Seeberg: Text-Book of the History of Doctrines, Vol. 1

Doctrines

§ i . Definition and Ojfice of the History of Doctrines.

Kliefoth, Eine Einleitung in die Dogmengeschiclite, 1839. R. Seeberg, Ein Gang durch die Dogmengeschichte, Neue kirchl. Zeitschr. , 1890, 761 ff. G. Kruger, Was heisst u. zu welchem Ende studirt man Dogmengeschichte? 1895. Stange, Das Dogma u. seine Beurteilung, 1898.

1. The theological term, Dogma,1 designates either an ecclesiastical doctrine, or the entire structure of such doctrines, i. e. , the doctrinal system of the church. As Dogma is the formal expression of the truth held by the church at large, or by a particular church, the church expects the acknowledgment of it by her members, and, as legally organized, demands this of her recognized teachers. We apply the term, Dogma, not to every kind of theological propositions or formulas in which the general consciousness of the church may find utterance, but only to such propositions as have attained an ecclesiastical character, i. e., such as have by a public declaration of the church at large, or some particular branch of it, been acknowledged as expressing Christian truth. Although the form of Dogma is the work of theology, its content is derived from the common faith of the Christian church.

2. Dogma is an exceedingly complicated historical structure. It has in its various constituent parts, constructed as they have been in the face of multifarious forms of opposition, and under the inspiration of many practical (ethical and devotional) impulses and external (political and canonical) occasions, received the impress of different theological tendencies. Thus dogmas have been “deepened,” or “disintegrated” and super-

1 A cry pa is in ordinary Greek “ commandment, precept” (Lk. 2. 1. Acts 17. 7; 16. 4. Eph. 2. 15. Col. 2. 14. Didache, ii. 3). The word is employed both in a political and in a philosophical sense. The theological conception accords most fully with the philosophical use of the term, as equivalent to “proposition, principle,” e. g., Cicero, Quaest. acad., iv. 9. Marc. Aurel., ii. 3. Ep. Barn., 1. 6; x. 9. Ignat, ad Magnes, 13. I. See fuller discussion in Miinscher, DG. , p. 1, and Ilagenbach, DG. , p 1 f.

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ficialized — logically developed, or, under the influence of advancing views, transformed, restored, and again newly interpreted. To delineate these historical processes is the office of the History of Doctrines — to show how the Dogma…