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
Το δογματος ονομα της ανθρωπινης εχεται βουλης τε και γνωμης. 'Οτι δε τουθ' 'ουτος εχει, μαρτυρει μεν 'ικανως 'η δογματικη των ιατρων τεχνη, μαρτυρει δε και τα των φιλοσοφων καλουμενα δογματα. 'Οτι δε και τα συνκλητο δοξαντα ετι και νυν δογματα συνκλητου λεγεται, ουδενα αγνοειν οιμαι.
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]
[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]
[Lessing, Semler, Lange, Münscher, Baumgarten-Crusius, Meier]
[Baur, Neander, Kliefoth, Thomasius, Nitzsch, Ritschl, Renan, Loofs]
[CHAPTER II.—THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF THE HISTORY OF DOGMA]
[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]
[§ 3. The Common Preaching concerning Jesus Christ in the first generation of believers.]
[The faith of the first Disciples]
[The beginnings of Christology]
[Conceptions of the Work of Jesus]
[Righteousness and the Law, Paul]
[The Self-consciousness of being the Church of God]
[Supplement 3. The Pauline Theology.]
[Supplement 4. The Johannine Writings]
[Supplement 5. The Authorities in the Church]
[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]
[Spiritualising and Moralising of the Jewish Religion]
[The Hermeneutic principles of Philo]
[The new religious needs and the old worship (Excursus on θεος)]
[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)]
[(2) Obscurity in the origin of the most important Christian ideas and Ecclesiastical forms]
[CHAPTER I. HISTORICAL SURVEY]
[CHAPTER II.—THE ELEMENT COMMON TO ALL CHRISTIANS AND THE BREACH WITH JUDAISM]
[(1) The Communities and the Church]
[(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)]
[Jesus the Son of God, the Theologia Christi]
[The Adoptian and the Pneumatic Christology]
[(7) The Worship, the sacred actions, and the organisation of the Churches]
[Baptism and the Lord's Supper]
[Doctrinal diversities of the Apostolical Fathers]
[(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]
[Characterisation of Marcion's attempt]
[(1) His estimate of the Old Testament and the god of the Jews]
[(3) The relation of the two Gods according to Marcion]
[(6) Criticism of the Christian tradition, the Marcionite Church]
[CHAPTER VI.—THE CHRISTIANITY OF JEWISH CHRISTIANS, DEFINITION OF THE NOTION JEWISH CHRISTIANITY]
[(1) General conditions for the development of Jewish Christianity]
[History of Jewish Christianity]
[The Elkesaites and Ebionites of Epiphanius]
APPENDICES.
[I. On the different notions of Pre-existence.]
[II. On Liturgies and the genesis of Dogma.]
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 Œcumenical 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 κατ' εξοχην. 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:[ (return) ]
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 Œcumenical 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:[ (return) ]
See Kattenbusch. Luther's Stellung zu den ökumenischen Symbolen, 1883.
Footnote 3:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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: το του δογματος ονομα της ανθρωπινης εχεται βουλης τε και γνωμης κ.τ.λ. 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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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 Œcolampadius 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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
Lange. Ausführ. Gesch. der Dogmen, oder der Glaubenslehre der Christl. Kirche nach den Kirchenväter ausgearbeitet. 1796.
Footnote 29:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
Meier, Lehrb. d. D.G. 1840. 2nd Edit. revised by G. Baur 1854.
Footnote 33:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
See Vol. 1. p. 14.
Footnote 42:[ (return) ]
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:[ (return) ]
This fulfils a requirement urged by Weizsäcker (Jahrb. f. Deutsche Theol 1866 p. 170 ff.)
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.
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: εικοτως Ιουδαιοις μεν νομος, 'Ελλεσι δε φιλοσοφια μεχρις της παρουσιας εντευθεν δε 'η κλησις 'η καθολικη [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, Περι αρχων. 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 λυτρον 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.