Footnote 44:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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 εκκλησια του θεου: 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.