Note 45 — Chapter I

Footnote 45:

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By the connection with general church history we must, above all, understand, a continuous regard to the world within which the church has been developed. The most recent works on the history of the church and of dogma, those of Renan, Overbeck (Anfänge der patristischen Litteratur), Aube, Von Engelhardt (Justin), Kühn (Minucius Felix). Hatch ("Organization of the early church," and especially his posthumous work "The influence of Greek ideas and usages upon the Christian Church," 1890, in which may be found the most ample proof for the conception of the early history of dogma which is set forth in the following pages), are in this respect worthy of special note. Deserving of mention also is R. Rothe, who, in his "Vorlesungen über Kirchengeschichte", edited by Weingarten, 1875, 2 vols, gave most significant suggestions towards a really historical conception of the history of the church and of dogma. To Rothe belongs the undiminished merit of realising thoroughly the significance of nationality in church history. But the theology of our century is also indebted for the first scientific conception of Catholicism, not to Marheineke or Winer, but to Rothe. (See Vol II. pp. 1-11 especially p. 7 f.). "The development of the Christian Church in the Græco-Roman world was not at the same time a development of that world by the Church and further by Christianity. There remained, as the result of the process, nothing but the completed Church. The world which had built it had made itself bankrupt in doing so." With regard to the origin and development of the Catholic cultus and constitution, nay, even of the Ethic (see Luthardt, Die antike Ethik, 1887, preface), that has been recognised by Protestant scholars, which one always hesitates to recognise with regard to catholic dogma: see the excellent remarks of Schwegler, Nachapostolisches Zeitalter. Vol. 1. p. 3 ff. It may be hoped that an intelligent consideration of early Christian literature will form the bridge to a broad and intelligent view of the history of dogma. The essay of Overbeck mentioned above (Histor. Zeitschrift. N. F. XII p. 417 ff.) may be most heartily recommended in this respect. It is very gratifying to find an investigator so conservative as Sohm, now fully admitting that "Christian theology grew up in the second and third centuries, when its foundations were laid for all time (?), the last great production of the Hellenic Spirit." (Kirchengeschichte im Grundriss, 1888. p. 37). The same scholar in his very important Kirchenrecht. Bd. I. 1892, has transferred to the history of the origin of Church law and Church organization, the points of view which I have applied in the following account to the consideration of dogma. He has thereby succeeded in correcting many old errors and prejudices; but in my opinion he has obscured the truth by exaggerations connected with a conception, not only of original Christianity, but also of the Gospel in general, which is partly a narrow legal view, partly an enthusiastic one. He has arrived ex errore per veritatem ad errorem; but there are few books from which so much may be learned about early church history as from this paradoxical "Kirchenrecht."