RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Dogma
precisely on rational grounds, be continually taught in the Church.
If, however, religion be considered as essentially a matter of feeling (Schleiermacher), it is not enough to say that certain conceptions as to the source of the feeling, as to the feeling subject, and the factors producing the feeling must be combined, and that the religious life of a community always and necessarily produces a certain uniformity in such conceptions. For one might simply ignore the question whether those conceptions have objective truth or reality back of them. But the case is different, not only when religion and Christianity are made to consist essentially in perceptions and knowledge — which even the old orthodoxy did not assert — but also when true religious experience, no matter how essential feeling may be, realizes itself, after all, only in a definite inner practical attitude. It is a question of being able to come to the enjoyment of communion with God and life in him, of losing this ability through sin, and of having it restored in a definite attitude on our , part to actual deeds and ordinances of God. For the fellowship of the religious life, moreover, not only mutual incitement and harmony of subjective feelings are necessary, but common devotion to God and the Redeemer, and mutual encouragement and help in that whole relation; and this is possible only when there is agreement as to those basal truths, and when the leaders of the common worship and edification have fixed confessional formulas of doctrine. To renounce such fundamental dogmas would be to sign the Church's death warrant, to seal the ruin of Protestantism.
But the most important question is that concerning the sources out of which, and the norms according to which dogmas are to be 7. Sources formed. It is precisely by those
Norms "^o™^ ^^e dogmatist must test
of Dogma dogmatic material lying before him in the Church, unless, indeed, he simply confines himself to the historical task of setting forth a given stage of doctrinal development. Even the Roman Catholic dogmatists have never confined themselves merely to the ecclesiastical formulations of doctrine, but have always had recourse to the testimony of Scripture and tradition. We are here deaHng with that basal question of dogmatics, about which there are now the most serious disputes within the Protestant theology. Roman Catholic dogmatists, going back to Scripture and tradition, must none the less bind themselves to the Fathers and tradition, and give the actually existing Church, as she is represented in the totality of her bishops (indeed, according to the Vatican decree, in the one infallible pope), the infallible decision as to what is really the content and sense of Scripture and tradition. Evangelical Protestant dogmatists find nowhere a tenable ground for the authority of such ecclesiasticism. Against this they place the authority of the Scriptures, which are deemed sufficiently perspicuous for believers. Luther, to be sure, had exercised a free criticism as to the constituent parts of the traditional documents of revelation; but the old orthodoxy lacked a clear consciousness as to the
principles of dogmatic procedure. Moreover, the old dogmatists distinguished between articuli puri, which are to be derived exclusively from special revelation, and articuli mixti, which as to content, indeed, must likewise be taken from the Scriptures, but which may find confirmation in the universal religious consciousness supported by general revelation. The Bible is therefore not merely the highest and only norm by which all doctrinal statements must be tested, but the revelation it contains is, in an absolute sense, the very principle of theological knowledge. None the less, in spite of the Reformation, tradition in the form of a scholastic philosophizing continued to exert a far-reaching influence. Rationalism and supranaturalism, accordingly, subjected the dogma to a new testing and purifying. At the same time the doctrine of inspiration is so transformed that an unconditional infallibihty can no longer be claimed in behalf of all statements contained in Scripture.
But even under the most radical criticism Scripture retains a certain unique normative authority. The views differ greatly, however, on the question as to what gives Scripture its peculiar documentary value and how far this value extends. It is by no means enough to say that we here 8. Funda- jjjg Christian truth in its original
mental fQ^^^i and that we must accept it thus.
tions' question is whether this first
form was not the lowest stage in a process of development, or whether Schleiermacher's dictum (cf. his Darstellung des theologischen Studiums, Berhn, 1830, p. 83) is here valid, that the earliest conditions of a historical development, before there has been any chance of collision with adverse forces, most purely represent its peculiar spiritual essence. Another question must be raised as to the date of the New Testament books; namely, whether they belong to the origin of Christianity or are themselves the product of a development that extended, as Baur claimed, to the end of the second century. Furthermore, does the power of the Scriptures differ only in degree or also in kind from that of other writings? Finally, there is the main question, whether in any event the sum and substance of the truth recorded in the Bible, namely, Jesus the Son of God, is so represented in these books as the perfect revelation of God and as the Redeemer that we can recognize him as such and that we must acknowledge him as such in obedience to the demands of our inmost nature when once it is brought under the power of this representation.
We thus come to the relation of Scripture to the inner life. It is only through a personal experience of the influence of the Christ here por-
9. Rela- trayed that the right conception of
tion of the aim and core of that revelation is
Scripture obtained. The right conviction as to Inner the higher character of those writings Life. can be obtained only when their very content in this manner attests itself to the heart, when their spirit with its peculiar originality, sublimity, power, freshness, and simplicity makes itself known in experience, and when at the same time this their spuitual peculiarity is understood in the light of the external and mternal
Dog'ina