Note (return) — Chapter II

7. The cause of the great historical fact is clear. It is given in the fact that the Gospel, rejected by the majority of the Jews, was very soon proclaimed to those who were not Jews, that after a few decades the greater number of its professors were found among the Greeks, and that, consequently, the development leading to the Catholic dogma took place within Græco-Roman culture. But within this culture there was lacking the power of understanding either the idea of the completed Old Testament theocracy, or the idea of the Messiah. Both of these essential elements of the original proclamation, therefore, must either be neglected or remodelled.51 But it is hardly allowable to mention details however important, where the whole aggregate of ideas, of religious historical perceptions and presuppositions, which were based on the old Testament, understood in a Christian sense, presented itself as something new and strange. One can easily appropriate words, but not practical ideas. Side by side with the Old Testament religion as the presupposition of the Gospel, and using its forms of thought, the moral and religious views and ideals dominant in the world of Greek culture could not but insinuate themselves into the communities consisting of Gentiles. From the enormous material that was brought home to the hearts of the Greeks, whether formulated by Paul or by any other, only a few rudimentary ideas could at first be appropriated. For that very reason, the Apostolic Catholic doctrine of faith in its preparation and establishment, is no mere continuation of that which, by uniting things that are certainly very dissimilar, is wont to be described as "Biblical Theology of the New Testament." Biblical Theology, even when kept within reasonable limits, is not the presupposition of the history of dogma. The Gentile Christians were little able to comprehend the controversies which stirred the Apostolic age within Jewish Christianity. The presuppositions of the history of dogma are given in certain fundamental ideas, or rather motives of the Gospel, (in the preaching concerning Jesus Christ, in the teaching of Evangelic ethics and the future life, in the Old Testament capable of any interpretation, but to be interpreted with reference to Christ and the Evangelic history), and in the Greek spirit.52