RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Doremus Dorotliea
experiences is the Christ of Scripture, which alone enables the Christian to understand and assert faith and the mystery of his new personality. Justification, he used to say, is the only completed fact in the Christian; everything else is growth.
In 1843 Dorner became professor at Konigsberg, in 1847 at Bonn, in 1853 at Gottingen, and finally in 1862 at BerUn as successor of 3. Later Nitzsch. Here he was also superior Life. In consistorial councilor {Oberkircheii- Berlin. rath), and for twenty-two years he exerted a mighty influence on the Evangelical Church of Prussia, and on students from all parts of the world. He visited America in 1873 as delegate to the conference of the Evangelical Alliance in New York. His last years were clouded by a painful cancerous affection of the face and by the incurable illness of a son. Nevertheless, he worked on his Christliche Sittenlehre t ill the last weeks of his life, which were spent at Wittenberg in view of the Luther house.
Dr. Dorner was one of the profoundest and most learned theologians of the nineteenth century, and ranks with Schleiermacher, Neander, Nitzsch, Julius Miiller, and Richard Rothe. He mastered the theology of Schleiermacher and the philosophy of Hegel, appropriated the best elements of both, and infused into them a positive Evangelical faith and a historical spirit. The central idea of his system was the divine-human personality of Christ, as the highest rev- 4. Dorner's elation of God, the perfect ideal of Theology, humanity, and the Savior from sin His Per- and death. The primary postulate sonality. of faith in regard to the Redeemer is that he was free from sin and not himself in need of redemption. From this, faith proceeds to the supernatural origin of his person. Christ is the center of humanity, and not merely an individual. God's indwelling in him was not merely a dynamic divine immanence, but a personal self-communication of God. In him the divine and human natures were united. This union involved no diminution of the Logos. The kenosis of the Logos is to be thought of as a self-humiliation in love to meet the needs of mankind. Dorner's theology is preeminently Christological, and his monumental history of Christology is a rich mine of accurate and extensive scholarship and Christian experience. He lectured on exegesis, on New Testament theology, on symbolics, but more especially on dogmatics and ethics, in which he excelled all his contemporaries. He was one of the revisers of Luther's Bible, and proposed a correspondence with the Anglo-American revision committee, while in New York, 1873, which was carried on for a short time. He was alive to all practical church questions, and labored as Oberkirchenrath for synodical church government, and the development of the lay agency and the voluntary principle. He took a deep interest in the work of the Innere Mission (q.v.) and was one of its directors. With Wichern and Von Bethmann- HoUweg, he was one of the founders of the Church Diet (q.v.) in the revolutionary year 1848, and one of the leading speakers and managers at its
annual sessions. He was a most devoted and conscientious teacher, and a favorite among students. The Johanneum and the Melanchthon House in Berlin are memorials of his active interest in indigent students. The leading traits in his personal character were purity, simplicity, courtesy, gentleness, humility, and love.
Dorner's more important publications not already mentioned were as follows: Der Pieti sinus, insbesondere in WitrUcmberg mit bcsonderer Beziehung auf das Verhaltniss des Pieiismus zur Kirche (Hamburg, 1840); Das Verhaltniss zwischen Kirche und Staat (inaugural address at Berlin, Bonn, 1847); Sendschreiben iiber Reform der evangelischen Landeskirchen im Zusammenhang mit der Herstellung einer evangelisch-deut-
5. His schcn Nationalkirche (Bonn, 1848);
Works. Uebcr Jesu silndlose V ollkommenheit (Gotha, 1862; Eng. transl., by Henry B. Smith, in the American Presbyterian Review, 1863): Geschichte der protestantischen Theologie (Munich, 1867; Eng. transl., History of Protestant Theology, 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1871); System der christlichen Glaubenslehre (2 vols., Berlin, 1879-81; 2d ed., 1886-87; Eng. transl., A System of Christian Doctrine, 4 vols., Edinburgh, 1880-82; the eschatological portion, advocating the doctrine of a future probation, was edited, with introduction and notes, by Newman Smyth under the title Dorner on the Future Sttitc, New York, 1883); Gesammelte Schriften auf dem Gebiet der systemotischen Theologie, Exegcse und Geschichte (Berlin, 1883; contains valuable metaphysical essays on the unchangeability of God, and criticism of the kenosis theory of the incarnation); System der christlichen Sittenlehre (Berlin, 1885, edited by his son, A. J. Dorner; Eng. transl., System of Christian Ethics, Edinburgh, 1887). A collection of letters between Dorner and his lifelong friend. Bishop H. L. Martensen, appeared alter his death (2 vols., Berlin, 1888). With K. T. A. Liebner he founded and edited the Jahrbiicher fiir deutsche Theologie (Stuttgart and Gotha, 1856-78).
(Philip ScHAFFf) D. S. Schaff.
Bibliography: P. Schaff, Germany: its Universities, Theology, and Religion, pp. 376-380, Philadelphia, 1857; Dekan Jager and Diakonus Knapp, Zur Erinnerung an Dr. Isaak August Dorner, Tuttlingen, 1884 (funeral addresses); P. Kleinert, Zum Gedachlniss J. A. Dorners, Berlin, 1884 (a eulogy dehvered at Berlin); Andover Review, ii (1884), 176; J. Bobertag, I. A. Dorner, sein Leben und seine Lehre, Gutersloh, 1906. A good account of hia theological system is given by his son, A. J. Dorner, Dem Andenken von Dr. 1. A. Dorner, in TSK, 1885.
DOROTHEA: 1. St. Dorothea is said to' have been a virgin of Cffisarea in Cappadocia, and to have suffered martyrdom during the persecutions of Diocletian. She is mentioned in the various recensions of the so-called M artyrologium _ Hieronymianum, the Codex Wissenbergensis giving the day of her death as Feb. 6. But she is unknown to the Orient, and accordingly seems to be merely legendary. A Dorothea who was " a virgin consecrated to God" is also mentioned by Rufinus (Hist, eccl., viii. 17), who states that she escaped bv flight from the persecutions of Maximinus. ^ (A. Hauck.)
Dort Dosker