THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
the development of Roman Catholic dogma since 1517. Marheineke applied the Hegelian method in producing an orthodox counterpart to Baur's work, abandoned the distinction between general and special history of doctrines, limited the scope of dogma to public definitions, identified the substantial contents of the Christian religion with the teachings of Christ and the apostles, and limited doctrine history to the time between the apostolic age and the completion of the formation of the ecclesiastical symbols. To the Hegelian school Likewise belonged iMeier and Noack.
To a third group, in which doctrine history is conceived as a historic-genetic representation of the coming into existence of the 4. Engel- doctrinal ideas of the various Christian hardt Churches, belong Engelhardt's Dogand Gie- vwngeschichte (1839) and Gieseler's seler. lectures. Both were free from Hegelian influence. Engelhardt had much in common with the group next treated, Gieseler with the Mimscher type. Engelhardt's peculiarity appears in his comparative treatment of the Lutheran, Roman Catholic, and Reformed dogmas, and his brief survey of the doctrinal movements in the various Churches since the definition of doctrines in the great symbols. Gieseler's definition of dogma is noteworthy: " Christian dogma is not doctrinal opinion, not the pronouncement of any teacher, but doctrinal statute. The dogmas of a church are those doctrinal propositions which it declares to be the most essential contents of Christianity." While he held that a complete doctrine history embraces the development of dogmas in all Christian Churches, he paid little attention to the development of doctrines in the Greek Church after its separation from the Roman, or in the Roman CathoUc Church after the Protestant revolt.
The last group of the older writers on the history of doctrines is the confessional Lutheran, whose aim was to show the complete doc- 5. The trinal agreement of the Book of Con- Confes- cord with divine revelation. Engelsional hardt and Marheineke prepared the Lutheran way for this type of doctrine history. Group. Kliefoth, deeply immersed in Hegelianism, marked out its program. Kahnis embodied this idea in his Kirchenglaube. Schmid's brief treatise (1860) was of the same character. The most important work of this group is that of Thomasius (1874-76). The second edition of Thomasius by Bonwetsch and Seeberg belongs rather to the preceding group.
Side by side with these four groups stands the uncompleted work of Nitzsch, who, though he had a narrow conception of dogma, yet aimed to make intelligible the present position of Christian theology, including the influence of 6. Nitzsch Schleiermacher. The one-sidedness of and the Hegelian construction of history Harnack. is eliminated by sound historical realism, and the separatinn of general and special dogmatics is abandoned. Nitzsch's work is the mature resultant of the older development of doctrine history. But Harnack's famous (oxt-book begins a new section of the history of the
discipline. While building on the foundations laid by Nitzsch, Thomasius, and Ritschl, he has created an epoch in the study of the history of doctrines by materially increasing knowledge of the subject, by his living grasp of the objects of investigation, and by his brilliant and highly interesting literary presentation. His abandonment of any schematic arrangement of the materials and his sole regard to genetic connections, his appreciation of the " tenacity " of dogma and the inner logic of its development, and his effort to understand individual dogmas as parts of the conception of Christianity as a whole may be regarded as contributions of abiding value. The more recent text-books of the writer [F Loofs] and of R. Seeberg (2d ed., vol. i., 1907, vols, ii.-iii. in preparation), though dependent on Harnack's, are not without distinctive features.*
The question as to the light thrown on the idea, task, method, and scope of doctrine history by a century of study can only be answered 7. The Idea personally and briefly. The writer and Task regards Harnack's conception of docof Doctrine trine history as only individually justi-
History. fied. Dogma is for Harnack not a generic idea, but the particular doctrinal ideas that have formed themselves on the basis of the ancient world. Ancient dogma, with its objectivity formally independent of the faith of the individual, is of a wholly different kind from any modern evangelical system, while Roman Catholic dogma still bears this purely objective character. It is therefore instructive to discover the rise of ancient dogma and to trace its further development until it is dissolved in heterogeneous new formations or has found a homogeneous continuation to the present. As there is no dogma on the idea of dogma, Harnack can not be fairly reproached for publishing his doctrine history of the ancient Church under the title Dogmengeschichte. Another question is whether the interest that theology has in doctrine history inheres in this special idea of dogma or in the generic idea. Is the term dogma to be used to designate the entire body of doctrines commonly held by a church, or is it to be limited to statements of doctrine made in earlier times by ecclesiastical authority, to which adherence is obligatory? Stange, without sufficient ground, charges Harnack, Kaftan, and Loofs with innovation in using the term in the generic sense; for most of the older writers (HoUatz, Marheineke, Gieseler, Rothe, Biedermann, Nitzsch, etc.) allow the legitimacy of this usage. Seeberg and Heinrici agree with Loofs in defining the history of dogmas as the history of the rise, development, and eventual change of church conceptions of doctrine in Christianity as a whole or in its various denominations.
On the method of this discipline two views have recently been set forth, that of Bernouilli and others, who insist that doctrine history can attain to the
* The editor of this article may be allowed to express the highest admiration of Loofs's Leitfaden as a masterpiece of condensed wisdom on the subject. But the 4th ed. (1906) has 1,002 pages. It contains an amount of pertinent quotation from the sources greater than is to be found in many larger works. A. H. N.