Note 1 — Chapter I

Footnote 1:

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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.