History of Dogma, Volume 1
by Adolf von Harnack · English · Gutenberg #19612 · 1,001,044 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of History of Dogma, Volume 1
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: History of Dogma, Volume 1
Author: Adolf von Harnack
Translator: Neil Buchanan
Release date: October 24, 2006 [eBook #19612]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19612
Credits: Produced by Dave Maddock, David King, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF DOGMA, VOLUME 1 ***
Produced by Dave Maddock, David King, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
THEOLOGICAL TRANSLATION LIBRARY
EDITED BY THE REV. T. K. CHEYNE MA DD, ORIET PROFESSOR OF INTERPRETATION
OXFORD AND THE REV. A. B. BRUCE, DD PROFESSOR OF APOLOGETICS AND NEW
TESTAMENT: EXEGESIS, FREE CHURCH COLLEGE GLASGOW
VOL II
HARNACKS HISTORY OF DOGMA. VOL. I
[Greek: To dogmatos onoma tês anthrôpinês echetai boulês te kai gnômês.
Hoti de touth' houtos echei, marturei men hikanôs hê dogmatikê tôn
iatrôn technê, martyrei de kai ta tôn philosophôn kaloumena dogmata.
Hoti de kai ta synklêto doxanta eti kai nun dogmata synklêtou legetai,
oudena agnoein oimai.]
MARCELLUS OF ANCYRA.
Die Christliche Religion hat nichts in der Philosophie zu thun, Sie ist
ein machtiges Wesen für sich, woran die gesunkene und leidende
Menschheit von Zeit zu Zeit sich immer wieder emporgearbeitet hat, und
indem man ihr diese Wirkung zugesteht, ist sie über aller Philosophie
erhaben und bedarf von ihr keine Stütze.
Gesprache mit GOETHE von ECKERMANN,
2 Th p 39.
HISTORY OF DOGMA
BY
DR. ADOLPH HARNACK
ORDINARY PROF. OF CHURCH HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY, AND FELLOW OF THE
ROYAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCE, BERLIN
_TRANSLATED FROM THE THIRD GERMAN EDITION_
BY
NEIL BUCHANAN
VOL. I.
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1901
VORWORT ZUR ENGLISCHEN AUSGABE.
Ein theologisches Buch erhält erst dadurch einen Platz in der
Weltlitteratur, dass es Deutsch und Englisch gelesen werden kann. Diese
beiden Sprachen zusammen haben auf dem Gebiete der Wissenschaft vom
Christenthum das Lateinische abgelöst. Es ist mir daher eine grosse
Freude, dass mein Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte in das Englische
übersetzt worden ist, und ich sage dem Uebersetzer sowie den Verlegern
meinen besten Dank.
Der schwierigste Theil der Dogmengeschichte ist ihr Anfang, nicht nur
weil in dem Anfang die Keime für alle späteren Entwickelungen liegen,
und daher ein Beobachtungsfehler beim Beginn die Richtigkeit der ganzen
folgenden Darstellung bedroht, sondern auch desshalb, weil die Auswahl
des wichtigsten Stoffs aus der Geschichte des Urchristenthums und der
biblischen Theologie ein schweres Problem ist. Der Eine wird finden,
dass ich zu viel in das Buch aufgenommen habe, und der Andere zu
wenig--vielleicht haben Beide recht; ich kann dagegen nur anführen, dass
sich mir die getroffene Auswahl nach wiederholtem Nachdenken und
Experimentiren auf's Neue erprobt hat.
Wer ein theologisches Buch aufschlägt, fragt gewöhnlich zuerst nach dem
"Standpunkt" des Verfassers. Bei geschichtlichen Darstellungen sollte
man so nicht fragen. Hier handelt es sich darum, ob der Verfasser einen
Sinn hat für den Gegenstand den er darstellt, ob er Originales und
Abgeleitetes zu unterscheiden versteht, ob er seinen Stoff volkommen
kennt, ob er sich der Grenzen des geschichtlichen Wissens bewusst ist,
und ob er wahrhaftig ist. Diese Forderungen enthalten den kategorischen
Imperativ für den Historiker; aber nur indem man rastlos an sich selber
arbeitet, sind sie zu erfullen,--so ist jede geschichtliche Darstellung
eine ethische Aufgabe. Der Historiker soll in jedem Sinn _treu_ sein: ob
er das gewesen ist, darnach soll mann fragen.
_Berlin_, am 1. Mai, 1894.
ADOLF HARNACK.
THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION.
No theological book can obtain a place in the literature of the world
unless it can be read both in German and in English. These two languages
combined have taken the place of Latin in the sphere of Christian
Science. I am therefore greatly pleased to learn that my "History of
Dogma" has been translated into English, and I offer my warmest thanks
both to the translator and to the publishers.
The most difficult part of the history of dogma is the beginning, not
only because it contains the germs of all later developments, and
therefore an error in observation here endangers the correctness of the
whole following account, but also because the selection of the most
important material from the history of primitive Christianity and
biblical theology is a hard problem. Some will think that I have
admitted too much into the book, others too little. Perhaps both are
right. I can only reply that after repeated consideration and experiment
I continue to be satisfied with my selection.
In taking up a theological book we are in the habit of enquiring first
of all as to the "stand-point" of the Author. In a historical work there
is no room for such enquiry. The question here is, whether the Author is
in sympathy with the subject about which he writes, whether he can
distinguish original elements from those that are derived, whether he
has a thorough acquaintance with his material, whether he is conscious
of the limits of historical knowledge, and whether he is truthful. These
requirements constitute the categorical imperative for the historian:
but they can only be fulfilled by an unwearied self-discipline. Hence
every historical study is an ethical task. The historian ought to be
faithful in every sense of the word; whether he has been so or not is
the question on which his readers have to decide.
_Berlin_, 1st May, 1894.
ADOLF HARNACK.
FROM THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
The task of describing the genesis of ecclesiastical dogma which I have
attempted to perform in the following pages, has hitherto been proposed
by very few scholars, and, properly speaking, undertaken by one only. I
must therefore crave the indulgence of those acquainted with the subject
for an attempt which no future historian of dogma can avoid.
At first I meant to confine myself to narrower limits, but I was unable
to carry out that intention, because the new arrangement of the material
required a more detailed justification. Yet no one will find in the
book, which presupposes the knowledge of Church history so far as it is
given in the ordinary manuals, any repertory of the theological thought
of Christian antiquity. The diversity of Christian ideas, or of ideas
closely related to Christianity, was very great in the first centuries.
For that very reason a selection was necessary; but it was required,
above all, by the aim of the work. The history of dogma has to give an
account, only of those doctrines of Christian writers which were
authoritative in wide circles, or which furthered the advance of the
development; otherwise it would become a collection of monographs, and
thereby lose its proper value. I have endeavoured to subordinate
everything to the aim of exhibiting the development which led to the
ecclesiastical dogmas, and therefore have neither, for example,
communicated the details of the gnostic systems, nor brought forward in
detail the theological ideas of Clemens Romanus, Ignatius, etc. Even a
history of Paulinism will be sought for in the book in vain. It is a
task by itself, to trace the aftereffects of the theology of Paul in the
post-Apostolic age. The History of Dogma can only furnish fragments
here; for it is not consistent with its task to give an accurate account
of the history of a theology the effects of which were at first very
limited. It is certainly no easy matter to determine what was
authoritative in wide circles at the time when dogma was first being
developed, and I may confess that I have found the working out of the
third chapter of the first book very difficult. But I hope that the
severe limitation in the material will be of service to the subject. If
the result of this limitation should be to lead students to read
connectedly the manual which has grown out of my lectures, my highest
wish will be gratified.
There can be no great objection to the appearance of a text-book on the
history of dogma at the present time. We now know in what direction we
have to work; but we still want a history of Christian theological ideas
in their relation to contemporary philosophy. Above all, we have not got
an exact knowledge of the Hellenistic philosophical terminologies in
their development up to the fourth century. I have keenly felt this
want, which can only be remedied by well-directed common labour. I have
made a plentiful use of the controversial treatise of Celsus against
Christianity, of which little use has hitherto been made for the history
of dogma. On the other hand, except in a few cases, I have deemed it
inadmissible to adduce parallel passages, easy to be got, from Philo,
Seneca, Plutarch, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Porphyry, etc.; for only a
comparison strictly carried out would have been of value here. I have
been able neither to borrow such from others, nor to furnish it myself.
Yet I have ventured to submit my work, because, in my opinion, it is
possible to prove the dependence of dogma on the Greek spirit, without
being compelled to enter into a discussion of all the details.
The Publishers of the Encyclopædia Britannica have allowed me to print
here, in a form but slightly altered, the articles on Neoplatonism and
Manichæism which I wrote for their work, and for this I beg to thank
them.
It is now eighty-three years since my grandfather, Gustav Ewers, edited
in German the excellent manual on the earliest history of dogma by
Münter, and thereby got his name associated with the history of the
founding of the new study. May the work of the grandson be found not
unworthy of the clear and disciplined mind which presided over the
beginnings of the young science.
_Giessen_, 1st August, 1885.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
In the two years that have passed since the appearance of the first
edition I have steadily kept in view the improvement of this work, and
have endeavoured to learn from the reviews of it that have appeared. I
owe most to the study of Weizsäcker's work, on the Apostolic Age, and
his notice of the first edition of this volume in the Göttinger gelehrte
Anzeigen, 1886, No. 21. The latter, in several decisive passages
concerning the general conception, drew my attention to the fact that I
had emphasised certain points too strongly, but had not given due
prominence to others of equal importance, while not entirely overlooking
them. I have convinced myself that these hints were, almost throughout,
well founded, and have taken pains to meet them in the new edition. I
have also learned from Heinrici's commentary on the Second Epistle to
the Corinthians, and from Bigg's "Lectures on the Christian Platonists
of Alexandria." Apart from these works there has appeared very little
that could be of significance for my historical account; but I have once
more independently considered the main problems, and in some cases,
after repeated reading of the sources, checked my statements, removed
mistakes and explained what had been too briefly stated. Thus, in
particular, Chapter II. §§ 1-3 of the "Presuppositions", also the Third
Chapter of the First Book (especially Section 6), also in the Second
Book, Chapter I. and Chapter II. (under B), the Third Chapter
(Supplement 3 and excursus on "Catholic and Romish"), the Fifth Chapter
(under 1 and 3) and the Sixth Chapter (under 2) have been subjected to
changes and greater additions. Finally, a new excursus has been added on
the various modes of conceiving pre-existence, and in other respects
many things have been improved in detail. The size of the book has
thereby been increased by about fifty pages. As I have been
misrepresented by some as one who knew not how to appreciate the
uniqueness of the Gospel history and the evangelic faith, while others
have conversely reproached me with making the history of dogma proceed
from an "apostasy" from the Gospel to Hellenism, I have taken pains to
state my opinions on both these points as clearly as possible. In doing
so I have only wrought out the hints which were given in the first
edition, and which, as I supposed, were sufficient for readers. But it
is surely a reasonable desire when I request the critics in reading the
paragraphs which treat of the "Presuppositions", not to forget how
difficult the questions there dealt with are, both in themselves and
from the nature of the sources, and how exposed to criticism the
historian is who attempts to unfold his position towards them in a few
pages. As is self-evident, the centre of gravity of the book lies in
that which forms its subject proper, in the account of the origin of
dogma within the Græco-Roman empire. But one should not on that account,
as many have done, pass over the beginning which lies before the
beginning, or arbitrarily adopt a starting-point of his own; for
everything here depends on where and how one begins. I have not
therefore been able to follow the well-meant counsel to simply strike
out the "Presuppositions."
I would gladly have responded to another advice to work up the notes
into the text; but I would then have been compelled to double the size
of some chapters. The form of this book, in many respects awkward, may
continue as it is so long as it represents the difficulties by which the
subject is still pressed. When they have been removed--and the smallest
number of them lie in the subject matter--I will gladly break up this
form of the book and try to give it another shape. For the friendly
reception given to it I have to offer my heartiest thanks. But against
those who, believing themselves in possession of a richer view of the
history here related, have called my conception meagre, I appeal to the
beautiful words of Tertullian; "Malumus in scripturis minus, si forte,
sapere quam contra."
_Marburg_, 24th December, 1887.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.
In the six years that have passed since the appearance of the second
edition I have continued to work at the book, and have made use of the
new sources and investigations that have appeared during this period, as
well as corrected and extended my account in many passages. Yet I have
not found it necessary to make many changes in the second half of the
work. The increase of about sixty pages is almost entirely in the first
half.
_Berlin_, 31st December, 1893
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY DIVISION.
CHAPTER I.--PROLEGOMENA TO THE STUDY OF THE HISTORY OF DOGMA
§ 1. The Idea and Task of the History of Dogma
Definition
Limits and Divisions
Dogma and Theology
Factors in the formation of Dogma
Explanation as to the conception and task of the History of Dogma
§ 2. History of the History of Dogma
The Early, the Mediæval, and the Roman Catholic Church
The Reformers and the 17th Century
Mosheim, Walch, Ernesti
Lessing, Semler, Lange, Münscher, Baumgarten-Crusius, Meier Baur,
Neander, Kliefoth, Thomasius,
Nitzsch, Ritschl, Renan, Loofs
CHAPTER II.--THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF THE HISTORY OF DOGMA
§ 1. Introductory
The Gospel and the Old Testament
The Detachment of the Christians from the Jewish Church
The Church and the Græco-Roman World
The Greek spirit an element of the Ecclesiastical Doctrine of Faith
The Elements connecting Primitive Christianity and the growing Catholic
Church
The Presuppositions of the origin of the Apostolic Catholic Doctrine of
Faith
§ 2. The Gospel of Jesus Christ according to His own Testimony
concerning Himself
Fundamental Features
Details
Supplements
Literature
§ 3. The Common Preaching concerning Jesus Christ in the first
generation of believers.
General Outline
The faith of the first Disciples
The beginnings of Christology
Conceptions of the Work of Jesus
Belief in the Resurrection
Righteousness and the Law
Paul
The Self-consciousness of being the Church of God
Supplement 1. Universalism
Supplement 2. Questions as to the value of the Law; the four main
tendencies at the close of the Apostolic Age
Supplement 3. The Pauline Theology.
Supplement 4. The Johannine Writings
Supplement 5. The Authorities in the Church
§ 4. The current Exposition of the Old Testament and the Jewish hopes of
the future in their significance for the Earliest types of Christian
preaching
The Rabbinical and Exegetical Methods
The Jewish Apocalyptic literature
Mythologies and poetical ideas, notions of pre-existence and their
application to Messiah
The limits of the explicable Literature
§ 5. The Religious Conceptions and the Religious Philosophy of the
Hellenistic Jews in their significance for the later formulation of the
Gospel
Spiritualising and Moralising of the Jewish Religion
Philo
The Hermeneutic principles of Philo
§ 6. The religious dispositions of the Greeks and Romans in the first
two centuries, and the current Græco-Roman philosophy of religion
The new religious needs and the old worship (Excursus on [Greek: theos])
The System of associations, and the Empire
Philosophy and its acquisitions
Platonic and Stoic Elements in the philosophy of religion
Greek culture and Roman ideas in the Church
The Empire and philosophic schools (the Cynics)
Literature
SUPPLEMENTARY.
(1) The twofold conception of the blessing of Salvation in its
significance for the following period
(2) Obscurity in the origin of the most important Christian ideas and
Ecclesiastical forms
(3) Significance of the Pauline theology for the legitimising and
reformation of the doctrine of the Church in the following period
DIVISION I.--THE GENESIS OF ECCLESIASTICAL DOGMA, OR THE GENESIS OF THE
CATHOLIC APOSTOLIC DOGMATIC THEOLOGY, AND THE FIRST SCIENTIFIC
ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM OF DOCTRINE.
BOOK I.
THE PREPARATION.
CHAPTER I. HISTORICAL SURVEY
CHAPTER II.--THE ELEMENT COMMON TO ALL CHRISTIANS AND THE BREACH WITH
JUDAISM
CHAPTER III. THE COMMON FAITH AND THE BEGINNINGS OF KNOWLEDGE IN GENTILE
CHRISTIANITY AS IT WAS BEING DEVELOPED INTO CATHOLICISM
(1) The Communities and the Church
(2) The Foundations of the Faith; the Old Testament, and the traditions
about Jesus (sayings of Jesus, the _Kerygma_ about Jesus), the
significance of the "Apostolic"
(3) The main articles of Christianity and the conceptions of salvation.
The new law. Eschatology.
(4) The Old Testament as source of the knowledge of faith
(5) The knowledge of God and of the world, estimate of the world
(Demons)
(6) Faith in Jesus Christ
Jesus the Lord.
Jesus the Christ
Jesus the Son of God, the _Theologia Christi_
The Adoptian and the Pneumatic Christology
Ideas of Christ's work
(7) The Worship, the sacred actions, and the organisation of the
Churches
The Worship and Sacrifice
Baptism and the Lord's Supper
The organisation
SUPPLEMENTARY.
The premises of Catholicism
Doctrinal diversities of the Apostolical Fathers
CHAPTER IV.--THE ATTEMPTS OF THE GNOSTICS TO CREATE AN APOSTOLIC
DOGMATIC, AND A CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY; OR THE ACUTE SECULARISING OF
CHRISTIANITY
(1) The conditions for the rise of Gnosticism.
(2) The nature of Gnosticism
(3) History of Gnosticism and the forms in which it appeared
(4) The most important Gnostic doctrines
CHAPTER V.--THE ATTEMPT OF MARCION TO SET ASIDE THE OLD TESTAMENT
FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIANITY, TO PURIFY THE TRADITION AND REFORM
CHRISTENDOM ON THE BASIS OF THE PAULINE GOSPEL
Characterisation of Marcion's attempt
(1) His estimate of the Old Testament and the god of the Jews
(2) The God of the Gospel
(3) The relation of the two Gods according to Marcion. The Gnostic woof
in Marcion's Christianity
(4) The Christology
(5) Eschatology and Ethics
(6) Criticism of the Christian tradition, the Marcionite Church
Remarks
CHAPTER VI.--THE CHRISTIANITY OF JEWISH CHRISTIANS, DEFINITION OF THE
NOTION JEWISH CHRISTIANITY
(1) General conditions for the development of Jewish Christianity
(2) Jewish Christianity and the Catholic Church, insignificance of
Jewish Christianity, "Judaising" in Catholicism
Alleged documents of Jewish Christianity (Apocalypse of John, Acts of
the Apostles, Epistle to the Hebrews, Hegesippus)
History of Jewish Christianity
The witness of Justin
The witness of Celsus
The witness of Irenæus and Origen
The witness of Eusebius and Jerome
The Gnostic Jewish Christianity
The Elkesaites and Ebionites of Epiphanius
Estimate of the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions and Homilies, their want
of significance for the question as to the genesis of Catholicism and
its doctrine
APPENDICES.
I. On the different notions of Pre-existence.
II. On Liturgies and the genesis 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 ecclesiæ_, 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. It cannot, however, be
maintained that they have been set aside in the centuries that have
passed since then; for apart from some Protestant National and
independent Churches, which are too insignificant and whose future is
too uncertain to be taken into account here, the ecclesiastical
tradition of the 16th century, and along with it the tradition of the
early Church, have not been abrogated in authoritative form. Of course,
changes of the greatest importance with regard to doctrine have appeared
everywhere in Protestantism from the 17th century to the present day.
But these changes cannot in any sense be taken into account in a history
of dogma, because they have not as yet attained a form valid for the
Church. However we may judge of these changes, whether we regard them as
corruptions or improvements, or explain the want of fixity in which the
Protestant Churches find themselves, as a situation that is forced on
them, or the situation that is agreeable to them and for which they are
adapted, in no sense is there here a development which could be
described as history of dogma.
These facts would seem to justify those who, like Thomasius and Schmid,
carry the history of dogma in Protestantism to the Formula of Concord,
or, in the case of the Reformed Church, to the decrees of the Synod of
Dort. But it may be objected to this boundary line; (1) That those
symbols have at all times attained only a partial authority in
Protestantism; (2) That as noted above, the dogmas, that is, the
formulated doctrines of faith have different meanings on different
matters in the Protestant and in the Catholic Churches. Accordingly, it
seems advisable within the frame-work of the history of dogma, to
examine Protestantism only so far as this is necessary for obtaining a
knowledge of its deviations from the Catholic dogma materially and
formally, that is, to ascertain the original position of the Reformers
with regard to the doctrine of the Church, a position which is beset
with contradictions. The more accurately we determine the relation of
the Reformers to Catholicism, the more intelligible will be the
developments which Protestantism has passed through in the course of its
history. But these developments themselves (retrocession and advance) do
not belong to the sphere of the history of dogma, because they stand in
no comparable relation to the course of the history of dogma within the
Catholic Church. As history of Protestant doctrines they form a peculiar
independent province of Church history.
As to the division of the history of dogma, it consists of two main
parts. The first has to describe the origin of dogma, that is, of the
Apostolic Catholic system of doctrine based on the foundation of the
tradition authoritatively embodied in the creeds and Holy scripture, and
extends to the beginning of the fourth century. This may be conveniently
divided into two parts, the first of which will treat of the
preparation, the second of the establishment of the ecclesiastical
doctrine of faith. The second main part, which has to portray the
development of dogma, comprehends three stages. In the first stage the
doctrine of faith appears as Theology and Christology. The Eastern
Church has never got beyond this stage, although it has to a large
extent enriched dogma ritually and mystically (see the decrees of the
seventh council). We will have to shew how the doctrines of faith formed
in this stage have remained for all time in the Church dogmas [Greek:
kat' exochên]. The second stage was initiated by Augustine. The doctrine
of faith appears here on the one side completed, and on the other
re-expressed by new dogmas, which treat of the relation of 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 three; the style of Origen,
that of Augustine, and that of the Reformers. But the dogma of the
post-Augustinian Church, as well as that of Luther, does not in any way
represent itself as a new building, not even as the mere extension of an
old building, but as a complicated rebuilding, and by no means in
harmony with former styles, because neither Augustine nor Luther ever
dreamed of building independently.[8] This perception leads us to the
most peculiar phenomenon which meets the historian of dogma, and which
must determine his method.
Dogmas arise, develop themselves and are made serviceable to new aims;
this in all cases takes place through Theology. But Theology is
dependent on innumerable factors, above all, on the spirit of the time;
for it lies in the nature of theology that it desires to make its object
intelligible. Dogmas are the product of theology, not inversely; of a
theology of course which, as a rule, was in correspondence with the
faith of the time. The critical view of history teaches this: first we
have the Apologists and Origen, then the councils of Nice and Chalcedon;
first the Scholastics, then the Council of Trent. In consequence of
this, dogma bears the mark of all, the factors on which the theology was
dependent. That is one point. But the moment in which the product of
theology became dogma, the way which led to it must be obscured; for,
according to the conception of the Church, dogma can be nothing else
than the revealed faith itself. Dogma is regarded not as the exponent,
but as the basis of theology, and therefore the product of theology
having passed into dogma limits, and criticises the work of theology
both past and future.[9] That is the second point. It follows from this
that the history of the Christian religion embraces a very complicated
relation of ecclesiastical dogma and theology, and that the
ecclesiastical conception of the significance of theology cannot at all
do justice to this significance. The ecclesiastical scheme which is here
formed and which denotes the utmost concession that can be made to
history, is to the effect that theology gives expression only to the
form of dogma, while so far as it is ecclesiastical theology, it
presupposes the unchanging dogma, i.e., the substance of dogma. But this
scheme, which must always leave uncertain what the form really is, and
what the substance, is in no way applicable to the actual circumstances.
So far, however, as it is itself an article of faith it is an object of
the history of dogma. Ecclesiastical dogma when put on its defence must
at all times take up an ambiguous position towards theology, and
ecclesiastical theology a corresponding position towards dogma; for they
are condemned to perpetual uncertainty as to what they owe each other,
and what they have to fear from each other. The theological Fathers of
dogma have almost without exception failed to escape being condemned by
dogma, either because it went beyond them, or lagged behind their
theology. The Apologists, Origen and Augustine may be cited in support
of this; and even in Protestantism, _mutatis mutandis_, the same thing
has been repeated, as is proved by the fate of Melanchthon and
Schleiermacher. On the other hand, there have been few theologians who
have not shaken some article of the traditional dogma. We are wont to
get rid of these fundamental facts by hypostatising the ecclesiastical
principle or the common ecclesiastical spirit, and by this normal
hypostasis, measuring, approving or condemning the doctrines of the
theologians, unconcerned about the actual conditions and frequently
following a hysteron-proteron. But this is a view of history which
should in justice be left to the Catholic Church, which indeed cannot
dispense with it. The critical history of dogma has, on the contrary, to
shew above all how an ecclesiastical theology has arisen; for it can
only give account of the origin of dogma in connection with this main
question. The horizon must be taken here as wide as possible; for the
question as to the origin of theology can only be answered by surveying
all the relations into which the Christian religion has entered in
naturalising itself in the world and subduing it. When ecclesiastical
dogma has once been created and recognised as an immediate expression of
the Christian religion, the history of dogma has only to take the
history of theology into account so far as it has been active in the
formation of dogma. Yet it must always keep in view the peculiar claim
of dogma to be a criterion and not a product of theology. But it will
also be able to shew how, partly by means of theology and partly by
other means--for dogma is also dependent on ritual, constitution, and
the practical ideals of life, as well as on the letter, whether of
Scripture, or of tradition no longer understood--dogma in its
development and re-expression has continually changed, according to the
conditions under which the Church was placed. If dogma is originally the
formulation of Christian faith as Greek culture understood it and
justified it to itself, then dogma has never indeed lost this character,
though it has been radically modified in later times. It is quite as
important to keep in view the tenacity of dogma as its changes, and in
this respect the Protestant way of writing history, which, here as
elsewhere in the history of the Church, is more disposed to attend to
differences than to what is permanent, has much to learn from the
Catholic. But as the Protestant historian, as far possible, judges of
the progress of development in so far as it agrees with the Gospel in
its documentary form, he is still able to shew, with all deference to
that tenacity, that dogma has been so modified and used to the best
advantage by Augustine 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 mediæval 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 systems." Thomasius
has combined the second and third by conceiving the history of dogma as
the history of the development of the ecclesiastical system of doctrine.
But even this conception is not sufficiently definite, inasmuch as it
fails to do complete justice to the special peculiarity of the subject.
Ancient and modern usage does certainly seem to allow the word dogma to
be applied to particular doctrines, or to a uniform system of doctrine,
to fundamental truths, or to opinions, to theoretical propositions or
practical rules, to statements of belief that have not been reached by a
process of reasoning, as well as to those that bear the marks of such a
process. But this uncertainty vanishes on closer examination. We then
see that there is always an authority at the basis of dogma, which gives
it to those who recognise that authority the signification of a
fundamental truth "_quæ sine scelere prodi non poterit_" (Cicero Quæst.
Acad. IV. 9). But therewith at the same time is introduced into the idea
of dogma a social element (see Biedermann, Christl. Dogmatik. 2. Edit.
I. p. 2 f.); the confessors of one and the same dogma form a community.
There can be no doubt that these two elements are also demonstrable in
Christian dogma, and therefore we must reject all definitions of the
history of dogma which do not take them into account. If we define it as
the history of the understanding of Christianity by itself, or as the
history of the changes of the theoretic part of the doctrine of religion
or the like, we shall fail to do justice to the idea of dogma in its
most general acceptation. We cannot describe as dogmas, doctrines such
as the Apokatastasis, or the Kenosis of the Son of God, without coming
into conflict with the ordinary usage of language and with
ecclesiastical law.
If we start, therefore, from the supposition that Christian dogma is an
ecclesiastical doctrine which presupposes revelation as its authority,
and therefore claims to be strictly binding, we shall fail to bring out
its real nature with anything like completeness. That which Protestants
and Catholics call dogmas, are not only ecclesiastical doctrines, but
they are also: (1) theses expressed in abstract terms, forming together
a unity, and fixing the contents of the Christian religion as a
knowledge of God, of the world, and of the sacred history under the
aspect of a proof of the truth. But (2) they have also emerged at a
definite stage of the history of the Christian religion; they show in
their conception as such, and in many details, the influence of that
stage, viz., the Greek period, and they have preserved this character in
spite of all their reconstructions and additions in after periods. This
view of dogma cannot be shaken by the fact that particular historical
facts, miraculous or not miraculous are described as dogmas; for here
they are regarded as such, only in so far as they have got the value of
doctrines which have been inserted in the complete structure of
doctrines and are, on the other hand, members of a chain of proofs,
viz., proofs from prophecy.
But as soon as we perceive this, the parallel between the ecclesiastical
dogmas and those of ancient schools of philosophy appears to be in point
of form complete. The only difference is that revelation is here put as
authority in the place of human knowledge, although the later
philosophic schools appealed to revelation also. The theoretical as well
as the practical doctrines which embraced the peculiar conception of the
world and the ethics of the school, together with their rationale, were
described in these schools as dogmas. Now, in so far as the adherents of
the Christian religion possess dogmas in this sense, and form a
community which has gained an understanding of its religious faith by
analysis and by scientific definition and grounding, they appear as a
great philosophic school in the ancient sense of the word. But they
differ from such a school in so far as they have always eliminated the
process of thought which has led to the dogma, looking upon the whole
system of dogma as a revelation and therefore, even in respect of the
reception of the dogma, at least at first, they have taken account not
of the powers of human understanding, but of the Divine enlightenment
which is bestowed on all the willing and the virtuous. In later times,
indeed, the analogy was far more complete, in so far as the Church
reserved the full possession of dogma to a circle of consecrated and
initiated individuals. Dogmatic Christianity is therefore a definite
stage in the history of the development of Christianity. It corresponds
to the antique mode of thought, but has nevertheless continued to a very
great extent in the following epochs, though subject to great
transformations. Dogmatic Christianity stands between Christianity as
the religion of the Gospel, presupposing a personal experience and
dealing with disposition and conduct, and Christianity as a religion of
cultus, sacraments, ceremonial and obedience, in short of superstition,
and it can be united with either the one or the other. In itself and in
spite of all its mysteries it is always intellectual Christianity, and
therefore there is always the danger here that as knowledge it may
supplant religious faith, or connect it with a doctrine of religion,
instead of with God and a living experience.
If then the discipline of the history of dogma is to be what its name
purports, its object is the very dogma which is so formed, and its
fundamental problem will be to discover how it has arisen. In the
history of the canon our method of procedure has for long been to ask
first of all, how the canon originated, and then to examine the changes
through which it has passed. We must proceed in the same way with the
history of dogma, of which the history of the canon is simply a part.
Two objections will be raised against this. In the first place, it will
be said that from the very first the Christian religion has included a
definite religious faith as well as a definite ethic, and that therefore
Christian dogma is as original as Christianity itself, so that there can
be no question about a genesis, but only as to a development or
alteration of dogma within the Church. Again it will be said, in the
second place, that dogma as defined above, has validity only for a
definite epoch in the history of the Church, and that it is therefore
quite impossible to write a comprehensive history of dogma in the sense
we have indicated.
As to the first objection, there can of course be no doubt that the
Christian religion is founded on a message, the contents of which are a
definite belief in God and in Jesus Christ whom he has sent, and that
the promise of salvation is attached to this belief. But faith in the
Gospel and the later dogmas of the Church are not related to each other
as theme and the way in which it is worked out, any more than the dogma
of the New Testament canon is only the explication of the original
reliance of Christians on the word of their Lord and the continuous
working of the Spirit; but in these later dogmas an entirely new element
has entered into the conception of religion. The message of religion
appears here clothed in a knowledge of the world and of the ground of
the world which had already been obtained without any reference to it,
and therefore religion itself has here become a doctrine which has,
indeed, its certainty in the Gospel, but only in part derives its
contents from it, and which can also be appropriated by such as are
neither poor in spirit nor weary and heavy laden. Now, it may of course
be shewn that a philosophic conception of the Christian religion is
possible, and began to make its appearance from the very first, as in
the case of Paul. But the Pauline gnosis has neither been simply
identified with the Gospel by Paul himself (1 Cor. III. 2 f.; XII. 3;
Phil. I. 18) nor is it analogous to the later dogma, not to speak of
being identical with it. The characteristic of this dogma is that it
represents itself in no sense as foolishness, but as wisdom, and at the
same time desires to be regarded as the contents of revelation itself.
Dogma in its conception and development is a work of the Greek spirit on
the soil of the Gospel. By comprehending in itself and giving excellent
expression to the religious conceptions contained in Greek philosophy
and the Gospel, together with its Old Testament basis; by meeting the
search for a revelation as well as the desire for a universal knowledge;
by subordinating itself to the aim of the Christian religion to bring a
Divine life to humanity as well as to the aim of philosophy to know the
world: it became the instrument by which the Church conquered the
ancient world and educated the modern nations. But this dogma--one
cannot but admire its formation or fail to regard it as a great
achievement of the spirit, which never again in the history of
Christianity has made itself at home with such freedom and boldness in
religion--is the product of a comparatively long history which needs to
be deciphered; for it is obscured by the completed dogma. The Gospel
itself is not dogma, for belief in the Gospel provides room for
knowledge only so far as it is a state of feeling and course of action,
that is a definite form of life. Between practical faith in the Gospel
and the historico-critical account of the Christian religion and its
history, a third element can no longer be thrust in without its coming
into conflict with faith, or with the historical data--the only thing
left is the practical task of defending the faith. But a third element
has been thrust into the history of this religion, viz., dogma, that is,
the philosophical means which were used in early times for the purpose
of making the Gospel intelligible have been fused with the contents of
the Gospel and raised to dogma. This dogma, next to the Church, has
become a real world power, the pivot in the history of the Christian
religion. The transformation of the Christian faith into dogma is indeed
no accident, but has its reason in the spiritual character of the
Christian religion, which at all times will feel the need of a
scientific apologetic.[10] But the question here is not as to something
indefinite and general, but as to the definite dogma formed in the first
centuries, and binding even yet.
This already touches on the second objection which was raised above,
that dogma, in the given sense of the word, was too narrowly conceived,
and could not in this conception be applied throughout the whole history
of the Church. This objection would only be justified, if our task were
to carry the history of the development of dogma through the whole
history of the Church. But the question is just whether we are right in
proposing such a task. The Greek Church has no history of dogma after
the seven great Councils, and it is incomparably more important to
recognise this fact than to register the theologoumena which were later
on introduced by individual Bishops and scholars in the East, who were
partly influenced by the West. Roman Catholicism in its dogmas, though,
as noted above, these at present do not very clearly characterise it, is
to-day essentially--that is, so far as it is religion--what it was 1500
years ago, viz., Christianity as understood by the ancient world. The
changes which dogma has experienced in the course of its development in
western Catholicism are certainly deep and radical: they have, in point
of fact, as has been indicated in the text above, modified the position
of the Church towards Christianity as dogma. But as the Catholic Church
herself maintains that she adheres to Christianity in the old dogmatic
sense, this claim of hers cannot be contested. She has embraced new
things and changed her relations to the old, but still preserved the
old. But she has further developed new dogmas according to the scheme of
the old. The decrees of Trent and of the Vatican are formally analogous
to the old dogmas. Here, then, a history of dogma may really be carried
forward to the present day without thereby shewing that the definition
of dogma given above is too narrow to embrace the new doctrines.
Finally, as to Protestantism, it has been briefly explained above why
the changes in Protestant systems of doctrine are not to be taken up
into the history of dogma. Strictly speaking, dogma, as dogma, has had
no development in Protestantism, inasmuch as a secret note of
interrogation has been here associated with it from the very beginning.
But the old dogma has continued to be a power in it, because of its
tendency to look back and to seek for authorities in the past, and
partly in the original unmodified form. The dogmas of the fourth and
fifth centuries have more influence to-day in wide circles of Protestant
Churches than all the doctrines which are concentrated around
justification by faith. Deviations from the latter are borne
comparatively easy, while as a rule, deviations from the former are
followed by notice to quit the Christian communion, that is, by
excommunication. The historian of to-day would have no difficulty in
answering the question whether the power of Protestantism as a Church
lies at present in the elements which it has in common with the old
dogmatic Christianity, or in that by which it is distinguished from it.
Dogma, that is to say, that type of Christianity which was formed in
ecclesiastical antiquity, has not been suppressed even in Protestant
Churches, has really not been modified or replaced by a new conception
of the Gospel. But, on the other hand, who could deny that the
Reformation began to disclose such a conception, and that this new
conception was related in a very different way to the traditional dogma
from that of the new propositions of Augustine to the dogmas handed down
to him? Who could further call in question that, in consequence of the
reforming impulse in Protestantism, the way was opened up for a
conception which does not identify Gospel and dogma, which does not
disfigure the latter by changing or paring down its meaning while
failing to come up to the former? But the historian who has to describe
the formation and changes of dogma can take no part in these
developments. It is a task by itself more rich and comprehensive than
that of the historian of dogma, to portray the diverse conceptions that
have been formed of the Christian religion, to portray how strong men
and weak men, great and little minds have explained the Gospel outside
and inside the frame-work of dogma, and how under the cloak, or in the
province of dogma, the Gospel has had its own peculiar history. But the
more limited theme must not be put aside. For it can in no way be
conducive to historical knowledge to regard as indifferent the peculiar
character of the expression of Christian faith as dogma, and allow the
history of dogma to be absorbed in a general history of the various
conceptions of Christianity. Such a "liberal" view would not agree
either with the teaching of history or with the actual situation of the
Protestant Churches of the present day: for it is, above all, of crucial
importance to perceive that it is a peculiar stage in the development of
the human spirit which is described by dogma. On this stage, parallel
with dogma and inwardly united with it, stands a definite psychology,
metaphysic and natural philosophy, as well as a view of history of a
definite type. This is the conception of the world obtained by antiquity
after almost a thousand years' labour, and it is the same connection of
theoretic perceptions and practical ideals which it accomplished. This
stage on which the Christian religion has also entered we have in no way
as yet transcended, though science has raised itself above it.[11] But
the Christian religion, as it was not born of the culture of the ancient
world, is not for ever chained to it. The form and the new contents
which the Gospel received when it entered into that world have only the
same guarantee of endurance as that world itself. And that endurance is
limited. We must indeed be on our guard against taking episodes for
decisive crises. But every episode carries us forward, and
retrogressions are unable to undo that progress. The Gospel since the
Reformation, in spite of retrograde movements which have not been
wanting, is working itself out of the forms which it was once compelled
to assume, and a true comprehension of its history will also contribute
to hasten this process.
1. The definition given above, p. 17: "Dogma in its conception and
development is a work of the Greek spirit on the soil of the Gospel,"
has frequently been distorted by my critics, as they have suppressed the
words "on the soil of the Gospel." But these words are decisive. The
foolishness of identifying dogma and Greek philosophy never entered my
mind; on the contrary, the peculiarity of ecclesiastical dogma seemed to
me to lie in the very fact that, on the one hand, it gave expression to
Christian Monotheism and the central significance of the person of
Christ, and, on the other hand, comprehended this religious faith and
the historical knowledge connected with it in a philosophic system. I
have given quite as little ground for the accusation that I look upon
the whole development of the history of dogma as a pathological process
within the history of the Gospel. I do not even look upon the history of
the origin of the Papacy as such a process, not to speak of the history
of dogma. But the perception that "everything must happen as it has
happened" does not absolve the historian from the task of ascertaining
the powers which have formed the history, and distinguishing between
original and later, permanent and transitory, nor from the duty of
stating his own opinion.
2. Sabatier has published a thoughtful treatise on "Christian Dogma: its
Nature and its Development." I agree with the author in this, that in
dogma--rightly understood--two elements are to be distinguished, the
religious proceeding from the experience of the individual or from the
religious spirit of the Church, and the intellectual or theoretic. But I
regard as false the statement which he makes, that the intellectual
element in dogma is only the symbolical expression of religious
experience. The intellectual element is itself again to be
differentiated. On the one hand, it certainly is the attempt to give
expression to religious feeling, and so far is symbolical; but, on the
other hand, within the Christian religion it belongs to the essence of
the thing itself, inasmuch as this not only awakens feeling, but has a
quite definite content which determines and should determine the
feeling. In this sense Christianity without dogma, that is, without a
clear expression of its content, is inconceivable. But that does not
justify the unchangeable permanent significance of that dogma which has
once been formed under definite historical conditions.
3. The word "dogmas" (Christian dogmas) is, if I see correctly, used
among us in three different senses, and hence spring all manner of
misconceptions and errors. By dogmas are denoted: (1) The historical
doctrines of the Church. (2) The historical facts on which the Christian
religion is reputedly or actually founded. (3) Every definite exposition
of the contents of Christianity is described as dogmatic. In contrast
with this the attempt has been made in the following presentation to use
dogma only in the sense first stated. When I speak, therefore, of the
decomposition of dogma, I mean by that, neither the historical facts
which really establish the Christian religion, nor do I call in question
the necessity for the Christian and the Church to have a creed. My
criticism refers not to the general genus dogma, but to the species,
viz., the defined dogma, as it was formed on the soil of the ancient
world, and is still a power, though under modifications.
2. _History of the History of Dogma._
The history of dogma as a historical and critical discipline had its
origin in the last century through the works of Mosheim, C. W. F. Walch,
Ernesti, Lessing and Semler. Lange gave to the world in 1796 the first
attempt at a history of dogma as a special branch of theological study.
The theologians of the Early and Mediæval Churches have only transmitted
histories of Heretics and of Literature, regarding dogma as
unchangeable.[12] This presupposition is so much a part of the nature of
Catholicism that it has been maintained till the present day. It is
therefore impossible for a Catholic to make a free, impartial and
scientific investigation of the history of dogma.[13] There have,
indeed, at almost all times before the Reformation, been critical
efforts in the domain of Christianity, especially of western
Christianity, efforts which in some cases have led to the proof of the
novelty and inadmissibility of particular dogmas. But, as a rule, these
efforts were of the nature of a polemic against the dominant Church.
They scarcely prepared the way for, far less produced a historical view
of, dogmatic tradition.[14] The progress of the sciences[15] and the
conflict with Protestantism could here, for the Catholic Church, have no
other effect than that of leading to the collecting, with great
learning, of material for the history of dogma, the establishing of the
_consensus patrum et doctorum_, the exhibition of the necessity of a
continuous explication of dogma, and the description of the history of
heresies pressing in from without, regarded now as unheard-of novelties,
and again as old enemies in new masks. The modern Jesuit-Catholic
historian indeed exhibits, in certain circumstances, a manifest
indifference to the task of establishing the _semper idem_ in the faith
of the Church, but this indifference is at present regarded with
disfavour, and, besides, is only an apparent one, as the continuous
though inscrutable guidance of the Church by the infallible teaching of
the Pope is the more emphatically maintained.[16]
It may be maintained that the Reformation opened the way for a critical
treatment of the history of dogma.[17] But even in Protestant Churches,
at first, historical investigations remained under the ban of the
confessional system of doctrine and were used only for polemics.[18]
Church history itself up to the 18th century was not regarded as a
theological discipline in the strict sense of the word, and the history
of dogma existed only within the sphere of dogmatics as a collection of
testimonies to the truth, _theologia patristica_. It was only after the
material had been prepared in the course of the 16th and 17th centuries
by scholars of the various Church parties, and, above all, by excellent
editions of the Fathers,[19] and after Pietism had exhibited the
difference between Christianity and Ecclesiasticism, and had begun to
treat the traditional confessional structure of doctrine with
indifference,[20] that a critical investigation was entered on.
The man who was the Erasmus of the 18th century, neither orthodox nor
pietistic, nor rationalistic, but capable of appreciating all these
tendencies, familiar with English, French and Italian literature,
influenced by the spirit of the new English Science,[21] while avoiding
all statements of it that would endanger positive Christianity. John
Lorenz Mosheim, treated Church history in the spirit of his great
teacher Leibnitz,[22] and by impartial analysis, living reproduction,
and methodical artistic form raised it for the first time to the rank of
a science. In his monographic works also, he endeavours to examine
impartially the history of dogma, and to acquire the historic
stand-point between the estimate of the orthodox dogmatists and that of
Gottfried Arnold Mosheim, averse to all fault-finding and polemic, and
abhorring theological crudity as much as pietistic narrowness and
undevout Illuminism, aimed at an actual correct knowledge of history, in
accordance with the principle of Leibnitz, that the valuable elements
which are everywhere to be found in history must be sought out and
recognised. And the richness and many-sidedness of his mind qualified
him for gaining such a knowledge. But his latitudinarian dogmatic
stand-point as well as the anxiety to awaken no controversy or endanger
the gradual naturalising of a new science and culture, caused him to put
aside the most important problems of the history of dogma and devote his
attention to political Church history as well as to the more indifferent
historical questions. The opposition of two periods which he endeavoured
peacefully to reconcile could not in this way be permanently set
aside.[23] In Mosheim's sense, but without the spirit of that great man,
C.W.F. Walch taught on the subject and described the religious
controversies of the Church with an effort to be impartial, and has thus
made generally accessible the abundant material collected by the
diligence of earlier scholars.[24] Walch, moreover, in the "Gedanken von
der Geschichte der Glaubenslehre," 1756, gave the impulse that was
needed to fix attention on the history of dogma as a special discipline.
The stand-point which he took up was still that of subjection to
ecclesiastical dogma, but without confessional narrowness. Ernesti in
his programme of the year 1759. "De theologiae historicae et dogmaticae
conjungendae necessitate," gave eloquent expression to the idea that
Dogmatic is a positive science which has to take its material from
history, but that history itself requires a devoted and candid study, on
account of our being separated from the earlier epochs by a complicated
tradition.[25] He has also shewn in his celebrated "Antimuratorius" that
an impartial and critical investigation of the problems of the history
of dogma, might render the most effectual service to the polemic against
the errors of Romanism. Besides, the greater part of the dogmas were
already unintelligible to Ernesti, and yet during his lifetime the way
was opened up for that tendency in theology, which prepared in Germany
by Chr. Thomasius, supported by English writers, drew the sure
principles of faith and life from what is called reason, and therefore
was not only indifferent to the system of dogma, but felt it more and
more to be the tradition of unreason and of darkness. Of the three
requisites of a historian, knowledge of his subject, candid criticism,
and a capacity for finding himself at home in foreign interests and
ideas, the Rationalistic Theologians who had outgrown Pietism and passed
through the school of the English Deists and of Wolf, no longer
possessed the first, a knowledge of the subject, to the same extent as
some scholars of the earlier generation. The second, free criticism,
they possessed in the high degree guaranteed by the conviction of having
a rational religion; the third, the power of comprehension, only in a
very limited measure. They had lost the idea of positive religion, and
with it a living and just conception of the history of religion.
In the history of thought there is always need for an apparently
disproportionate expenditure of power, in order to produce an advance in
the development. And it would appear as if a certain self-satisfied
narrow-mindedness within the progressing ideas of the present, as well
as a great measure of inability even to understand the past and
recognise its own dependence on it, must make its appearance, in order
that a whole generation may be freed from the burden of the past. It
needed the absolute certainty which Rationalism had found in the
religious philosophy of the age, to give sufficient courage to subject
to historical criticism the central dogmas on which the Protestant
system as well as the Catholic finally rests, the dogmas of the canon
and inspiration on the one hand, and of the Trinity and Christology on
the other. The work of Lessing in this respect had no great results. We
to-day see in his theological writings the most important contribution
to the understanding of the earliest history of dogma, which that period
supplies; but we also understand why its results were then so trifling.
This was due, not only to the fact that Lessing was no theologian by
profession, or that his historical observations were couched in
aphorisms, but because like Leibnitz and Mosheim, he had a capacity for
appreciating the history of religion which forbade him to do violence to
that history or to sit in judgment on it, and because his philosophy in
its bearings on the case allowed him to seek no more from his materials
than an assured understanding of them, in a word again, because he was
no theologian. The Rationalists, on the other hand, who within certain
limits were no less his opponents than the orthodox, derived the
strength of their opposition to the systems of dogma, as the Apologists
of the second century had already done with regard to polytheism, from
their religious belief and their inability to estimate these systems
historically. That, however, is only the first impression which one gets
here from the history, and it is everywhere modified by other
impressions. In the first place, there is no mistaking a certain
latitudinarianism in several prominent theologians of the rationalistic
tendency. Moreover, the attitude to the canon was still frequently, in
virtue of the Protestant principle of scripture, an uncertain one, and
it was here chiefly that the different types of rational supernaturalism
were developed. Then, with all subjection to the dogmas of Natural
religion, the desire for a real true knowledge was unfettered and
powerfully excited. Finally, very significant attempts were made by some
rationalistic theologians to explain in a real historical way the
phenomena of the history of dogma, and to put an authentic and
historical view of that history in the place of barren pragmatic or
philosophic categories.
The special zeal with which the older rationalism applied itself to the
investigation of the canon, either putting aside the history of dogma,
or treating it merely in the frame-work of Church history, has only been
of advantage for the treatment of our subject. It first began to be
treated with thoroughness when the historical and critical interests had
become more powerful than the rationalistic. After the important labours
of Semler which here, above all, have wrought in the interests of
freedom,[26] and after some monographs on the history of dogma,[27] S.G.
Lange for the first time treated the history of dogma as a special
subject.[28] Unfortunately, his comprehensively planned and carefully
written work, which shews a real understanding of the early history of
dogma, remains incomplete. Consequently, W. Münscher, in his learned
manual, which was soon followed by his compendium of the history of
dogma, was the first to produce a complete presentation of our
subject.[29] Münscher's compendium is a counterpart to Giesler's Church
history; it shares with that the merit of drawing from the sources,
intelligent criticism and impartiality, but with a thorough knowledge of
details it fails to impart a real conception of the development of
ecclesiastical dogma. The division of the material into particular
_loci_, which, in three sections, is carried through the whole history
of the Church, makes insight into the whole Christian conception of the
different epochs impossible, and the prefixed "General History of
Dogma," is far too sketchily treated to make up for that defect.
Finally, the connection between the development of dogma and the general
ideas of the time is not sufficiently attended to. A series of manuals
followed the work of Münscher, but did not materially advance the
study.[30] The compendium of Baumgarten Crusius,[31] and that of F.K.
Meier,[32] stand out prominently among them. The work of the former is
distinguished by its independent learning as well as by the discernment
of the author that the centre of gravity of the subject lies in the
so-called general history of dogma.[33] The work of Meier goes still
further, and accurately perceives that the division into a general and
special history of dogma must be altogether given up, while it is also
characterised by an accurate setting and proportional arrangement of the
facts.[34]
The great spiritual revolution at the beginning of our century, which
must in every respect be regarded as a reaction against the efforts of
the rationalistic epoch, changed also the conceptions of the Christian
religion and its history. It appears therefore plainly in the treatment
of the history of dogma. The advancement and deepening of Christian
life, the zealous study of the past, the new philosophy which no longer
thrust history aside, but endeavoured to appreciate it in all its
phenomena as the history of the spirit, all these factors co-operated in
begetting a new temper, and accordingly, a new estimate of religion
proper and of its history. There were three tendencies in theology that
broke up rationalism; that which was identified with the names of
Schleiermacher and Neander, that of the Hegelians, and that of the
Confessionalists. The first two were soon divided into a right and a
left, in so far as they included conservative and critical interests
from their very commencement. The conservative elements have been used
for building up the modern confessionalism, which in its endeavours to
go back to the Reformers has never actually got beyond the theology of
the Formula of Concord, the stringency of which it has no doubt
abolished by new theologoumena and concessions of all kinds. All these
tendencies have in common the effort to gain a real comprehension of
history and be taught by it, that is, to allow the idea of development
to obtain its proper place, and to comprehend the power and sphere of
the individual. In this and in the deeper conception of the nature and
significance of positive religion, lay the advance beyond Rationalism.
And yet the wish to understand history, has in great measure checked the
effort to obtain a true knowledge of it, and the respect for history as
the greatest of teachers, has not resulted in that supreme regard for
facts which distinguished the critical rationalism. The speculative
pragmatism, which, in the Hegelian School, was put against the "lower
pragmatism," and was rigorously carried out with the view of exhibiting
the unity of history, not only neutralised the historical material, in
so far as its concrete definiteness was opposed, as phenomenon, to the
essence of the matter, but also curtailed it in a suspicious way, as may
be seen, for example, in the works of Baur. Moreover, the universal
historical suggestions which the older history of dogma had given were
not at all, or only very little regarded. The history of dogma was, as
it were, shut out by the watchword of the immanent development of the
spirit in Christianity. The disciples of Hegel, both of the right and of
the left, were, and still are, agreed in this watch-word,[35] the
working out of which, including an apology for the course of the history
of dogma, must be for the advancement of conservative theology. But at
the basis of the statement that the history of Christianity is the
history of the spirit, there lay further a very one-sided conception of
the nature of religion, which confirmed the false idea that religion is
theology. It will always, however, be the imperishable merit of Hegel's
great disciple, F. Chr. Baur, in theology, that he was the first who
attempted to give a uniform general idea of the history of dogma, and to
live through the whole process in himself, without renouncing the
critical acquisitions of the 18th century.[36] His brilliantly written
manual of the history of dogma, in which the history of this branch of
theological science is relatively treated with the utmost detail, is,
however, in material very meagre, and shews in the very first
proposition of the historical presentation an abstract view of
history.[37] Neander, whose "Christliche Dogmengeschichte," 1857, is
distinguished by the variety of its points of view, and keen
apprehension of particular forms of doctrine, shews a far more lively
and therefore a far more just conception of the Christian religion. But
the general plan of the work, (General history of dogma--_loci_, and
these according to the established scheme), proves that Neander has not
succeeded in giving real expression to the historical character of the
study, and in attaining a clear insight into the progress of the
development.[38]
Kliefoth's thoughtful and instructive, "Einleitung in die
Dogmengeschichte," 1839, contains the programme for the conception of
the history of dogma characteristic of the modern confessional theology.
In this work the Hegelian view of history, not without being influenced
by Schleiermacher, is so represented as to legitimise a return to the
theology of the Fathers. In the successive great epochs of the Church
several circles of dogmas have been successively fixed, so that the
respective doctrines have each time been adequately formulated.[39]
Disturbances of the development are due to the influence of sin. Apart
from this, Kliefoth's conception is in point of form equal to that of
Baur and Strauss, in so far as they also have considered the theology
represented by themselves as the goal of the whole historical
development. The only distinction is that, according to them, the next
following stage always cancels the preceding, while according to
Kliefoth, who, moreover, has no desire to give effect to mere
traditionalism, the new knowledge is added to the old. The new edifice
of true historical knowledge, according to Kliefoth, is raised on the
ruins of Traditionalism, Scholasticism, Pietism, Rationalism and
Mysticism. Thomasius (Das Bekenntniss der evang-luth. Kirche in der
Consequenz seines Princips, 1848) has, after the example of Sartorius,
attempted to justify by history the Lutheran confessional system of
doctrine from another side, by representing it as the true mean between
Catholicism and the Reformed Spiritualism. This conception has found
much approbation in the circles of Theologians related to Thomasius, as
against the Union Theology. But Thomasius is entitled to the merit of
having produced a Manual of the history of dogma which represents in the
most worthy manner,[40] the Lutheran confessional view of the history of
dogma. The introduction, as well as the selection and arrangement of his
material, shews that Thomasius has learned much from Baur. The way in
which he distinguishes between central and peripheral dogmas is,
accordingly, not very appropriate, especially for the earliest period.
The question as to the origin of dogma and theology is scarcely even
touched by him. But he has an impression that the central dogmas contain
for every period the whole of Christianity, and that they must therefore
be apprehended in this sense.[41] The presentation is dominated
throughout by the idea of the self-explication of dogma, though a
malformation has to be admitted for the middle ages;[42] and therefore
the formation of dogma is almost everywhere justified as the testimony
of the Church represented as completely hypostatised, and the outlook on
the history of the time is put into the background. But narrow and
insufficient as the complete view here is, the excellences of the work
in details are great, in respect of exemplary clearness of presentation,
and the discriminating knowledge and keen comprehension of the author
for religious problems. The most important work done by Thomasius is
contained in his account of the history of Christology.
In his outlines of the history of Christian dogma (Grundriss der
Christl. Dogmengesch. 1870), which unfortunately has not been carried
beyond the first part (Patristic period), F. Nitzsch, marks an advance
in the history of our subject. The advance lies, on the one hand, in the
extensive use he makes of monographs on the history of dogma, and on the
other hand, in the arrangement. Nitzsch has advanced a long way on the
path that was first entered by F.K. Meier, and has arranged his material
in a way that far excels all earlier attempts. The general and special
aspects of the history of dogma are here almost completely worked into
one,[43] and in the main divisions, "Grounding of the old Catholic
Church doctrine," and "Development of the old Catholic Church doctrine,"
justice is at last done to the most important problem which the history
of dogma presents, though in my opinion the division is not made at the
right place, and the problem is not so clearly kept in view in the
execution as the arrangement would lead one to expect.[44] Nitzsch has
freed himself from that speculative view of the history of dogma which
reads ideas into it. No doubt idea and motive on the one hand, form and
expression on the other, must be distinguished for every period. But the
historian falls into vagueness as soon as he seeks and professes to find
behind the demonstrable ideas and aims which have moved a period, others
of which, as a matter of fact, that period itself knew nothing at all.
Besides, the invariable result of that procedure is to concentrate the
attention on the theological and philosophical points of dogma, and
either neglect or put a new construction on the most concrete and
important, the expression of the religious faith itself. Rationalism has
been reproached with "throwing out the child with the bath," but this is
really worse, for here the child is thrown out while the bath is
retained. Every advance in the future treatment of our subject will
further depend on the effort to comprehend the history of dogma without
reference to the momentary opinions of the present, and also on keeping
it in closest connection with the history of the Church, from which it
can never be separated without damage. We have something to learn on
this point from rationalistic historians of dogma.[45] But progress is
finally dependent on a true perception of what the Christian religion
originally was, for this perception alone enables us to distinguish that
which sprang out of the inherent power of Christianity from that which
it has assimilated in the course of its history. For the historian,
however, who does not wish to serve a party, there are two standards in
accordance with which he may criticise the history of dogma. He may
either, as far as this is possible, compare it with the Gospel, or he
may judge it according to the historical conditions of the time and the
result. Both ways can exist side by side, if only they are not mixed up
with one another. Protestantism has in principle expressly recognised
the first, and it will also have the power to bear its conclusions; for
the saying of Tertullian still holds good in it; "Nihil veritas
erubescit nisi solummodo abscondi." The historian who follows this
maxim, and at the same time has no desire to be wiser than the facts,
will, while furthering science, perform the best service also to every
Christian community that desires to build itself upon the Gospel.
After the appearance of the first and second editions of this Work,
Loofs published, "Leitfaden für seine Vorlesungen über
Dogmengeschichte," Halle, 1889, and in the following year, "Leitfaden
zum Studium der Dogmengeschichte, zunächst für seine Vorlesungen,"
(second and enlarged edition of the first-named book). The work in its
conception of dogma and its history comes pretty near that stated above,
and it is distinguished by independent investigation and excellent
selection of material. I myself have published a "Grundriss der
Dogmengeschichte," 2 Edit, in one vol. 1893. (Outlines of the history of
dogma, English translation, Hodder and Stoughton). That this has not
been written in vain, I have the pleasure of seeing from not a few
notices of professional colleagues. I may mention the Church history of
Herzog in the new revision by Koffmane, the first vol. of the Church
history of Karl Müller, the first vol. of the Symbolik of Kattenbusch,
and Kaftan's work, "The truth of the Christian religion." Wilhelm
Schmidt, "Der alte Glaube und die Wahrheit des Christenthums," 1891, has
attempted to furnish a refutation in principle of Kaftan's work.
[Footnote 1: Weizsäcker, Gött. Gel. Anz. 1886, p. 823 f., says, "It is a
question whether we should limit the account of the genesis of Dogma to
the Antenicene period and designate all else as a development of that.
This is undoubtedly correct so long as our view is limited to the
history of dogma of the Greek Church in the second period, and the
development of it by the Oecumenical Synods. On the other hand, the
Latin Church, in its own way and in its own province, becomes productive
from the days of Augustine onwards; the formal signification of dogma in
the narrower sense becomes different in the middle ages. Both are
repeated in a much greater measure through the Reformation. We may
therefore, in opposition to that division into genesis and development,
regard the whole as a continuous process, in which the contents as well
as the formal authority of dogma are in process of continuous
development." This view is certainly just, and I think is indicated by
myself in what follows. We have to decide here, as so often elsewhere in
our account, between rival points of view. The view favoured by me has
the advantage of making the nature of dogma clearly appear as a product
of the mode of thought of the early church, and that is what it has
remained, in spite of all changes both in form and substance, till the
present day.]
[Footnote 2: See Kattenbusch. Luther's Stellung zu den ökumenischen
Symbolen, 1883.]
[Footnote 3: See Ritschl, Geschichte des Pietismus. I. p. 80 ff., 93 ff.
II. p. 60 f.: 88 f. "The Lutheran view of life did not remain pure and
undefiled, but was limited and obscured by the preponderance of dogmatic
interests. Protestantism was not delivered from the womb of the western
Church of the middle ages in full power and equipment, like Athene from
the head of Jupiter. The incompleteness of its ethical view, the
splitting up of its general conceptions into a series of particular
dogmas, the tendency to express its beliefs as a hard and fast whole;
are defects which soon made Protestantism appear to disadvantage in
comparison with the wealth of Mediæval theology and asceticism ... The
scholastic form of pure doctrine is really only the provisional, and not
the final form of Protestantism."]
[Footnote 4: It is very evident how the mediæval and old catholic dogmas
were transformed in the view which Luther originally took of them. In
this view we must remember that he did away with all the presuppositions
of dogma, the infallible Apostolic Canon of Scripture, the infallible
teaching function of the Church, and the infallible Apostolic doctrine
and constitution. On this basis dogmas can only be utterances which do
not support faith, but are supported by it. But, on the other hand, his
opposition to all the Apocryphal saints which the Church had created,
compelled him to emphasise faith alone, and to give it a firm basis in
scripture, in order to free it from the burden of tradition. Here then,
very soon, first by Melanchthon, a summary of _articuli fidei_ was
substituted for the faith, and the scriptures recovered their place as a
rule. Luther himself, however, is responsible for both, and so it came
about that very soon the new evangelic standpoint was explained almost
exclusively by the "abolition of abuses", and by no means so surely by
the transformation of the whole doctrinal tradition. The classic
authority for this is the Augsburg confession ("hæc fere summa est
doctrina apud suos, in qua cerni potest nihil inesse, quod discrepet a
scripturis vel ab ecclesia Catholica vel ab ecclesia Romana ... sed
dissensio est de quibusdam abusibus"). The purified catholic doctrine
has since then become the palladium of the Reformation Churches. The
refuters of the Augustana have justly been unwilling to admit the mere
"purifying," but have noted in addition that the Augustana does not say
everything that was urged by Luther and the Doctors (see Ficker, Die
Konfutation des Augsburgischen Bekenntnisse, 1891). At the same time,
however, the Lutheran Church, though not so strongly as the English,
retained the consciousness of being the true Catholics. But, as the
history of Protestantism proves, the original impulse has not remained
inoperative. Though Luther himself all his life measured his personal
Christian standing by an entirely different standard than subjection to
a law of faith; yet, however presumptuous the words may sound, we might
say that in the complicated struggle that was forced on him, he did not
always clearly understand his own faith.]
[Footnote 5: In the modern Romish Church, Dogma is, above all, a
judicial regulation which one has to submit to, and in certain
circumstances submission alone is sufficient, _fides implicita_. Dogma
is thereby just as much deprived of its original sense and its original
authority as by the demand of the Reformers, that every thing should be
based upon a clear understanding of the Gospel. Moreover, the changed
position of the Romish Church towards dogma is also shewn by the fact
that it no longer gives a plain answer to the question as to what dogma
is. Instead of a series of dogmas definitely defined, and of equal
value, there is presented an infinite multitude of whole and half
dogmas, doctrinal directions, pious opinions, probable theological
propositions, etc. It is often a very difficult question whether a
solemn decision has or has not already been taken on this or that
statement, or whether such a decision is still necessary. Everything
that must be believed is nowhere stated, and so one sometimes hears in
Catholic circles the exemplary piety of a cleric praised with the words
that "he believes more than is necessary." The great dogmatic conflicts
within the Catholic Church, since the Council of Trent, have been
silenced by arbitrary Papal pronouncements and doctrinal directions.
Since one has simply to accommodate oneself to these as laws, it once
more appears clear that dogma has become a judicial regulation,
administered by the Pope, which is carried out in an administrative way
and loses itself in an endless casuistry. We do not mean by this to deny
that dogma has a decided value for the pious Catholic as a Summary of
the faith. But in the Catholic Church it is no longer piety, but
obedience that is decisive. The solidarity with the orthodox Protestants
may be explained by political reasons, in order from political reasons
again, to condemn, where it is necessary, all Protestants as heretics
and revolutionaries.]
[Footnote 6: See the discussions of Biedermann (Christliche Dogmatik. 2
Ed. p. 150 f.) about what he calls the law of stability in the history
of religion.]
[Footnote 7: See Ritschl's discussion of the methods of the early
histories of dogma in the Jahrb. f. Deutsche Theologie. 1871, p. 181
ff.]
[Footnote 8: In Catholicism, the impulse which proceeded from Augustine
has finally proved powerless to break the traditional conception of
Christianity, as the Council of Trent and the decrees of the Vatican
have shewn. For that very reason the development of the Roman Catholic
Church doctrine belongs to the history of dogma. Protestantism must,
however, under all circumstances be recognised as a new thing, which
indeed in none of its phases has been free from contradictions.]
[Footnote 9: Here then begins the ecclesiastical theology which takes as
its starting-point the finished dogma it strives to prove or harmonise,
but very soon, as experience has shewn, loses its firm footing in such
efforts and so occasions new crises.]
[Footnote 10: Weizsäcker, Apostolic Age, Vol. I. p. 123. "Christianity
as religion is absolutely inconceivable without theology; first of all,
for the same reasons which called forth the Pauline theology. As a
religion it cannot be separated from the religion of its founder, hence
not from historical knowledge. And as Monotheism and belief in a world
purpose, it is the religion of reason with the inextinguishable impulse
of thought. The first gentile Christians therewith gained the proud
consciousness of a gnosis." But of ecclesiastical Christianity which
rests on dogma ready made, as produced by an earlier epoch, this
conception holds good only in a very qualified way; and of the vigorous
Christian piety of the earliest and of every period, it may also be said
that it no less feels the impulse to think against reason than with
reason.]
[Footnote 11: In this sense it is correct to class dogmatic theology as
historical theology, as Schleiermacher has done. If we maintain that for
practical reasons it must be taken out of the province of historical
theology, then we must make it part of practical theology. By dogmatic
theology here, we understand the exposition of Christianity in the form
of Church doctrine, as it has been shaped since the second century. As
distinguished from it, a branch of theological study must be conceived
which harmonises the historical exposition of the Gospel with the
general state of knowledge of the time. The Church can as little
dispense with such a discipline as there can be a Christianity which
does not account to itself for its basis and spiritual contents.]
[Footnote 12: See Eusebius' preface to his Church History. Eusebius in
this work set himself a comprehensive task, but in doing so he never in
the remotest sense thought of a history of dogma. In place of that we
have a history of men "who from generation to generation proclaimed the
word of God orally or by writing," and a history of those who by their
passion for novelties, plunged themselves into the greatest errors.]
[Footnote 13: See for example, B. Schwane, Dogmengesch. d.
Vornicänischen Zeit, 1862, where the sense in which dogmas have no
historical side is first expounded, and then it is shewn that dogmas,
"notwithstanding, present a certain side which permits a historical
consideration, because in point of fact they have gone through
historical developments." But these historical developments present
themselves simply either as solemn promulgations and explications, or as
private theological speculations.]
[Footnote 14: If we leave out of account the Marcionite gnostic
criticism of ecclesiastical Christianity, Paul of Samosata and Marcellus
of Ancyra may be mentioned as men who, in the earliest period,
criticised the apologetic Alexandrian theology which was being
naturalised (see the remarkable statement of Marcellus in Euseb. C.
Marc. I.4: [Greek: to tou dogmatos onoma tês anthrôpinês echetai boulês
te kai gnômês k.t.l.] which I have chosen as the motto of this book). We
know too little of Stephen Gobarus (VI. cent.) to enable us to estimate
his review of the doctrine of the Church and its development (Photius
Bibl. 232). With regard to the middle ages (Abelard "Sic et Non"), see
Reuter, Gesch. der relig. Aufklärung im MA., 1875. Hahn Gesch, der
Ketzer, especially in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries, 3 vols., 1845.
Keller, Die Reformation und die alteren Reform-Parteien, 1885.]
[Footnote 15: See Voigt, Die Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums.
2 vols., 1881, especially vol. II p. 1 ff. 363 ff. 494 ff. ("Humanism
and the science of history"). The direct importance of humanism for
illuminating the history of the middle ages is very little, and least of
all for the history of the Church and of dogma. The only prominent works
here are those of Saurentius Valla and Erasmus. The criticism of the
scholastic dogmas of the Church and the Pope began as early as the 12th
century. For the attitude of the Renaissance to religion, see
Burckhardt, Die Cultur der Renaissance. 2 vols., 1877.]
[Footnote 16: See Holtzmann, Kanon und Tradition, 1859, Hase, Handbuch
der protest. Polemik, 1878. Joh Delitszch, Das Lehrsystem der röm.
Kirche, 1875. New revelations, however, are rejected, and bold
assumptions leading that way are not favoured: See Schwane, above work
p. 11: "The content of revelation is not enlarged by the decisions or
teaching of the Church, nor are new revelations added in course of time
... Christian truth cannot therefore in its content be completed by the
Church, nor has she ever claimed the right of doing so, but always where
new designations or forms of dogma became necessary for the putting down
of error or the instruction of the faithful, she would always teach what
she had received in Holy scripture or in the oral tradition of the
Apostles." Recent Catholic accounts of the history of dogma are Klee,
Lehrbuch der D.G. 2 vols, 1837, (Speculative). Schwane, Dogmengesch. der
Vornicänischen Zeit, 1862, der patrist Zeit, 1869; der Mittleren Zeit,
1882. Bach, Die D.G. des MA. 1873. There is a wealth of material for the
history of dogma in Kuhn's Dogmatîk, as well as in the great
controversial writings occasioned by the celebrated work of Bellarmin;
Disputationes de controversiis Christianæ fidei adversus hujus temporis
hæreticos, 1581-1593. It need not be said that, in spite of their
inability to treat the history of dogma historically and critically,
much may be learned from these works, and some other striking monographs
of Roman Catholic scholars. But everything in history that is fitted to
shake the high antiquity and unanimous attestation of the Catholic
dogmas, becomes here a problem, the solution of which is demanded,
though indeed its carrying out often requires a very exceptional
intellectual subtlety.]
[Footnote 17: Historical interest in Protestantism has grown up around
the questions as to the power of the Pope, the significance of Councils,
or the Scripturalness of the doctrines set up by them, and about the
meaning of the Lord's supper, of the conception of it by the Church
Fathers; (see Oecolampadius and Melanchthon.) Protestants were too sure
that the doctrine of justification was taught in the scriptures to feel
any need of seeking proofs for it by studies in the history of dogma,
and Luther also dispensed with the testimony of history for the dogma of
the Lord's supper. The task of shewing how far and in what way Luther
and the Reformers compounded with history has not even yet been taken
up. And yet there may be found in Luther's writings surprising and
excellent critical comments on the history of dogma and the theology of
the Fathers, as well as genial conceptions which have certainly remained
inoperative; see especially the treatise "Von den Conciliis und
Kirchen," and his judgment on different Church Fathers. In the first
edition of the _Loci_ of Melanchthon we have also critical material for
estimating the old systems of dogma. Calvin's depreciatory estimate of
the Trinitarian and Christological Formula, which, however, he retracted
at a later period is well known.]
[Footnote 18: Protestant Church history was brought into being by the
Interim, Flacius being its father, see his Catalogus Testium Veritatis,
and the so called Magdeburg Centuries 1559-1574, also Jundt Les
Centuries de Magdebourg Paris, 1883 Von Engelhardt (Christenthum
Justins, p. 9 ff.) has drawn attention to the estimate of Justin in the
Centuries, and has justly insisted on the high importance of this first
attempt at a criticism of the Church Fathers Khefoth (Eml. in. d. D.G.
1839) has the merit of pointing out the somewhat striking judgment of A.
Hyperius on the history of dogma Chemnitz, Examen concilii Tridentini,
1565 Forbesius a Corse (a Scotsman) Instructiones historico-theologiæ de
doctrina Christiana 1645.]
[Footnote 19: The learning, the diligence in collecting, and the
carefulness of the Benedictines and Maurians, as well as of English
Dutch and French theologians, such as Casaubon, Vossius, Pearson,
Dallaus Spanheim, Grabe, Basnage, etc. have never since been equalled,
far less surpassed. Even in the literary historical and higher criticism
these scholars have done splendid work, so far as the confessional
dogmas did not come into question]
[Footnote 20: See especially, G. Arnold, Unpartheyische Kirchen- und
Ketzerhistorie, 1699, also Baur, Epochen der kirchlichen
Geschichtsschreibung p. 84 ff., Floring G. Arnold als Kirchenhistoriker
Darmstadt, 1883. The latter determines correctly the measure of Arnold's
importance. His work was the direct preparation for an impartial
examination of the history of dogma however partial it was in itself
Pietism, here and there, after Spener, declared war against scholastic
dogmatics as a hindrance to piety, and in doing so broke the ban under
which the knowledge of history lay captive.]
[Footnote 21: The investigations of the so-called English Deists about
the Christian religion contain the first, and to some extent a very
significant free-spirited attempt at a critical view of the history of
dogma (see Lechler, History of English Deism, 1841). But the criticism
is an abstract rarely a historical one. Some very learned works bearing
on the history of dogma were written in England against the position of
the Deists especially by Lardner; see also at an earlier time Bull,
Defensio fidei nic.]
[Footnote 22: Calixtus of Helmstadt was the forerunner of Leibnitz with
regard to Church history. But the merit of having recognised the main
problem of the history of dogma does not belong to Calixtus. By pointing
out what Protestantism and Catholicism had in common he did not in any
way clear up the historico-critical problem. On the other hand, the
_Consensus repetitus_ of the Wittenberg theologians shews what
fundamental questions Calixtus had already stirred.]
[Footnote 23: Among the numerous historical writings of Mosheim may be
mentioned specially his Dissert ad hist Eccles pertinentes 2 vols.
1731-1741, as well as the work "De rebus Christianorum ante Constantinum
M Commentarii," 1753; see also "Institutiones hist Eccl" last Edition,
1755.]
[Footnote 24: Walch, "Entwurf einer vollständigen Historie der
Ketzereien, Spaltungen und Religionsstreitigkeiten bis auf die Zeiten
der Reformation." 11 Thle (incomplete), 1762-1785. See also his "Entwurf
einer vollständigen Historie der Kirchenversammlungen" 1759, as well as
numerous monographs on the history of dogma. Such were already produced
by the older Walch, whose "Histor. theol Einleitung in die
Religionsstreitigkeiten der Ev. Luth. Kirche," 5 vols. 1730-1739, and
"Histor.-theol. Einleit. in die Religionsstreitigkeiten welche
sonderlich ausser der Ev Luth. Kirche entstanden sind 5 Thle",
1733-1736, had already put polemics behind the knowledge of history (see
Gass. "Gesch. der protest. Dogmatik," 3rd Vol. p. 205 ff).]
[Footnote 25: Opusc. p. 576 f.: "Ex quo fit, ut nullo modo in
theologicis, quæ omnia e libris antiquis hebraicis, grascis, latinis
ducuntur, possit aliquis bene in definiendo versari et a peccatis multis
et magnis sibi cavere, nisi litteras et historiam assumat." The title of
a programme of Crusius, Ernesti's opponent, "De dogmatum Christianorum
historia cum probatione dogmatum non confundenda," 1770, is significant
of the new insight which was steadily making way.]
[Footnote 26: Semler, Einleitung zu Baumgartens evang. Glaubenslehre,
1759: also Geschichte der Glaubenslehre, zu Baumgartens Untersuch.
theol. Streitigkeiten, 1762-1764. Semler paved the way for the view that
dogmas have arisen and been gradually developed under definite
historical conditions. He was the first to grasp the problem of the
relation of Catholicism to early Christianity, because he freed the
early Christian documents from the fetters of the Canon. Schröckh
(Christl. Kirchengesch., 1786,) in the spirit of Semler described with
impartiality and care the changes of the dogmas.]
[Footnote 27: Rössler, Lehrbegriff der Christlichen Kirche in den 3
ersten Jahrh. 1775; also, Arbeiten by Burscher, Heinrich, Stäudlin,
etc., see especially, Löffler's "Abhandlung welche eine kurze
Darstellung der Entstehungsart der Dreieinigkeit enthält," 1792, in the
translation of Souverain's Le Platonisme devoilé, 1700. The question as
to the Platonism of the Fathers, this fundamental question of the
history of dogma, was raised even by Luther and Flacius, and was very
vigorously debated at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th
centuries, after the Socinians had already affirmed it strongly. The
question once more emerges on German soil in the church history of G.
Arnold, but cannot be said to have received the attention it deserves in
the 150 years that have followed (see the literature of the controversy
in Tzschirner, Fall des Heidenthums, p. 580 f.). Yet the problem was
first thrust aside by the speculative view of the history of
Christianity.]
[Footnote 28: Lange. Ausführ. Gesch. der Dogmen, oder der Glaubenslehre
der Christl. Kirche nach den Kirchenväter ausgearbeitet. 1796.]
[Footnote 29: Münscher, Handb. d. Christl. D.G. 4 vols. first 6
Centuries 1797-1809; Lehrbuch, 1st Edit. 1811; 3rd. Edit. edited by v
Cölln, Hupfeld and Neudecker, 1832-1838. Planck's epoch-making work:
Gesch. der Veränderungen und der Bildung unseres protestantischen
Lehrbegriffs. 6 vols. 1791-1800, had already for the most part appeared.
Contemporary with Münscher are Wundemann, Gesch. d. Christl.
Glaubenslehren vom Zeitalter des Athanasius bis auf Gregor. d. Gr. 2
Thle. 1789-1799; Münter, Handbuch der alteren Christl. D.G. hrsg. von
Ewers, 2 vols. 1802-1804; Stäudlin, Lehrbuch der Dogmatik und
Dogmengeschichte, 1800, last Edition 1822, and Beck, Comment, hist.
decretorum religionis Christianæ, 1801.]
[Footnote 30: Augusti, Lehrb. d. Christl. D.G. 1805. 4 Edit. 1835.
Berthold, Handb. der D.G. 2 vols. 1822-1823. Schickedanz, Versuch einer
Gesch. d. Christl. Glaubenslehre etc. 1827. Ruperti, Geschichte der
Dogmen, 1831. Lenz, Gesch. der Christl. Dogmen. 2 parts. 1834-1835.
J.G.V. Engelhardt, Dogmengesch. 1839. See also Giesler, Dogmengesch. 2
vols. edited by Redepenning, 1855: also Illgen, Ueber den Werth der
Christl. D.G. 1817.]
[Footnote 31: Baumgarten Crusius, Lehrb. d. Christl. D.G. 1852: also
compendium d. Christl. D.G. 2 parts 1830-1846, the second part edited by
Hase.]
[Footnote 32: Meier, Lehrb. d. D.G. 1840. 2nd Edit. revised by G. Baur
1854.]
[Footnote 33: The "Special History of Dogma" in Baumgarten Crusius, in
which every particular dogma is by itself pursued through the whole
history of the Church, is of course entirely unfruitful. But even the
opinions which are given in the "General History of Dogma," are
frequently very far from the mark, (Cf., e.g., § 14 and p. 67), which is
the more surprising as no one can deny that he takes a scholarly view of
history.]
[Footnote 34: Meier's Lehrbuch is formally and materially a very
important piece of work, the value of which has not been sufficiently
recognised, because the author followed neither the track of Neander nor
of Baur. Besides the excellences noted in the text, may be further
mentioned, that almost everywhere Meier has distinguished correctly
between the history of dogma and the history of theology, and has given
an account only of the former.]
[Footnote 35: Biedermann (Christl Dogmatik 2 Edit 1 vol. p. 332 f) says,
"The history of the development of the Dogma of the Person of Christ
will bring before us step by step the ascent of faith in the Gospel of
Jesus Christ to its metaphysical basis in the nature of his person."
This was the quite normal and necessary way of actual faith and is not
to be reckoned as a confused mixture of heterogeneous philosophical
opinions. The only thing taken from the ideas of contemporary philosophy
was the special material of consciousness in which the doctrine of
Christ's Divinity was at any time expressed. The process of this
doctrinal development was an inward necessary one.]
[Footnote 36: Baur, Lehrbuch der Christl D.G. 1847 3rd Edit. 1867, also
Vorles uber die Christl D.G. edited by F. Baur 1865-68. Further the
Monographs, "Ueber die Christl Lehre v.d. Versohnung in ihrergesch Entw.
1838." Ueber die Christl Lehre v.d. Dreieinigkeit u.d. Menschwerdung,
1841, etc. D.F. Strauss preceded him with his work Die Christl
Glaubenslehre in ihrer gesch Entw 2 vols 1840-41. From the stand-point
of the Hegelian right we have Marheineke Christl D.G. edited by Matthias
and Vatke 1849. From the same stand-point though at the same time
influenced by Schleiermacher Dorner wrote "The History of the Person of
Christ."]
[Footnote 37: See p. 63: "As Christianity appeared in contrast with
Judaism and Heathenism, and could only represent a new and peculiar form
of the religious consciousness in distinction from both reducing the
contrasts of both to a unity in itself, so also the first difference of
tendencies developing themselves within Christianity, must be determined
by the relation in which it stood to Judaism on the one hand, and to
Heathenism on the other." Compare also the very characteristic
introduction to the first volume of the Vorlesungen.]
[Footnote 38: Hagenbach's Manual of the history of dogma might be put
alongside of Neander's work. It agrees with it both in plan and spirit.
But the material of the history of dogma which it offers in
superabundance, seems far less connectedly worked out than by Neander.
In Shedd's history of Christian doctrine the Americans possess a
presentation of the history of dogma worth noting 2 vols 3 Edit 1883.
The work of Fr. Bonifas Hist des Dogmes 2 vols 1886 appeared after the
death of the author and is not important.]
[Footnote 39: No doubt Kliefoth also maintains for each period a stage
of the disintegration of dogma but this is not to be understood in the
ordinary sense of the word. Besides there are ideas in this introduction
which hardly obtain the approval of their author to-day.]
[Footnote 40: Thomasius' Die Christl. Dogmengesch. als Entwickel. Gesch.
des Kirchl. Lehrbegriffs. 2 vols. 1874-76. 2nd Edit intelligently and
carefully edited by Bonwetsch. and Seeberg, 1887. (Seeberg has produced
almost a new work in vol. II). From the same stand-point is the manual
of the history of dogma by H. Schmid, 1859, (in 4th Ed. revised and
transformed into an excellent collection of passages from the sources by
Hauck, 1887), as well as the Luther. Dogmatik (Vol. II 1864: Der
Kirchenglaube) of Kahnis, which, however, subjects particular dogmas to
a freer criticism.]
[Footnote 41: See Vol. 1. p. 14.]
[Footnote 42: See Vol. 1. p. 11. "The first period treats of the
development of the great main dogmas which were to become the basis of
the further development (the Patristic age). The problem of the second
period was, partly to work up this material theologically, and partly to
develop it. But this development, under the influence of the Hierarchy,
fell into false paths, and became partly, at least, corrupt (the age of
Scholasticism), and therefore a reformation was necessary. It was
reserved for this third period to carry back the doctrinal formation
which had become abnormal, to the old sound paths, and on the other
hand, in virtue of the regeneration of the Church which followed, to
deepen it and fashion it according to that form which it got in the
doctrinal systems of the Evangelic Church, while the remaining part
fixed its own doctrine in the decrees of Trent (period of the
Reformation)." This view of history, which, from the Christian
stand-point, will allow absolutely nothing to be said against the
doctrinal formation of the early Church, is a retrogression from the
view of Luther and the writers of the "Centuries," for these were well
aware that the corruption did not first begin in the middle ages.]
[Footnote 43: This fulfils a requirement urged by Weizsäcker (Jahrb. f.
Deutsche Theol 1866 p. 170 ff.)]
[Footnote 44: See Ritschl's Essay, "Ueber die Methode der älteren
Dogmengeschichte" (Jahrb. f. deutsche Theol. 1871 p. 191 ff.) in which
the advance made by Nitzsch is estimated, and at the same time, an
arrangement proposed for the treatment of the earlier history of dogma
which would group the material more clearly and more suitably than has
been done by Nitzsch. After having laid the foundation for a correct
historical estimate of the development of early Christianity in his work
"Entstehung der Alt-Katholischen Kirche", 1857, Ritschl published an
epoch-making study in the history of dogma in his "History of the
doctrine of justification and reconciliation" 2 edit. 1883. We have no
superabundance of good monographs on the history of dogma. There are few
that give such exact information regarding the Patristic period as that
of Von Engelhardt "Ueber das Christenthum Justin's", 1878, and Zahn's
work on Marcellus, 1867. Among the investigators of our age, Renan above
all has clearly recognised that there are only two main periods in the
history of dogma, and that the changes which Christianity experienced
after the establishment of the Catholic Church bear no proportion to the
changes which preceded. His words are as follows (Hist. des origin. du
Christianisme T. VII. p. 503 f.):--the division about the year 180 is
certainly placed too early, regard being had to what was then really
authoritative in the Church.--"Si nous comparons maintenant le
Christianisme, tel qu'il existait vers l'an 180, au Christianisme du IVe
et du Ve, siècle, au Christianisme du moyen âge, au Christianisme de nos
jours, nous trouvons qu'en réalité il s'est augmenté des très peu de
chose dans les siècles qui ont suivis. En 180, le Nouveau Testament est
clos: il ne s'y ajoutera plus un seul livre nouveau(?). Lentement, les
Épitres de Paul out conquis leur place à la suite des Evangiles, dans le
code sacré et dans la liturgie. Quant aux dogmes, rien n'est fixé; mais
le germe de tout existe; presque aucune idée n'apparaitra qui ne puisse
faire valoir des autorités du 1er et du 2e siècles. Il y a du trop, il y
a des contradictions; le travail théologique consistera bien plus à
émonder, à écarter des superfluités qu'à inventer du nouveau. L'Église
laissera tomber une foule de choses mal commencées, elle sortira de bien
des impasses. Elle a encore deux coeurs, pour ainsi dire; elle a
plusieurs têtes; ces anomalies tomberont; mais aucun dogme vraiment
original ne se formera plus." Also the discussions in chapters 28-34, of
the same volume. H. Thiersch (Die Kirche im Apostolischen Zeitalter,
1852) reveals a deep insight into the difference between the spirit of
the New Testament writers and the post-Apostolic Fathers, but he has
overdone these differences and sought to explain them by the
mythological assumption of an Apostasy. A great amount of material for
the history of dogma may be found in the great work of Böhringer, Die
Kirche Christi und ihre Zeugen, oder die Kirchengeschichte in
Biographien. 2 Edit. 1864.]
[Footnote 45: By the connection with general church history we must,
above all, understand, a continuous regard to the world within which the
church has been developed. The most recent works on the history of the
church and of dogma, those of Renan, Overbeck (Anfänge der patristischen
Litteratur), Aube, Von Engelhardt (Justin), Kühn (Minucius Felix). Hatch
("Organization of the early church," and especially his posthumous work
"The influence of Greek ideas and usages upon the Christian Church,"
1890, in which may be found the most ample proof for the conception of
the early history of dogma which is set forth in the following pages),
are in this respect worthy of special note. Deserving of mention also is
R. Rothe, who, in his "Vorlesungen über Kirchengeschichte", edited by
Weingarten, 1875, 2 vols, gave most significant suggestions towards a
really historical conception of the history of the church and of dogma.
To Rothe belongs the undiminished merit of realising thoroughly the
significance of nationality in church history. But the theology of our
century is also indebted for the first scientific conception of
Catholicism, not to Marheineke or Winer, but to Rothe. (See Vol II. pp.
1-11 especially p. 7 f.). "The development of the Christian Church in
the Græco-Roman world was not at the same time a development of that
world by the Church and further by Christianity. There remained, as the
result of the process, nothing but the completed Church. The world which
had built it had made itself bankrupt in doing so." With regard to the
origin and development of the Catholic cultus and constitution, nay,
even of the Ethic (see Luthardt, Die antike Ethik, 1887, preface), that
has been recognised by Protestant scholars, which one always hesitates
to recognise with regard to catholic dogma: see the excellent remarks of
Schwegler, Nachapostolisches Zeitalter. Vol. 1. p. 3 ff. It may be hoped
that an intelligent consideration of early Christian literature will
form the bridge to a broad and intelligent view of the history of dogma.
The essay of Overbeck mentioned above (Histor. Zeitschrift. N. F. XII p.
417 ff.) may be most heartily recommended in this respect. It is very
gratifying to find an investigator so conservative as Sohm, now fully
admitting that "Christian theology grew up in the second and third
centuries, when its foundations were laid for all time (?), the last
great production of the Hellenic Spirit." (Kirchengeschichte im
Grundriss, 1888. p. 37). The same scholar in his very important
Kirchenrecht. Bd. I. 1892, has transferred to the history of the origin
of Church law and Church organization, the points of view which I have
applied in the following account to the consideration of dogma. He has
thereby succeeded in correcting many old errors and prejudices; but in
my opinion he has obscured the truth by exaggerations connected with a
conception, not only of original Christianity, but also of the Gospel in
general, which is partly a narrow legal view, partly an enthusiastic
one. He has arrived _ex errore per veritatem ad errorem_; but there are
few books from which so much may be learned about early church history
as from this paradoxical "Kirchenrecht."]
CHAPTER II
THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF THE HISTORY OF DOGMA
§ 1. _Introductory._
The Gospel presents itself as an Apocalyptic message on the soil of the
Old Testament, and as the fulfilment of the law and the prophets, and
yet is a new thing, the creation of a universal religion on the basis of
that of the Old Testament. It appeared when the time was fulfilled, that
is, it is not without a connection with the stage of religious and
spiritual development which was brought about by the intercourse of Jews
and Greeks, and was established in the Roman Empire; but still it is a
new religion because it cannot be separated from Jesus Christ. When the
traditional religion has become too narrow the new religion usually
appears as something of a very abstract nature; philosophy comes upon
the scene, and religion withdraws from social life and becomes a private
matter. But here an overpowering personality has appeared--the Son of
God. Word and deed coincide in that personality, and as it leads men
into a new communion with God, it unites them at the same time
inseparably with itself, enables them to act on the world as light and
leaven, and joins them together in a spiritual unity and an active
confederacy.
2. Jesus Christ brought no new doctrine, but he set forth in his own
person a holy life with God and before God, and gave himself in virtue
of this life to the service of his brethren in order to win them for the
Kingdom of God, that is, to lead them out of selfishness and the world
to God, out of the natural connections and contrasts to a union in love,
and prepare them for an eternal kingdom and an eternal life. But while
working for this Kingdom of God he did not withdraw from the religious
and political communion of his people, nor did he induce his disciples
to leave that communion. On the contrary, he described the Kingdom of
God as the fulfilment of the promises given to the nation, and himself
as the Messiah whom that nation expected. By doing so he secured for his
new message, and with it his own person, a place in the system of
religious ideas and hopes, which by means of the Old Testament were
then, in diverse forms, current in the Jewish nation. The origin of a
doctrine concerning the Messianic hope, in which the Messiah was no
longer an unknown being, but Jesus of Nazareth, along with the new
temper and disposition of believers was a direct result of the
impression made by the person of Jesus. The conception of the Old
Testament in accordance with the _analogia fidei_, that is, in
accordance with the conviction that this Jesus of Nazareth is the
Christ, was therewith given. Whatever sources of comfort and strength
Christianity, even in its New Testament, has possessed or does possess
up to the present, is for the most part taken from the Old Testament,
viewed from a Christian stand-point, in virtue of the impression of the
person of Jesus. Even its dross was changed into gold; its hidden
treasures were brought forth, and while the earthly and transitory were
recognised as symbols of the heavenly and eternal, there rose up a world
of blessings, of holy ordinances, and of sure grace prepared by God from
eternity. One could joyfully make oneself at home in it; for its long
history guaranteed a sure future and a blessed close, while it offered
comfort and certainty in all the changes of life to every individual
heart that would only raise itself to God. From the positive position
which Jesus took up towards the Old Testament, that is, towards the
religious traditions of his people, his Gospel gained a footing which,
later on, preserved it from dissolving in the glow of enthusiasm, or
melting away in the ensnaring dream of antiquity, that dream of the
indestructible Divine nature of the human spirit, and the nothingness
and baseness of all material things.[46] But from the positive attitude
of Jesus to the Jewish tradition, there followed also, for a generation
that had long been accustomed to grope after the Divine active in the
world, the summons to think out a theory of the media of revelation, and
so put an end to the uncertainty with which speculation had hitherto
been afflicted. This, like every theory of religion, concealed in itself
the danger of crippling the power of faith; for men are ever prone to
compound with religion itself by a religious theory.
3. The result of the preaching of Jesus, however, in the case of the
believing Jews, was not only the illumination of the Old Testament by
the Gospel and the confirmation of the Gospel by the Old Testament, but
not less, though indirectly, the detachment of believers from the
religious community of the Jews from the Jewish Church. How this came
about cannot be discussed here: we may satisfy ourselves with the fact
that it was essentially accomplished in the first two generations of
believers. The Gospel was a message for humanity even where there was no
break with Judaism: but it seemed impossible to bring this message home
to men who were not Jews in any other way than by leaving the Jewish
Church. But to leave that Church was to declare it to be worthless, and
that could only be done by conceiving it as a malformation from its very
commencement, or assuming that it had temporarily or completely
fulfilled its mission. In either case it was necessary to put another in
its place, for, according to the Old Testament, it was unquestionable
that God had not only given revelations, but through these revelations
had founded a nation, a religious community. The result, also, to which
the conduct of the unbelieving Jews and the social union of the
disciples of Jesus required by that conduct, led, was carried home with
irresistible power: believers in Christ are the community of God, they
are the true Israel, the [Greek: ekklêsia tou theou]: but the Jewish
Church persisting in its unbelief is the Synagogue of Satan. Out of this
consciousness sprang--first as a power in which one believed, but which
immediately began to be operative, though not as a commonwealth--the
christian church, a special communion of hearts on the basis of a
personal union with God, established by Christ and mediated by the
Spirit; a communion whose essential mark was to claim as its own the Old
Testament and the idea of being the people of God, to sweep aside the
Jewish conception of the Old Testament and the Jewish Church, and
thereby gain the shape and power of a community that is capable of a
mission for the world.
4. This independent Christian community could not have been formed had
not Judaism, in consequence of inner and outer developments, then
reached a point at which it must either altogether cease to grow or
burst its shell. This community is the presupposition of the history of
dogma, and the position which it took up towards the Jewish tradition
is, strictly speaking, the point of departure for all further
developments, so far as with the removal of all national and ceremonial
peculiarities it proclaimed itself to be what the Jewish Church wished
to be. We find the Christian Church about the middle of the third
century, after severe crisis, in nearly the same position to the Old
Testament and to Judaism as it was 150 or 200 years earlier.[47] It
makes the same claim to the Old Testament, and builds its faith and hope
upon its teaching. It is also, as before, strictly anti-national; above
all, anti-judaic, and sentences the Jewish religious community to the
abyss of hell. It might appear, then, as though the basis for the
further development of Christianity as a church was completely given
from the moment in which the first breach of believers with the
synagogue and the formation of independent Christian communities took
place. The problem, the solution of which will always exercise this
church, so far as it reflects upon its faith, will be to turn the
Old Testament more completely to account in its own sense, so as to
condemn the Jewish Church with its particular and national forms.
5. But the rule even for the Christian use of the Old Testament lay
originally in the living connection in which one stood with the Jewish
people and its traditions, and a new religious community, a religious
commonwealth, was not yet realised, although it existed for faith and
thought. If again we compare the Church about the middle of the third
century with the condition of Christendom 150 or 200 years before, we
shall find that there is now a real religious commonwealth, while at the
earlier period there were only communities who believed in a heavenly
Church, whose earthly image they were, endeavoured to give it expression
with the simplest means, and lived in the future as strangers and
pilgrims on the earth, hastening to meet the Kingdom of whose existence
they had the surest guarantee. We now really find a new commonwealth,
politically formed and equipped with fixed forms of all kinds. We
recognise in these forms few Jewish, but many Græco-Roman features, and
finally, we perceive also in the doctrine of faith on which this
commonwealth is based, the philosophic spirit of the Greeks. We find a
Church as a political union and worship institute, a formulated faith
and a sacred learning; but one thing we no longer find, the old
enthusiasm and individualism which had not felt itself fettered by
subjection to the authority of the Old Testament. Instead of
enthusiastic independent Christians, we find a new literature of
revelation, the New Testament, and Christian priests. When did these
formations begin? How and by what influence was the living faith
transformed into the creed to be believed, the surrender to Christ into
a philosophic Christology, the Holy Church into the _corpus permixtum_,
the glowing hope of the Kingdom of heaven into a doctrine of immortality
and deification, prophecy into a learned exegesis and theological
science, the bearers of the spirit into clerics, the brethren into laity
held in tutelage, miracles and healings into nothing, or into
priestcraft, the fervent prayers into a solemn ritual, renunciation of
the world into a jealous dominion over the world, the "spirit" into
constraint and law?
There can be no doubt about the answer: these formations are as old in
their origin as the detachment of the Gospel from the Jewish Church. A
religious faith which seeks to establish a communion of its own in
opposition to another, is compelled to borrow from that other what it
needs. The religion which is life and feeling of the heart cannot be
converted into a knowledge determining the motley multitude of men
without deferring to their wishes and opinions. Even the holiest must
clothe itself in the same existing earthly forms as the profane if it
wishes to found on earth a confederacy which is to take the place of
another, and if it does not wish to enslave, but to determine the
reason. When the Gospel was rejected by the Jewish nation, and had
disengaged itself from all connection with that nation, it was already
settled whence it must take the material to form for itself a new body
and be transformed into a Church and a theology. National and
particular, in the ordinary sense of the word, these forms could not be:
the contents of the Gospel were too rich for that; but separated from
Judaism, nay, even before that separation, the Christian religion came
in contact with the Roman world and with a culture which had already
mastered the world, viz., the Greek. The Christian Church and its
doctrine were developed within the Roman world and Greek culture in
opposition to the Jewish Church. This fact is just as important for the
history of dogma as the other stated above, that this Church was
continuously nourished on the Old Testament. Christendom was of course
conscious of being in opposition to the empire and its culture, as well
as to Judaism; but this from the beginning--apart from a few
exceptions--was not without reservations. No man can serve two masters;
but in setting up a spiritual power in this world one must serve an
earthly master, even when he desires to naturalise the spiritual in the
world. As a consequence of the complete break with the Jewish Church
there followed not only the strict necessity of quarrying the stones for
the building of the Church from the Græco-Roman world, but also the idea
that Christianity has a more positive relation to that world than to the
synagogue. And, as the Church was being built, the original enthusiasm
must needs vanish. The separation from Judaism having taken place, it
was necessary that the spirit of another people should be admitted, and
should also materially determine the manner of turning the Old Testament
to advantage.
6. But an inner necessity was at work here no less than an outer.
Judaism and Hellenism in the age of Christ were opposed to each other,
not only as dissimilar powers of equal value, but the latter having its
origin among a small people, became a universal spiritual power, which,
severed from its original nationality, had for that very reason
penetrated foreign nations. It had even laid hold of Judaism, and the
anxious care of her professional watchmen to hedge round the national
possession, is but a proof of the advancing decomposition within the
Jewish nation. Israel, no doubt, had a sacred treasure which was of
greater value than all the treasures of the Greeks,--the living God--but
in what miserable vessels was this treasure preserved, and how much
inferior was all else possessed by this nation in comparison with the
riches, the power, the delicacy and freedom of the Greek spirit and its
intellectual possessions. A movement like that of Christianity, which
discovered to the Jew the soul whose dignity was not dependent on its
descent from Abraham, but on its responsibility to God, could not
continue in the framework of Judaism however expanded, but must soon
recognise in that world which the Greek spirit had discovered and
prepared, the field which belonged to it: [Greek: eikotôs Ioudaiois men
nomos, Hellesi de philosophia mechris tês parousias enteuthen de hê
klêsis hê katholikê] [to the Jews the law, to the Greeks Philosophy, up
to the Parousia; from that time the catholic invitation.] But the Gospel
at first was preached exclusively to the lost sheep of the house of
Israel, and that which inwardly united it with Hellenism did not yet
appear in any doctrine or definite form of knowledge.
On the contrary, the Church doctrine of faith, in the preparatory stage,
from the Apologists up to the time of Origen, hardly in any point shews
the traces, scarcely even the remembrance of a time in which the Gospel
was not detached from Judaism. For that very reason it is absolutely
impossible to understand this preparation and development solely from
the writings that remain to us as monuments of that short earliest
period. The attempts at deducing the genesis of the Church's doctrinal
system from the theology of Paul, or from compromises between Apostolic
doctrinal ideas, will always miscarry; for they fail to note that to the
most important premises of the Catholic doctrine of faith belongs an
element which we cannot recognise as dominant in the New Testament,[48]
viz., the Hellenic spirit.[49] As far backwards as we can trace the
history of the propagation of the Church's doctrine of faith, from the
middle of the third century to the end of the first, we nowhere perceive
a leap, or the sudden influx of an entirely new element. What we
perceive is rather the gradual disappearance of an original element, the
Enthusiastic and Apocalyptic, that is, of the sure consciousness of an
immediate possession of the Divine Spirit, and the hope of the future
conquering the present; individual piety conscious of itself and
sovereign, living in the future world, recognising no external authority
and no external barriers. This piety became ever weaker and passed away:
the utilising of the Codex of Revelation, the Old Testament,
proportionally increased with the Hellenic influences which controlled
the process, for the two went always hand in hand. At an earlier period
the Churches made very little use of either, because they had in
individual religious inspiration on the basis of Christ's preaching and
the sure hope of his Kingdom which was near at hand, much more than
either could bestow. The factors whose co-operation we observe in the
second and third centuries, were already operative among the earliest
Gentile Christians. We nowhere find a yawning gulf in the great
development which lies between the first Epistle of Clement and the work
of Origen, [Greek: Peri archôn]. Even the importance which the
"Apostolic" was to obtain, was already foreshadowed by the end of the
first century, and enthusiasm always had its limits.[50] The most
decisive division, therefore, falls before the end of the first century;
or more correctly, the relatively new element, the Greek, which is of
importance for the forming of the Church as a commonwealth, and
consequently for the formation of its doctrine, is clearly present in
the churches even in the Apostolic age. Two hundred years, however,
passed before it made itself completely at home in the Gospel, although
there were points of connection inherent in the Gospel.
7. The cause of the great historical fact is clear. It is given in the
fact that the Gospel, rejected by the majority of the Jews, was very
soon proclaimed to those who were not Jews, that after a few decades the
greater number of its professors were found among the Greeks, and that,
consequently, the development leading to the Catholic dogma took place
within Græco-Roman culture. But within this culture there was lacking
the power of understanding either the idea of the completed Old
Testament theocracy, or the idea of the Messiah. Both of these essential
elements of the original proclamation, therefore, must either be
neglected or remodelled.[51] But it is hardly allowable to mention
details however important, where the whole aggregate of ideas, of
religious historical perceptions and presuppositions, which were based
on the old Testament, understood in a Christian sense, presented itself
as something new and strange. One can easily appropriate words, but not
practical ideas. Side by side with the Old Testament religion as the
presupposition of the Gospel, and using its forms of thought, the moral
and religious views and ideals dominant in the world of Greek culture
could not but insinuate themselves into the communities consisting of
Gentiles. From the enormous material that was brought home to the hearts
of the Greeks, whether formulated by Paul or by any other, only a few
rudimentary ideas could at first be appropriated. For that very reason,
the Apostolic Catholic doctrine of faith in its preparation and
establishment, is no mere continuation of that which, by uniting things
that are certainly very dissimilar, is wont to be described as "Biblical
Theology of the New Testament." Biblical Theology, even when kept within
reasonable limits, is not the presupposition of the history of dogma.
The Gentile Christians were little able to comprehend the controversies
which stirred the Apostolic age within Jewish Christianity. The
presuppositions of the history of dogma are given in certain fundamental
ideas, or rather motives of the Gospel, (in the preaching concerning
Jesus Christ, in the teaching of Evangelic ethics and the future life,
in the Old Testament capable of any interpretation, but to be
interpreted with reference to Christ and the Evangelic history), and in
the Greek spirit.[52]
8. The foregoing statements involve that the difference between the
development which led to the Catholic doctrine of religion and the
original condition, was by no means a total one. By recognising the Old
Testament as a book of Divine revelation, the Gentile Christians
received along with it the religious speech which was used by Jewish
Christians, were made dependent upon the interpretation which had been
used from the very beginning, and even received a great part of the
Jewish literature which accompanied the Old Testament. But the
possession of a common religious speech and literature is never a mere
outward bond of union, however strong the impulse be to introduce the
old familiar contents into the newly acquired speech. The Jewish, that
is, the Old Testament element, divested of its national peculiarity, has
remained the basis of Christendom. It has saturated this element with
the Greek spirit, but has always clung to its main idea, faith in God as
the creator and ruler of the world. It has in the course of its
development rejected important parts of that Jewish element, and has
borrowed others at a later period from the great treasure that was
transmitted to it. It has also been able to turn to account the least
adaptable features, if only for the external confirmation of its own
ideas. The Old Testament applied to Christ and his universal Church has
always remained the decisive document, and it was long ere Christian
writings received the same authority, long ere individual doctrines and
sayings of Apostolic writings obtained an influence on the formation of
ecclesiastical doctrine.
9. From yet another side there makes its appearance an agreement between
the circles of Palestinian believers in Jesus and the Gentile Christian
communities, which endured for more than a century, though it was of
course gradually effaced. It is the enthusiastic element which unites
them, the consciousness of standing in an immediate union with God
through the Spirit, and receiving directly from God's hand miraculous
gifts, powers and revelations, granted to the individual that he may
turn them to account in the service of the Church. The depotentiation of
the Christian religion, where one may believe in the inspiration of
another, but no longer feels his own, nay, dare not feel it, is not
altogether coincident with its settlement on Greek soil. On the
contrary, it was more than two centuries ere weakness and reflection
suppressed, or all but suppressed, the forms in which the personal
consciousness of God originally expressed itself.[53] Now it certainly
lies in the nature of enthusiasm, that it can assume the most diverse
forms of expression, and follow very different impulses, and so far it
frequently separates instead of uniting. But so long as criticism and
reflection are not yet awakened, and a uniform ideal hovers before one,
it does unite, and in this sense there existed an identity of
disposition between the earliest Jewish Christians and the still
enthusiastic Gentile Christian communities.
10. But, finally, there is a still further uniting element between the
beginnings of the development to Catholicism, and the original condition
of the Christian religion as a movement within Judaism, the importance
of which cannot be overrated, although we have every reason to complain
here of the obscurity of the tradition. Between the Græco-Roman world
which was in search of a spiritual religion, and the Jewish commonwealth
which already possessed such a religion as a national property, though
vitiated by exclusiveness, there had long been a Judaism which,
penetrated by the Greek spirit, was, _ex professo_, devoting itself to
the task of bringing a new religion to the Greek world, the Jewish
religion, but that religion in its kernel Greek, that is,
philosophically moulded, spiritualised and secularised. Here then was
already consummated an intimate union of the Greek spirit with the Old
Testament religion, within the Empire and to a less degree in Palestine
itself. If everything is not to be dissolved into a grey mist, we must
clearly distinguish this union between Judaism and Hellenism and the
spiritualising of religion it produced, from the powerful but
indeterminable influences which the Greek spirit exercised on all things
Jewish, and which have been a historical condition of the Gospel. The
alliance, in my opinion, was of no significance at all for the _origin_
of the Gospel, but was of the most decided importance, first, for the
propagation of Christianity, and then, for the development of
Christianity to Catholicism, and for the genesis of the Catholic
doctrine of faith.[54] We cannot certainly name any particular
personality who was specially active in this, but we can mention three
facts which prove more than individual references. (1) The propaganda of
Christianity in the Diaspora followed the Jewish propaganda and partly
took its place, that is, the Gospel was at first preached to those
Gentiles who were already acquainted with the general outlines of the
Jewish religion, and who were even frequently viewed as a Judaism of a
second order, in which Jewish and Greek elements had been united in a
peculiar mixture. (2) The conception of the Old Testament, as we find it
even in the earliest Gentile Christian teachers, the method of
spiritualising it, etc., agrees in the most surprising way with the
methods which were used by the Alexandrian Jews. (3) There are Christian
documents in no small number and of unknown origin, which completely
agree in plan, in form and contents with Græco-Jewish writings of the
Diaspora, as for example, the Christian Sibylline Oracles, and the
pseudo-Justinian treatise, "de Monarchia." There are numerous tractates
of which it is impossible to say with certainty whether they are of
Jewish or of Christian origin.
The Alexandrian and non-Palestinian Judaism is still Judaism. As the
Gospel seized and moved the whole of Judaism, it must also have been
operative in the non Palestinian Judaism. But that already foreshadowed
the transition of the Gospel to the non-Jewish Greek region, and the
fate which it was to experience there. For that non-Palestinian Judaism
formed the bridge between the Jewish Church and the Roman Empire,
together with its culture.[55] The Gospel passed into the world chiefly
by this bridge. Paul indeed had a large share in this, but his own
Churches did not understand the way he led them, and were not able on
looking back to find it.[56] He indeed became a Greek to the Greeks, and
even began the undertaking of placing the treasures of Greek knowledge
at the service of the Gospel. But the knowledge of Christ crucified, to
which he subordinated all other knowledge as only of preparatory value,
had nothing in common with Greek philosophy, while the idea of
justification and the doctrine of the Spirit (Rom. VIII), which together
formed the peculiar contents of his Christianity, were irreconcilable
with the moralism and the religious ideals of Hellenism. But the great
mass of the earliest Gentile Christians became Christians because they
perceived in the Gospel the sure tidings of the benefits and obligations
which they had already sought in the fusion of Jewish and Greek
elements. It is only by discerning this that we can grasp the
preparation and genesis of the Catholic Church and its dogma.
From the foregoing statements it appears that there fall to be
considered as presuppositions of the origin of the Catholic Apostolic
doctrine of faith, the following topics, though of unequal importance as
regards the extent of their influence:
(a) The Gospel of Jesus Christ.
(b) The common preaching of Jesus Christ in the first generation of
believers.
(c) The current exposition of the Old Testament, the Jewish speculations
and hopes of the future, in their significance for the earliest types of
Christian preaching.[57]
(d) The religious conceptions, and the religious philosophy of the
Hellenistic Jews, in their significance for the later restatement of the
Gospel.
(e) The religious dispositions of the Greeks and Romans of the first two
centuries, and the current Græco-Roman philosophy of religion.
§ 2. _The Gospel of Jesus Christ according to His own testimony
concerning Himself._
I. The Fundamental Features.
The Gospel entered into the world as an apocalyptic eschatological
message, apocalyptical and eschatological not only in its form, but also
in its contents. But Jesus announced that the kingdom of God had already
begun with his own work, and those who received him in faith became
sensible of this beginning; for the "apocalyptical" was not merely the
unveiling of the future, but above all the revelation of God as the
Father, and the "eschatological" received its counterpoise in the view
of Jesus' work as Saviour, in the assurance of being certainly called to
the kingdom, and in the conviction that life and future dominion is hid
with God the Lord and preserved for believers by him. Consequently, we
are following not only the indications of the succeeding history, but
also the requirement of the thing itself, when, in the presentation of
the Gospel, we place in the foreground, not that which unites it with
the contemporary disposition of Judaism, but that which raises it above
it. Instead of the hope of inheriting the kingdom, Jesus had also spoken
simply of preserving the soul, or the life. In this one substitution
lies already a transformation of universal significance, of political
religion into a religion that is individual and therefore holy; for the
life is nourished by the word of God, but God is the Holy One.
The Gospel is the glad message of the government of the world and of
every individual soul by the almighty and holy God, the Father and
Judge. In this dominion of God, which frees men from the power of the
Devil, makes them rulers in a heavenly kingdom in contrast with the
kingdoms of the world, and which will also be sensibly realised in the
future æon just about to appear, is secured life for all men who yield
themselves to God, although they should lose the world and the earthly
life. That is, the soul which is pure and holy in connection with God,
and in imitation of the Divine perfection is eternally preserved with
God, while those who would gain the world, and preserve their life, fall
into the hands of the Judge who sentences them to Hell. This dominion of
God imposes on men a law, an old and yet a new law, viz., that of the
Divine perfection and therefore of undivided love to God and to our
neighbour. In this love, where it sways the inmost feeling, is presented
the better righteousness (better not only with respect to the Scribes
and Pharisees, but also with respect to Moses, see Matt. V.), which
corresponds to the perfection of God. The way to attain it is a change
of mind, that is, self-denial, humility before God, and heartfelt trust
in him. In this humility and trust in God there is contained a
recognition of one's own unworthiness; but the Gospel calls to the
kingdom of God those very sinners who are thus minded, by promising the
forgiveness of the sins which hitherto have separated them from God. But
the Gospel which appears in these three elements, the dominion of God, a
better righteousness embodied in the law of love, and the forgiveness of
sin, is inseparably connected with Jesus Christ; for in preaching this
Gospel Jesus Christ everywhere calls men to himself. In him the Gospel
is word and deed; it has become his food, and therefore his personal
life, and into this life of his he draws all others. He is the Son who
knows the Father. In him men are to perceive the kindness of the Lord;
in him they are to feel God's power and government of the world, and to
become certain of this consolation; they are to follow him the meek and
lowly, and while he, the pure and holy one, calls sinners to himself,
they are to receive the assurance that God through him forgiveth sin.
Jesus Christ has by no express statement thrust this connection of his
Gospel with his Person into the foreground. No words could have
certified it unless his life, the overpowering impression of his Person,
had created it. By living, acting and speaking from the riches of that
life which he lived with his Father, he became for others the revelation
of the God of whom they formerly had heard, but whom they had not known.
He declared his Father to be their Father and they understood him. But
he also declared himself to be Messiah, and in so doing gave an
intelligible expression to his abiding significance for them and for his
people. In a solemn hour at the close of his life, as well as on special
occasions at an earlier period, he referred to the fact that the
surrender to his Person which induced them to leave all and follow him,
was no passing element in the new position they had gained towards God
the Father. He tells them, on the contrary, that this surrender
corresponds to the service which he will perform for them and for the
many, when he will give his life a sacrifice for the sins of the world.
By teaching them to think of him and of his death in the breaking of
bread and the drinking of wine, and by saying of his death that it takes
place for the remission of sins, he has claimed as his due from all
future disciples what was a matter of course so long as he sojourned
with them, but what might fade away after he was parted from them. He
who in his preaching of the kingdom of God raised the strictest
self-examination and humility to a law, and exhibited them to his
followers in his own life, has described with clear consciousness his
life crowned by death as the imperishable service by which men in all
ages will be cleansed from their sin and made joyful in their God. By so
doing he put himself far above all others, although they were to become
his brethren; and claimed a unique and permanent importance as Redeemer
and Judge. This permanent importance as the Lord he secured, not by
disclosures about the mystery of his Person, but by the impression of
his life and the interpretation of his death. He interprets it, like all
his sufferings, as a victory, as the passing over to his glory, and in
spite of the cry of God-forsakenness upon the cross, he has proved
himself able to awaken in his followers the real conviction that he
lives and is Lord and Judge of the living and the dead.
The religion of the Gospel is based on this belief in Jesus Christ, that
is, by looking to him, this historical person, it becomes certain to the
believer that God rules heaven and earth, and that God, the Judge, is
also Father and Redeemer. The religion of the Gospel is the religion
which makes the highest moral demands, the simplest and the most
difficult, and discloses the contradiction in which every man finds
himself towards them. But it also procures redemption from such misery,
by drawing the life of men into the inexhaustible and blessed life of
Jesus Christ, who has overcome the world and called sinners to himself.
In making this attempt to put together the fundamental features of the
Gospel, I have allowed myself to be guided by the results of this Gospel
in the case of the first disciples. I do not know whether it is
permissible to present such fundamental features apart from this
guidance. The preaching of Jesus Christ was in the main so plain and
simple, and in its application so manifold and rich, that one shrinks
from attempting to systematise it, and would much rather merely narrate
according to the Gospel. Jesus searches for the point in every man on
which he can lay hold of him and lead him to the Kingdom of God. The
distinction of good and evil--for God or against God--he would make a
life question for every man, in order to shew him for whom it has become
this, that he can depend upon the God whom he is to fear. At the same
time he did not by any means uniformly fall back upon sin, or even the
universal sinfulness, but laid hold of individuals very diversely, and
led them to God by different paths. The doctrinal concentration of
redemption on sin was certainly not carried out by Paul alone; but, on
the other hand, it did not in any way become the prevailing form for the
preaching of the Gospel. On the contrary, the antitheses, night, error,
dominion of demons, death and light, truth, deliverance, life, proved
more telling in the Gentile Churches. The consciousness of universal
sinfulness was first made the negative fundamental frame of mind of
Christendom by Augustine.
II. Details.
1. Jesus announced the Kingdom of God which stands in opposition to the
kingdom of the devil, and therefore also to the kingdom of the world, as
a future Kingdom, and yet it is presented in his preaching as present;
as an invisible, and yet it was visible--for one actually saw it. He
lived and spoke within the circle of eschatological ideas which Judaism
had developed more than two hundred years before: but he controlled them
by giving them a new content and forcing them into a new direction.
Without abrogating the law and the prophets he, on fitting occasions,
broke through the national, political and sensuous eudæmonistic forms in
which the nation was expecting the realisation of the dominion of God,
but turned their attention at the same time to a future near at hand, in
which believers would be delivered from the oppression of evil and sin,
and would enjoy blessedness and dominion. Yet he declared that even now,
every individual who is called into the kingdom may call on God as his
Father, and be sure of the gracious will of God, the hearing of his
prayers, the forgiveness of sin, and the protection of God even in this
present life.[58] But everything in this proclamation is directed to the
life beyond: the certainty of that life is the power and earnestness of
the Gospel.
2. The conditions of entrance to the kingdom are, in the first place, a
complete change of mind, in which a man renounces the pleasures of this
world, denies himself, and is ready to surrender all that he has in
order to save his soul; then, a believing trust in God's grace which he
grants to the humble and the poor, and therefore hearty confidence in
Jesus as the Messiah chosen and called by God to realise his kingdom on
the earth. The announcement is therefore directed to the poor, the
suffering, those hungering and thirsting for righteousness, not to those
who live, but to those who wish to be healed and redeemed, and finds
them prepared for entrance into, and reception of the blessings of the
kingdom of God,[59] while it brings down upon the self-satisfied, the
rich and those proud of their righteousness, the judgment of obduracy
and the damnation of Hell.
3. The commandment of undivided love to God and the brethren, as the
main commandment, in the observance of which righteousness is realised,
and forming the antithesis to the selfish mind, the lust of the world,
and every arbitrary impulse,[60] corresponds to the blessings of the
Kingdom of God, viz., forgiveness of sin, righteousness, dominion and
blessedness. The standard of personal worth for the members of the King
is self-sacrificing labour for others, not any technical mode of worship
or legal preciseness. Renunciation of the world together with its goods,
even of life itself in certain circumstances, is the proof of a man's
sincerity and earnest in seeking the Kingdom of God; and the meekness
which renounces every right, bears wrong patiently, requiting it with
kindness, is the practical proof of love to God, the conduct that
answers to God's perfection.
4. In the proclamation and founding of this kingdom, Jesus summoned men
to attach themselves to him, because he had recognised himself to be the
helper called by God, and therefore also the Messiah who was
promised.[61] He gradually declared himself to the people as such by the
names he assumed,[62] for the names "Anointed," "King," "Lord," "Son of
David," "Son of Man," "Son of God," all denote the Messianic office, and
were familiar to the greater part of the people.[63] But though, at
first, they express only the call, office, and power of the Messiah, yet
by means of them and especially by the designation Son of God, Jesus
pointed to a relation to God the Father, then and in its immediateness
unique, as the basis of the office with which he was entrusted. He has,
however, given no further explanation of the mystery of this relation
than the declaration that the Son alone knoweth the Father, and that
this knowledge of God and Sonship to God are secured for all others by
the sending of the Son.[64] In the proclamation of God as Father,[65] as
well as in the other proclamation that all the members of the kingdom
following the will of God in love, are to become one with the Son and
through him with the Father,[66] the message of the realised kingdom of
God receives its richest, inexhaustible content: the Son of the Father
will be the first-born among many brethren.
5. Jesus as the Messiah chosen by God has definitely distinguished
himself from Moses and all the Prophets: as his preaching and his work
are the fulfilment of the law and the prophets, so he himself is not a
disciple of Moses, but corrects that law-giver; he is not a Prophet, but
Master and Lord. He proves this Lordship during his earthly ministry in
the accomplishment of the mighty deeds given him to do, above all in
withstanding the Devil and his kingdom,[67] and--according to the law of
the Kingdom of God--for that very reason in the service which he
performs. In this service Jesus also reckoned the sacrifice of his life,
designating it as a [Greek: lutron] which he offered for the redemption
of man.[68] But he declared at the same time that his Messianic work was
not yet fulfilled in his subjection to death. On the contrary, the close
is merely initiated by his death; for the completion of the kingdom will
only appear when he returns in glory in the clouds of heaven to
judgment. Jesus seems to have announced this speedy return a short time
before his death, and to have comforted his disciples at his departure,
with the assurance that he would immediately enter into a supramundane
position with God.[69]
6. The instructions of Jesus to his disciples are accordingly dominated
by the thought that the end, the day and hour of which, however, no one
knows, is at hand. In consequence of this, also, the exhortation to
renounce all earthly good takes a prominent place. But Jesus does not
impose ascetic commandments as a new law, far less does he see in
asceticism as such, sanctification[70]--he himself did not live as an
ascetic, but was reproached as a wine-bibber--but he prescribed a
perfect simplicity and purity of disposition, and a singleness of heart
which remains invariably the same in trouble and renunciation, in
possession and use of earthly good. A uniform equality of all in the
conduct of life is not commanded: "To whom much is given, of him much
shall be required." The disciples are kept as far from fanaticism and
overrating of spiritual results as from asceticism. "Rejoice not that
the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written
in heaven." When they besought him to teach them to pray, he taught them
the "Lord's prayer", a prayer which demands such a collected mind, and
such a tranquil, childlike elevation of the heart to God, that it cannot
be offered at all by minds subject to passion or preoccupied by any
daily cares.
7. Jesus himself did not found a new religious community, but gathered
round him a circle of disciples, and chose Apostles whom he commanded to
preach the Gospel. His preaching was universalistic inasmuch as it
attributed no value to ceremonialism as such, and placed the fulfilment
of the Mosaic law in the exhibition of its moral contents, partly
against or beyond the letter. He made the law perfect by harmonising its
particular requirements with the fundamental moral requirements which
were also expressed in the Mosaic law. He emphasised the fundamental
requirements more decidedly than was done by the law itself, and taught
that all details should be referred to them and deduced from them. The
external righteousness of Pharisaism was thereby declared to be not only
an outer covering, but also a fraud, and the bond which still united
religion and nationality in Judaism was sundered.[71] Political and
national elements may probably have been made prominent in the hopes of
the future, as Jesus appropriated them for his preaching. But from the
conditions to which the realising of the hopes for the individual was
attached, there already shone the clearer ray which was to eclipse those
elements, and one saying such as Matt. XXII. 21, annulled at once
political religion and religious politics.
_Supplement_ 1.--The idea of the inestimable inherent value of every
individual human soul, already dimly appearing in several psalms, and
discerned by Greek Philosophers, though as a rule developed in
contradiction to religion, stands out plainly in the preaching of Jesus.
It is united with the idea of God as Father, and is the complement to
the message of the communion of brethren realising itself in love. In
this sense the Gospel is at once profoundly individualistic and
Socialistic. The prospect of gaining life, and preserving it for ever,
is therefore also the highest which Jesus has set forth, it is not,
however, to be a motive, but a reward of grace. In the certainty of this
prospect, which is the converse of renouncing the world, he has
proclaimed the sure hope of the resurrection, and consequently the most
abundant compensation for the loss of the natural life. Jesus put an end
to the vacillation and uncertainty which in this respect still prevailed
among the Jewish people of his day. The confession of the Psalmist,
"Whom have I in heaven but thee, and there is none upon the earth that I
desire beside thee", and the fulfilling of the Old Testament
commandment, "Love thy neighbour as thyself", were for the first time
presented in their connection in the person of Jesus. He himself
therefore is Christianity, for the "impression of his person convinced
the disciples of the facts of forgiveness of sin and the second birth,
and gave them courage to believe in and to lead a new life." We cannot
therefore state the "doctrine" of Jesus; for it appears as a
supramundane life which must be felt in the person of Jesus, and its
truth is guaranteed by the fact that such a life can be lived.
_Supplement_ 2.--The history of the Gospel contains two great
transitions, both of which, however, fall within the first century; from
Christ to the first generation of believers, including Paul, and from
the first, Jewish Christian, generation of these believers to the
Gentile Christians, in other words: from Christ to the brotherhood of
believers in Christ, and from this to the incipient Catholic Church. No
later transitions in the Church can be compared with these in
importance. As to the first, the question has frequently been asked, Is
the Gospel of Christ to be the authority or the Gospel concerning
Christ? But the strict dilemma here is false. The Gospel certainly is
the Gospel of Christ. For it has only, in the sense of Jesus, fulfilled
its Mission when the Father has been declared to men as he was known by
the Son, and where the life is swayed by the realities and principles
which ruled the life of Jesus Christ. But it is in accordance with the
mind of Jesus and at the same time a fact of history, that this Gospel
can only be appropriated and adhered to in connection with a believing
surrender to the person of Jesus Christ. Yet every dogmatic formula is
suspicious, because it is fitted to wound the spirit of religion; it
should not at least be put before the living experience in order to
evoke it; for such a procedure is really the admission of the half
belief which thinks it necessary that the impression made by the person
must be supplemented. The essence of the matter is a personal life which
awakens life around it as the fire of one torch kindles another. Early
as weakness of faith is in the Church of Christ, it is no earlier than
the procedure of making a formulated and ostensibly proved confession
the foundation of faith, and therefore demanding, above all, subjection
to this confession. Faith assuredly is propagated by the testimony of
faith, but dogma is not in itself that testimony.
The peculiar character of the Christian religion is conditioned by the
fact that every reference to God is at the same time a reference to
Jesus Christ, and _vice versa_. In this sense the Person of Christ is
the central point of the religion, and inseparably united with the
substance of piety as a sure reliance on God. Such a union does not, as
is supposed, bring a foreign element into the pure essence of religion.
The pure essence of religion rather demands such a union; for "the
reverence for persons, the inner bowing before the manifestation of
moral power and goodness is the root of all true religion" (W.
Herrmann). But the Christian religion knows and names only one name
before which it bows. In this rests its positive character, in all else,
as piety, it is by its strictly spiritual and inward attitude, not a
positive religion alongside of others, but religion itself. But just
because the Person of Christ has this significance is the knowledge and
understanding of the "historical Christ" required: for no other comes
within the sphere of our knowledge. "The historical Christ" that, to be
sure, is not the powerless Christ of contemporary history shewn to us
through a coloured biographical medium, or dissipated in all sorts of
controversies, but Christ as a power and as a life which towers above
our own life, and enters into our life as God's Spirit and God's Word,
(see Herrmann, Der Verkehr des Christen mit Gott. 2. Edit. 1892, (i.e.,
"The Fellowship of the Christian with God", an important work included
in the present series of translations. Ed.) Kähler, Der sog. historische
Jesus und der geschichtliche biblische Christus, 1892). But historical
labour and investigation are needed in order to grasp this Jesus Christ
ever more firmly and surely.
As to the second transition, it brought with it the most important
changes, which, however, became clearly manifest only after the lapse of
some generations. They appear, first, in the belief in holy
consecrations, efficacious in themselves, and administered by chosen
persons; further, in the conviction, that the relation of the individual
to God and Christ is, above all, conditioned on the acceptance of a
definite divinely attested law of faith and holy writings; further, in
the opinion that God has established Church arrangements, observance of
which is necessary and meritorious, as well as in the opinion that a
visible earthly community is the people of a new covenant. These
assumptions, which formally constitute the essence of Catholicism as a
religion, have no support in the teaching of Jesus, nay, offend against
that teaching.
_Supplement_ 3.--The question as to what new thing Christ has brought,
answered by Paul in the words, "If any man be in Christ he is a new
creature, old things are passed away, behold all things are become new",
has again and again been pointedly put since the middle of the second
century by Apologists, Theologians and religious Philosophers, within
and without the Church, and has received the most varied answers. Few of
the answers have reached the height of the Pauline confession. But where
one cannot attain to this confession, one ought to make clear to oneself
that every answer which does not lie in the line of it is altogether
unsatisfactory; for it is not difficult to set over against every
article from the preaching of Jesus an observation which deprives it of
its originality. It is the Person, it is the fact of his life that is
new and creates the new. The way in which he called forth and
established a people of God on earth, which has become sure of God and
of eternal life; the way in which he set up a new thing in the midst of
the old and transformed the religion of Israel into _the religion_ that
is the mystery of his Person, in which lies his unique and permanent
position in the history of humanity.
_Supplement_ 4.--The conservative position of Jesus towards the
religious traditions of his people had the necessary result that his
preaching and his Person were placed by believers in the frame-work of
this tradition, which was thereby very soon greatly expanded. But,
though this way of understanding the Gospel was certainly at first the
only possible way, and though the Gospel itself could only be preserved
by such means (see § 1), yet it cannot be mistaken that a displacement
in the conception of the Person and preaching of Jesus, and a burdening
of religious faith, could not but forthwith set in, from which
developments followed, the premises of which would be vainly sought for
in the words of the Lord (see §§ 3, 4). But here the question arises as
to whether the Gospel is not inseparably connected with the
eschatological world-renouncing element with which it entered into the
world, so that its being is destroyed where this is omitted. A few words
may be devoted to this question. The Gospel possesses properties which
oppose every positive religion, because they depreciate it, and these
properties form the kernel of the Gospel. The disposition which is
devoted to God, humble, ardent and sincere in its love to God and to the
brethren, is, as an abiding habit, law, and at the same time, a gift of
the Gospel, and also finally exhausts it. This quiet, peaceful element
was at the beginning strong and vigorous, even in those who lived in the
world of ecstasy and expected the world to come. One may be named for
all, Paul. He who wrote 1 Cor. XIII. and Rom. VIII. should not, in spite
of all that he has said elsewhere, be called upon to witness that the
nature of the Gospel is exhausted in its world-renouncing, ecstatic and
eschatological elements, or at least, that it is so inseparably united
with these as to fall along with them. He who wrote those chapters, and
the greater than he who promised the kingdom of heaven to children, and
to those who were hungering and thirsting for righteousness, he to whom
tradition ascribes the words: "Rejoice not that the spirits are subject
to you, but rather rejoice that your names are written in heaven"--both
attest that the Gospel lies above the antagonisms between this world and
the next, work and retirement from the world, reason and ecstasy,
Judaism and Hellenism. And because it lies above them it may be united
with either, as it originally unfolded its powers under the ruins of the
Jewish religion. But still more; it not only can enter into union with
them, it must do so if it is otherwise the religion of the living and is
itself living. It has only one aim; that man may find God and have him
as his own God, in order to gain in him humility and patience, peace,
joy and love. How it reaches this goal through the advancing centuries,
whether with the co-efficients of Judaism or Hellenism, of renunciation
of the world or of culture, of mysticism or the doctrine of
predestination, of Gnosticism or Agnosticism, and whatever other
incrustations there may yet be which can defend the kernel, and under
which alone living elements can grow--all that belongs to the centuries.
However each individual Christian may reckon to the treasure itself the
earthly vessel in which he hides his treasure; it is the duty and the
right, not only of the religious, but also of the historical estimate to
distinguish between the vessel and the treasure; for the Gospel did not
enter into the world as a positive statutory religion, and cannot
therefore have its classic manifestation in any form of its intellectual
or social types, not even in the first. It is therefore the duty of the
historian of the first century of the Church, as well as that of those
which follow, not to be content with fixing the changes of the Christian
religion, but to examine how far the new forms were capable of
defending, propagating and impressing the Gospel itself. It would
probably have perished if the forms of primitive Christianity had been
scrupulously maintained in the Church; but now primitive Christianity
has perished in order that the Gospel might be preserved. To study this
progress of the development, and fix the significance of the newly
received forms for the kernel of the matter, is the last and highest
task of the historian who himself lives in his subject. He who
approaches from without must be satisfied with the general view that in
the history of the Church some things have always remained, and other
things have always been changing.
_Literature._--Weiss. Biblical Theology of the New Testament. T. and T.
Clark. Wittichen. Beitr. z. bibl. Theol. 3. Thle. 1864-72.
Schüreer. Die Predigt Jesu in ihrem Verhaltniss z. A.T.u. z. Judenthum,
1882.
Wellhausen. Abriss der Gesch. Israels u. Juda's (Skizzen u. Vorarbeiten)
I. Heft. 1884.
Baldensperger. Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu im Licht der Messianischen
Hoffnungen seiner Zeit, 1888, (2 Aufl. 1891). The prize essays of
Schmoller and Issel, Ueber die Lehre vom Reiche Gottes im N. Test. 1891
(besides Gunkel in d. Theol. Lit. Ztg. 1893. N°. 2).
Wendt. Die Lehre Jesu. (The teaching of Jesus. T. and T. Clark. English
translation.)
Joh. Weiss. Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes, 1892.
Bousset. Jesu Predigt in ihrem Gegensatz zum Judenthum, 1892.
C. Holtzman. Die Offenbarung durch Christus und das Neue Testament
(Zeitschr. f. Theol. und Kirche I. p. 367 ff.) The special literature in
the above work of Weiss, and in the recent works on the life of Jesus,
and the Biblical Theology of the New Testament by Beyschlag. (T.T.
Clark)
§ 3. _The Common Preaching concerning Jesus Christ in the First
Generation of Believers._
Men had met with Jesus Christ and in him had found the Messiah. They
were convinced that God had made him to be wisdom and righteousness,
sanctification and redemption. There was no hope that did not seem to be
certified in him, no lofty idea which had not become in him a living
reality. Everything that one possessed was offered to him. He was
everything lofty that could be imagined. Everything that can be said of
him was already said in the first two generations after his appearance.
Nay, more: he was felt and known to be the ever living one, Lord of the
world and operative principle of one's own life. "To me to live is
Christ and to die is gain;" "He is the way, the truth and the life." One
could now for the first time be certain of the resurrection and eternal
life, and with that certainty the sorrows of the world melted away like
mist before the sun, and the residue of this present time became as a
day. This group of facts which the history of the Gospel discloses in
the world, is at the same time the highest and most unique of all that
we meet in that history; it is its seal and distinguishes it from all
other universal religions. Where in the history of mankind can we find
anything resembling this, that men who had eaten and drunk with their
Master should glorify him, not only as the revealer of God, but as the
Prince of life, as the Redeemer and Judge of the world, as the living
power of its existence, and that a choir of Jews and Gentiles, Greeks
and Barbarians, wise and foolish, should along with them immediately
confess that out of the fulness of this one man they have received grace
for grace? It has been said that Islam furnishes the unique example of a
religion born in broad daylight, but the community of Jesus was also
born in the clear light of day. The darkness connected with its birth is
occasioned not only by the imperfection of the records, but by the
uniqueness of the fact, which refers us back to the uniqueness of the
Person of Jesus.
But though it certainly is the first duty of the historian to signalise
the overpowering impression made by the Person of Jesus on the
disciples, which is the basis of all further developments, it would
little become him to renounce the critical examination of all the
utterances which have been connected with that Person with the view of
elucidating and glorifying it; unless he were with Origen to conclude
that Jesus was to each and all whatever they fancied him to be for their
edification. But this would destroy the personality. Others are of
opinion that we should conceive him, in the sense of the early
communities, as the second God who is one in essence with the Father, in
order to understand from this point of view all the declarations and
judgments of these communities. But this hypothesis leads to the most
violent distortion of the original declarations, and the suppression or
concealment of their most obvious features. The duty of the historian
rather consists in fixing the common features of the faith of the first
two generations, in explaining them as far as possible from the belief
that Jesus is Messiah, and in seeking analogies for the several
assertions. Only a very meagre sketch can be given in what follows. The
presentation of the matter in the frame-work of the history of dogma
does not permit of more, because as noted above, § 1, the presupposition
of dogma forming itself in the Gentile Church is not the whole
infinitely rich abundance of early Christian views and perceptions. That
presupposition is simply a proclamation of the one God and of Christ
transferred to Greek soil, fixed merely in its leading features and
otherwise very plastic, accompanied by a message regarding the future,
and demands for a holy life. At the same time the Old Testament and the
early Christian Palestinian writings with the rich abundance of their
contents, did certainly exercise a silent mission in the earliest
communities, till by the creation of the canon they became a power in
the Church.
I. The contents of the faith of the disciples,[72] and the common
proclamation which united them, may be comprised in the following
propositions. Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah promised by the prophets.
Jesus after his death is by the Divine awakening raised to the right
hand of God, and will soon return to set up his kingdom visibly upon the
earth. He who believes in Jesus, and has been received into the
community of the disciples of Jesus, who, in virtue of a sincere change
of mind, calls on God as Father, and lives according to the commandments
of Jesus, is a saint of God, and as such can be certain of the
sin-forgiving grace of God, and of a share in the future glory, that is,
of redemption.[73]
A community of Christian believers was formed within the Jewish national
community. By its organisation, the close brotherly union of its
members, it bore witness to the impression which the Person of Jesus had
made on it, and drew from faith in Jesus and hope of his return, the
assurance of eternal life, the power of believing in God the Father and
of fulfilling the lofty moral and social commands which Jesus had set
forth. They knew themselves to be the true Israel of the Messianic time
(see § 1), and for that very reason lived with all their thoughts and
feelings in the future. Hence the Apocalyptic hopes which in manifold
types were current in the Judaism of the time, and which Jesus had not
demolished, continued to a great extent in force (see § 4). One
guarantee for their fulfilment was supposed to be possessed in the
various manifestations of the Spirit,[74] which were displayed in the
members of the new communities at their entrance, with which an act of
baptism seems to have been united from the very first[75], and in their
gatherings. They were a guarantee that believers really were the [Greek:
ekklêsia tou theou], those called to be saints, and, as such, kings and
priests unto God[76] for whom the world, death and devil are overcome,
although they still rule the course of the world. The confession of the
God of Israel as the Father of Jesus, and of Jesus as Christ and
Lord[77] was sealed by the testimony of the possession of the Spirit,
which as Spirit of God assured every individual of his call to the
kingdom, united him personally with God himself and became to him the
pledge of future glory[78].
2. As the Kingdom of God which was announced had not yet visibly
appeared, as the appeal to the Spirit could not be separated from the
appeal to Jesus as Messiah, and as there was actually nothing possessed
but the reality of the Person of Jesus, so in preaching all stress must
necessarily fall on this Person. To believe in him was the decisive
fundamental requirement, and, at first, under the presupposition of the
religion of Abraham and the Prophets, the sure guarantee of salvation.
It is not surprising then to find that in the earliest Christian
preaching Jesus Christ comes before us as frequently as the Kingdom of
God in the preaching of Jesus himself. The image of Jesus, and the power
which proceeded from it, were the things which were really possessed.
Whatever was expected was expected only from Jesus the exalted and
returning one. The proclamation that the Kingdom of heaven is at hand
must therefore become the proclamation that Jesus is the Christ, and
that in him the revelation of God is complete. He who lays hold of Jesus
lays hold in him of the grace of God, and of a full salvation. We
cannot, however, call this in itself a displacement: but as soon as the
proclamation that Jesus is the Christ ceased to be made with the same
emphasis and the same meaning that it had in his own preaching, and what
sort of blessings they were which he brought, not only was a
displacement inevitable, but even a dispossession. But every
dispossession requires the given forms to be filled with new contents.
Simple as was the pure tradition of the confession: "Jesus is the
Christ," the task of rightly appropriating and handing down entire the
peculiar contents which Jesus had given to his self-witnessing and
preaching was nevertheless great, and in its limit uncertain. Even the
Jewish Christian could perform this task only according to the measure
of his spiritual understanding and the strength of his religious life.
Moreover, the external position of the first communities in the midst of
contemporaries who had crucified and rejected Jesus, compelled them to
prove, as their main duty, that Jesus really was the Messiah who was
promised. Consequently, everything united to bring the first communities
to the conviction that the proclamation of the Gospel with which they
were entrusted, resolved itself into the proclamation that Jesus is the
Christ. The [Greek: didaskein têrein panta hota eneteilato ho Iêsous]
(teaching to observe all that Jesus had commanded), a thing of heart and
life, could not lead to reflection in the same degree, as the [Greek:
didaskein hoti outos estin ho christos tou theou] (teaching that this is
the Christ of God): for a community which possesses the Spirit does not
reflect on whether its conception is right, but, especially a missionary
community, on what the certainty of its faith rests.
The proclamation of Jesus as the Christ, though rooted entirely in the
Old Testament, took its start from the exaltation of Jesus, which again
resulted from his suffering and death. The proof that the entire Old
Testament points to him, and that his person, his deeds and his destiny
are the actual and precise fulfilment of the Old Testament predictions,
was the foremost interest of believers, so far as they at all looked
backwards. This proof was not used in the first place for the purpose of
making the meaning and value of the Messianic work of Jesus more
intelligible, of which it did not seem to be in much need, but to
confirm the Messiahship of Jesus. Still, points of view for
contemplating the Person and work of Jesus could not fail to be got from
the words of the Prophets. The fundamental conception of Jesus
dominating everything was, according to the Old Testament, that God had
chosen him and through him the Church. God had chosen him and made him
to be both Lord and Christ. He had made over to him the work of setting
up the Kingdom, and had led him through death and resurrection to a
supra-mundane position of sovereignty, in which he would soon visibly
appear and bring about the end. The hope of Christ's speedy return was
the most important article in the "Christology," inasmuch as his work
was regarded as only reaching its conclusion by that return. It was the
most difficult, inasmuch as the Old Testament contained nothing of a
second advent of Messiah. Belief in the second advent became the
specific Christian belief.
But the searching in the scriptures of the Old Testament, that is, in
the prophetic texts, had already, in estimating the Person and dignity
of Christ, given an important impulse towards transcending the
frame-work of the idea of the theocracy completed solely in and for
Israel. Moreover, belief in the exaltation of Christ to the right hand
of God, caused men to form a corresponding idea of the beginning of his
existence. The missionary work among the Gentiles, so soon begun and so
rich in results, threw a new light on the range of Christ's purpose and
work, and led to the consideration of its significance for the whole
human race. Finally, the self-testimony of Jesus summoned them to ponder
his relation to God the Father, with the presuppositions of that
relation, and to give it expression in intelligible statements.
Speculation had already begun on these four points in the Apostolic age,
and had resulted in very different utterances as to the Person and
dignity of Jesus (§ 4).[79]
3. Since Jesus had appeared and was believed on as the Messiah promised
by the Prophets, the aim and contents of his mission seemed already to
be therewith stated with sufficient clearness. Further, as the work of
Christ was not yet completed, the view of those contemplating it was,
above all, turned to the future. But in virtue of express words of
Jesus, and in the consciousness of having received the Spirit of God,
one was already certain of the forgiveness of sin dispensed by God, of
righteousness before him, of the full knowledge of the Divine will, and
of the call to the future Kingdom as a present possession. In the
procuring of these blessings not a few perceived with certainty the
results of the first advent of Messiah, that is, his work. This work
might be seen in the whole activity of Christ. But as the forgiveness of
sins might be conceived as _the_ blessing of salvation which included
with certainty every other blessing, as Jesus had put his death in
express relation with this blessing, and as the fact of this death so
mysterious and offensive required a special explanation, there appeared
in the foreground from the very beginning the confession, in 1 Cor. XV.
3: [Greek: paredôxa humin en prôtois, ho kai parelabon, hoti christos
apethanen huper tôn hamartion hêmon.] "I delivered unto you first of all
that which I also received, that _Christ died for our sins_." Not only
Paul, for whom, in virtue of his special reflections and experiences,
the cross of Christ had become the central point of all knowledge, but
also the majority of believers, must have regarded the preaching of the
death of the Lord as an essential article in the preaching of
Christ[80], seeing that, as a rule, they placed it somehow under the
aspect of a sacrifice offered to God. Still, there were very different
conceptions of the value of the death as a means of procuring salvation,
and there may have been many who were satisfied with basing its
necessity on the fact that it had been predicted, ([Greek: apethanen
kata tas graphas]: "he died for our sins _according to the
scriptures_"), while their real religious interests were entirely
centered in the future glory to be procured by Christ. But it must have
been of greater significance for the following period that, from the
first, a short account of the destiny of Jesus lay at the basis of all
preaching about him (see a part of this in 1 Cor. XV. 1-11). Those
articles in which the identity of the Christ who had appeared with the
Christ who had been promised stood out with special clearness, must have
been taken up into this report, as well as those which transcended the
common expectations of Messiah, which for that very reason appeared of
special importance, viz., his death and resurrection. In putting
together this report, there was no intention of describing the "work" of
Christ. But after the interest which occasioned it had been obscured,
and had given place to other interests, the customary preaching of those
articles must have led men to see in them Christ's real performance, his
"work."[81]
4. The firm confidence of the disciples in Jesus was rooted in the
belief that he did not abide in death, but was raised by God. That
Christ had risen was, in virtue of what they had experienced in him,
certainly only after they had seen him, just as sure as the fact of his
death, and became the main article of their preaching about him.[82] But
in the message of the risen Lord was contained not only the conviction
that he lives again, and now lives for ever, but also the assurance that
his people will rise in like manner and live eternally. Consequently,
the resurrection of Jesus became the sure pledge of the resurrection of
all believers, that is of their real personal resurrection. No one at
the beginning thought of a mere immortality of the spirit, not even
those who assumed the perishableness of man's sensuous nature. In
conformity with the uncertainty which yet adhered to the idea of
resurrection in Jewish hopes and speculations, the concrete notions of
it in the Christian communities were also fluctuating. But this could
not affect the certainty of the conviction that the Lord would raise his
people from death. This conviction, whose reverse side is the fear of
that God who casts into hell, has become the mightiest power through
which the Gospel has won humanity.[83]
5. After the appearance of Paul, the earliest communities were greatly
exercised by the question as to how believers obtain the righteousness
which they possess, and what significance a precise observance of the
law of the Fathers may have in connection with it. While some would hear
of no change in the regulations and conceptions which had hitherto
existed, and regarded the bestowal of righteousness by God as possible
only on condition of a strict observance of the law, others taught that
Jesus as Messiah had procured righteousness for his people, had
fulfilled the law once for all, and had founded a new covenant, either
in opposition to the old, or as a stage above it. Paul especially saw in
the death of Christ the end of the law, and deduced righteousness solely
from faith in Christ, and sought to prove from the Old Testament itself,
by means of historical speculation, the merely temporary validity of the
law and therewith the abrogation of the Old Testament religion. Others,
and this view, which is not everywhere to be explained by Alexandrian
influences (see above p. 72 f.), is not foreign to Paul, distinguished
between spirit and letter in the Mosaic law, giving to everything a
spiritual significance, and in this sense holding that the whole law as
[Greek: nomos pneumatikos] was binding. The question whether
righteousness comes from the works of the law or from faith, was
displaced by this conception, and therefore remained in its deepest
grounds unsolved, or was decided in the sense of a spiritualised
legalism. But the detachment of Christianity from the political forms of
the Jewish religion, and from sacrificial worship, was also completed by
this conception, although it was regarded as identical with the Old
Testament religion rightly understood. The surprising results of the
direct mission to the Gentiles would seem to have first called forth
those controversies (but see Stephen) and given them the highest
significance. The fact that one section of Jewish Christians, and even
some of the Apostles, at length recognised the right of the Gentile
Christians to be Christians without first becoming Jews, is the clearest
proof that what was above all prized was faith in Christ and surrender
to him as the saviour. In agreeing to the direct mission to the Gentiles
the earliest Christians, while they themselves observed the law, broke
up the national religion of Israel, and gave expression to the
conviction that Jesus was not only the Messiah of his people, but the
redeemer of humanity.[84] The establishment of the universal character
of the Gospel, that is, of Christianity as a religion for the world,
became now, however, a problem, the solution of which, as given by Paul,
but few were able to understand or make their own.
6. In the conviction that salvation is entirely bound up with faith in
Jesus Christ, Christendom gained the consciousness of being a new
creation of God. But while the sense of being the true Israel was
thereby, at the same time, held fast, there followed, on the one hand,
entirely new historical perspectives, and on the other, deep problems
which demanded solution. As a new creation of God, [Greek: he ekklêsia
tou theou], the community was conscious of having been chosen by God in
Jesus before the foundation of the world. In the conviction of being the
true
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/19612