge, and not less in consequence of
the growing power of the Church. Accordingly, in this second stage
which comprehends the whole of the middle ages, the Church as an
institution kept believers together in a larger measure than was possible
to dogmas. These in their accepted form were too poor to enable them
to be the expression of religious conviction and the regulator of Church
life. On the other hand, the new decisions of Theologians, Councils and
Popes, did not yet possess the authority which could have made them
incontestable truths of faith. The third stage begins with the
Reformation, which compelled the Church to fix its faith on the basis
of the theological work of the middle ages. Thus arose the Roman
Catholic dogma which has found in the Vatican decrees its provisional
settlement. This Roman Catholic dogma, as it was formulated at Trent,
was moulded in express opposition to the Theses of the Reformers. But

these Theses themselves represent a peculiar conception of Christianity,
which has its root in the theology of Paul and Augustine, and includes
either explicitly or implicitly a revision of the whole ecclesiastical
tradition, and therefore of dogma also. The History of Dogma in this
last stage, therefore, has a twofold task. It has, on the one hand, to
present the Romish dogma as a product of the ecclesiastical
development of the middle ages under the influence of the Reformation
faith which was to be rejected, and on the other hand, to portray the
conservative new formation which we have in original Protestantism,
and determine its relation to dogma. A closer examination, however,
shews that in none of the great confessions does religion live in dogma,
as of old. Dogma everywhere has fallen into the background; in the
Eastern Church it has given place to ritual, in the Roman Church to
ecclesiastical instructions, in the Protestant Churches, so far as they are
mindful of their origin, to the Gospel. At the same time, however, the
paradoxical fact is unmistakable that dogma as such is nowhere at this
moment so powerful as in the Protestant Churches, though by their
history they are furthest removed from it. Here, however, it comes into
consideration as an object of immediate religious interest, which,
strictly speaking, in the Catholic Church is not the case.[4] The Council
of Trent was simply wrung from the Romish Church, and she has made
the dogmas of that council in a certain sense innocuous by the Vatican
decrees.[5] In this sense, it may be said that the period of development
of dogma is altogether closed, and that therefore our discipline requires
a statement such as belongs to a series of historical phenomena that has
been completed.
3. The church has recognised her faith, that is religion itself, in her
dogmas. Accordingly, one very important business of the History of
Dogma is to exhibit the unity that exists in the dogmas of a definite
period, and to shew how the several dogmas are connected with one
another and what leading ideas they express. But, as a matter of course,
this undertaking has its limits in the degree of unanimity which actually
existed in the dogmas of the particular period. It may be shewn without
much difficulty, that a strict though by no means absolute unanimity is
expressed only in the dogmas of the Greek Church. The peculiar
character of the western post-Augustinian ecclesiastical conception of

Christianity, no longer finds a clear expression in dogma, and still less
is this the case with the conception of the Reformers. The reason of this
is that Augustine, as well as Luther, disclosed a new conception of
Christianity, but at the same time appropriated the old dogmas.[6] But
neither Baur's nor Kliefoth's method of writing the history of dogma
has done justice to this fact. Not Baur's, because, notwithstanding the
division into six periods, it sees a uniform process in the development
of dogma, a process which begins with the origin of Christianity and
has run its course, as is alleged, in a strictly logical way. Not Kliefoth's,
because, in the dogmas of the Catholic Church which the East has
never got beyond, it only ascertains the establishment of one portion of
the Christian faith, to which the parts still wanting have been
successively added in later times.[7] In contrast with this, we may refer
to the fact that we can clearly distinguish three styles of building in the
history of dogma, but only