3. § 3. Method of Dogmatics.
§ 3. Method of Dogmatics.
. By method of dogmatics is to be understood, in a broad sense, the manner in which the dogmatic material is obtained and treated. Three matters come into consideration in this connection: Scripture, the confession of the church, and the personal faith of the dogmatician.
According as these three are neglected or used and then set in relation to one another, the point of departure and therefore the path and the result of dogmatics differ. In fact it always proceeds in such a way that every
Christian, including the dogmatician, receives his convictions of faith from the circle in which he is born and brought up. Through preaching the church is founded and transplanted from generation to generation. Faith is from hearing. Tradition, declared infallible by Rome, was also not rejected altogether by the Reformation and soon thereafter became a power that put all freedom in fetters. One received the dogmatic material from the hands of the church and of the school. Materia theologiae proprie sunt loci communes, materia remota est S. Scriptura, say Alsted and Alting,
Schweizer, Glaub. der ev. ref. K. I 210. And after the reaction of the so-
called Theologia Biblica, in this century the social element in religion, the ecclesiastical character of dogmatics, has again been set in the clearest light from various sides. There is scarcely anyone who denies the confessional determinacy of religion and dogmatics, Schleiermacher, Glaub. § 19; Rothe,
Zur Dogm. S. 27; Lange, Dogm. I 659 f.; Herzog2 12, 651 f. e. a. In this country the Groningen theologians again laid the emphasis on the church,
H. de Groot, De Gron. Godg. 68, 71-74, 97 v. Instit. theol. nat. § 37; Voorlez. over de gesch. der opvoeding des menschdoms door God, II. 16de en 17de voorl. And even modern theologians usually, in the treatment of the doctrine of faith, attach themselves to the ecclesiastical dogma.
Biedermann, Chr. Dogm. 2te Aufl. II. 170 f.; Lipsius, Dogm. § 7; Scholten, Leer der Herv. Kerk. [15] 2. But the church with her confession nevertheless cannot be the principium of dogmatics. The Greek and Roman church have indeed declared tradition to be infallible, but at all times churches, sects, and tendencies, to whom the Christian character could not be denied, have, over against that tradition, made an appeal to Holy Scripture. Indeed, in the Theologia biblica the attempt has been made, to arrive, without the help of church and confession, from Scripture alone at a doctrine of faith. It was already prepared by Erasmus, Joh. Jansen, Gesch. des deutschen Volkes II.
15, the Socinians, Herzog2 14, 389, and the Remonstrants, in the praefatie before the apologie of their confession. It found support among the many sects, which thereafter arose in and alongside the churches of the Reformation. It was introduced in the churches themselves by Calixtus and Coccejus, and in the 18th century gained more and more ground. Its intention becomes evident e.g. from the works of A. F. Büsching, Epitome
Theol. Christ. e solis S. S. verbis concinnatae et ab omnibus rebus et verbis
scholasticis purgatae, Gott. 1755. Thoughts on the character and the superiority of biblical dogmatic theology over the scholastic 1758. Even in this century such a Biblical tendency in dogmatics is advocated by Beck and his followers, by Doedes, Doctrine of salvation, 2nd ed. 1876, and also by Ritschl and his school, which, from the dogmatics corrupted by Greek philosophy, returns to the revelation of God in the person of Christ.
3. But even thereby the possibility of conflict between the doctrine of Scripture and the personal conviction of the dogmatician has not yet been removed. So long as the truth is objectively laid down for the dogmatician in Scripture or in the doctrine of the church, it seems that no right can be done to the personality of the dogmatician. Dogmatics then remains an exposition of the doctrine of Scripture or church, but perhaps without personal assent on the part of the dogmatician. That, however, is no dogmatics. For this does not consist in a historical report, but sets forth what must count as truth, and thus includes the personal conviction of the dogmatician. Since authority in matters of religion for many wholly fell away and the religio subjectiva was made independent of the religio objectiva, [16] religious consciousness, conscience, feeling, reason, or whatever one wishes to call it, has become the source and standard of religious representations. The whole of theology, through and after Schleiermacher, both among the orthodox and among the moderns, is consciousness-theology. Scholten, Schweizer, Biedermann, Lipsius may still, in the treatment of the dogmas, proceed from the ecclesiastical formulation, yet in the end they give nothing other than their personal faith.
And theologians also such as Martensen, Dorner, Hofmann, Philippi, Frank e. a., take their point of departure in the consciousness of the believer. In this country Van Oosterzee, Dogm. § 10, included Christian consciousness
among the sources of dogmatics. Des Amorie van der Hoeven Jr. versified in Geloof des harten: the inexpressible word stands to be read in our heart, and Christ gave it sounds. Beets, Dichtwerken IV 130 sang: To be wholly objective, is the demand, is human. But would it be possible? Oh, do not soothe yourself with any semblance! The systems are personal or inhuman.
And prof. Van Manen, in his inaugural oration at Groningen, pointed to the personal character of doctrinal theology, Gron. 1884. From that personal character of dogmatics Doedes, Encycl. bl. 168 v. explains the boundless confusion that prevails in its domain.
4. Even this survey of the three dogmatic directions makes it clear that none of the three can do without the other. Each, taken by itself, is onesided and lapses into error. The critical direction, which rejects confession and Scripture as a source of knowledge and wants to derive all religious truth from the subject, is in the first place already in conflict with experience. Also religiously we are products of our environment. We receive our religious representations and impressions from those who care for and educate us, and remain at all times bound to the circle in which we live. A good psychology shows that intellect and heart, reason and conscience, feeling and imagination cannot on any terrain count as a source of knowledge of the truth. Just as we are physically bound to nature and must receive food and drink, shelter and clothing from it, so we are also psychically, in art, science, religion, morality dependent on the world outside us. All our knowledge comes from outside; there are no ideae innatae. Feeling in particular cannot be considered as a source of knowledge [17], for feeling is never a prius, but always a posterius; it reacts only to that which affects it and then gives a sensation of pleasure or displeasure, of agreeable or disagreeable, Tholuck, art. Gefühl in Herzog2;
Bender, Jahrb. f. deutsche Theol. 1872 S. 659 f.; Philippi, Kirchl. Glaub. I 60 f.; Hodge, System. Theol. I 65 f.; Hoekstra, Godg. Bijdr. 1864 bl. 1-43.
Id. Philosophical Doctrine of Religion, Amst. 1894 bl. 59 v. 213 v. The autonomous explaining of the religious and moral human being always goes together with deism or pantheism. Deism makes the human being independent of God and world, teaches the self-sufficiency of his reason and leads to rationalism; pantheism lets God come to revelation and selfconsciousness in the human being and cultivates mysticism. Both destroy objective truth, leave reason and feeling, intellect and heart to themselves, and end in unbelief or superstition. Reason criticizes away all revelation, and feeling gives the Roman Catholic just as much right to imagine Mary as the sinless queen of heaven as it gives the Protestant to combat this belief,
Schweizer, Glaub. der ev. ref. K. I 94. It is therefore remarkable that Holy Scripture never refers the human being to himself as a source of knowledge and standard of religious truth. How could it do so, where it describes the psychic human being wholly and entirely, in his intellect Ps. 14:3; Rom.
1:21-23; Rom. 8:7; 1 Cor. 1:23, 2:14; 2 Cor. 3:5; Ef. 4:23; Gal. 1:6, 7; 1 Tim. 6:5; 2 Tim. 3:8; in his heart Gen. 6:5; 8:21; Jer. 17:9; Ezech. 36:26;
Mark. 7:21; in his will Joh. 8:34; Rom. 7:14; 8:7; Ef. 2:3; and also in his conscience Jer. 17:9; 1 Cor. 8:7, 10, 12; 10:28; 1 Tim. 4:2; Tit. 1:15 as darkened and corrupted by sin. For the knowledge of the truth it always refers him to the objective revelation, to the word, the instruction, that has proceeded from God, Deut. 4:1; Jes. 8:20; Joh. 5:39; 2 Tim. 3:15; 2 Petr.
1:19 etc. And also, where the objective truth through faith becomes our personal property, that faith is nevertheless never like a fountain that brings forth the living water out of itself, but like a channel that conveys the water to us from elsewhere.
5. Rome has understood this impossibility of a religious and moral [18] autonomy excellently, and therefore has bound man, on pain of the salvation of his soul, to the infallible church. This, and thus in the last instance the infallible Pope, is for the Roman Christian the principium of his faith. The Papa dixit is the end of all contradiction. But history teaches that this theoretical or practical infallibility of the church has at all times encountered contradiction and opposition not only in Rome, but also in the churches of the Reformation. Not the unbelieving, but the pious circles are in the first place those who have felt this power of the hierarchy as a constricting bond for the conscience. Through all centuries there has been not only a scientific, social, political, but also an intimately religious and moral opposition against the hierarchical power of the church. It will not do to explain this opposition from unbelief and disobedience, and, as if intentionally, to fail to recognize the religious motives that lay at the foundation of the opposition of the various sects and directions. No one dares to condemn all these sects, because they rose in revolt against the church and its tradition. Even Rome shrinks back from this conclusion. The extra ecclesiam nulla salus is a confession that even to the strongest faith still falls too heavy. The law, which we see ruling in every domain, therefore also continues in religion and morality. There is on the one hand a revolutionary spirit, which wants to demolish to the ground all that has become historical, in order then to begin building anew; but there is also a false conservatism, which takes pleasure in leaving the existing untouched merely because it exists and, according to the well-known word of Calvin, malum bene positum non movere. Everywhere and in every domain there is in its time a certain radicalism needed, in order to restore the equilibrium, to let development proceed, and not to let the stream of life silt up. In art and
science, in state and society and so also in religion and morality, there gradually arises a rut, which suppresses and violates the rights of personality, genius, invention, inspiration, freedom, conscience. But then also always in its time the man arises, who cannot endure under that pressure, who throws off from himself the yoke of servitude, and who again takes up the cause of the freedom of man, of the freedom of the Christian.
[19] Those are the turning points in history. Thus Christ himself once acted against the tradition of the elders and returned to the law and the prophets.
And thus once the Reformation had the courage, not for the sake of any scientific, social or political interest, but in the name of the Christian man, to protest against Rome's hierarchy. Even among the sects and directions that later arose in the Protestant churches, that religious, ethical motive is many times not to be denied. The theologia biblica also defends an important part of religious truth. If church and theology prefer rest above the struggle, they themselves awaken the opposition, which will remind them of their Christian calling and task. Rome can of course never approve such an opposition and must condemn it already beforehand. The Reformation itself has arisen from it and cannot withhold from others what it took for itself. And Holy Scripture, although far from all revolutionary resistance, has nevertheless legitimated the right of contradiction against every human command that conflicts with God's Word in the royal word of Peter: πειθαρχειν δει θεῳ μαλλον ἠ ἀνθρωποις, Hd. 5:29.
6. Thus only that method seems to be the true one, which is applied by the biblical theologians. But this direction too suffers from great one-sidedness.
It imagines that it stands wholly unprejudiced over against Scripture and reproduces its content purely and objectively. But it forgets that every believer and every dogmatician first of all receives his convictions of faith
from the hand of his church. He therefore never comes to Scripture from outside, without any knowledge and preconceived opinion, but brings from home already a certain conception of the content of revelation with him and thus also views Scripture with the spectacles which the church holds before him. Every dogmatician, when he sets to work, whether he acknowledges it or not, stands in that historical manifestation of Christianity in which he was born and brought up, and comes to Scripture as a Reformed or Lutheran or Roman Christian. One cannot here either simply rid oneself of one's environment; one is always a child of one's time, product of one's environment, Toorenenbergen, De Chr. Geloofsleer, bl. 6.; Nitzsch, Lehrb. der ev. Dogm. 1889 S. 8 f. The outcome accordingly answers to this expectation; all dogmatic handbooks which have been brought to light by the [20] biblical direction faithfully reflect the personal and ecclesiastical standpoint of the author; they can lay claim to no greater objectivity than that of the ecclesiastical dogmaticians. The pure Gospel, which Ritschl e.g. finds back in Luther and in Jesus, corresponds wholly to the conception which he himself has formed of it. All these biblical directions are therefore also continually judged by history; they do their use for a time and awaken a forgotten truth, but they do not change the stream of ecclesiastical life and have no permanence in themselves. Usually they proceed from a religious conviction which can no longer be found even in Scripture. Indeed they always begin by appealing from the confession to Scripture, but soon they go back from Scripture to the person of Christ and end with it by also assailing his authority. And history always shows again that Christianity has been preserved relatively most purely in the confessions of the churches.
But such a biblical conception is not only practically impossible, it is also theoretically incorrect. Scripture is no lawbook, of which the articles only
need to be looked up in order, in a particular case, to know its opinion. It is composed of many books by different persons, from very different times, with divergent content. It is not an abstract, but an organic, living unity. It nowhere contains a sketch of the doctrine of faith, but this must be derived from the whole organism of Scripture. Scripture is not arranged so that we should parrot it, but that we, as free children of God, should think it through. But then all so-called Voraussetzungslosigkeit and objectivity is also impossible. Then so much study and reflection of the subject is connected with it, that one person is utterly unfit for it. Centuries are needed for it. The church is appointed for it, which has the promise of the guidance of the Spirit in all truth. Whoever isolates himself from the church, i.e. from Christendom, from the whole history of dogma, loses the Christian truth.
He becomes like a branch that has been torn from the tree and dies away, a member that has been separated from the body and is therefore destined for death. Only in the communion of saints is the length and breadth, the depth and height of the love of Christ to be understood, Ef. [21] 3:18. In addition to that, the advocates of this direction forget that Christianity is universal and can and must enter into all forms and conditions. They set grace in hostile opposition to nature and do not reckon enough with the incarnation of the Word. For just as truly as the Son of God became man, so also the thought of God is laid down in Scripture, flesh and blood in the consciousness of men. Dogmatics is and ought to be, the divine thought completely entered and taken up into our human consciousness, expressed freely and independently in our language, in its essence fruit of the times, in its form of this time (Da Costa). Therefore the antithesis is also incorrect which is often made between Biblical Theology and Dogmatics, as though the former would reproduce the content of Scripture, the latter that of the
ecclesiastical dogmas. For dogmatics intends nothing else than to expound the thoughts of God which He has laid down in the H. Scripture, Maresius,
Syst. Theol. loc. 1. § 8. But it does that, as is proper, in a scientific manner, in a form and according to a method, as are scientifically required. In this sense the Reformed formerly defended the right of the so-called theologia scholastica. They had absolutely nothing against the revealed truth also being presented in a simpler form under the name of theologia positiva, catechetica etc. But they most strongly contested that these two differed in content; what distinguished them was only a difference in form and method.
And by taking this standpoint, they on the one hand maintained as strongly as possible the unity and coherence of faith and theology, of church and school, but on the other hand also kept high the scientific character of theology. The thoughts of God might be ever so lofty and wonderful, yet they were no aphorisms, but formed an organic unity, a systematic whole, which could also be thought through and represented in a scientific form.
Scripture itself urges to this theological labour, when it lays the strongest emphasis everywhere not on abstract knowing, but on doctrine and truth, knowledge and wisdom.
7. A good method of dogmatics must therefore take account of all three data, of Scripture, church, and personal conviction [22]. Only then is it possible to be preserved from gross one-sidedness. Yet it then still comes down to determining the relation in which these three data stand to one another. As a rule it goes thus, that we receive our religious convictions from our environment. That is the case in all religions, and also in Christianity. We are all born as members of a church. The covenant of grace takes us up from our birth onward. The promises of God in Christ apply not only to believers but also to their seed. In critical times, like our own, it
often happens that later there comes a painful breach between the faith of childhood and personal conviction. If this breach is of such a nature that one must indeed leave one's own church but can nevertheless join oneself to another historically existing church, then it is relatively quickly healed.
There is then indeed change, but no loss of religion itself, of the Christian name, of the communion, of the confession. There then still remains a dogma that stands firm and offers us support and comfort in life. On this standpoint, therefore, a dogmatics also still remains possible, which describes the truth of God as it found recognition in a particular church. But often doubt lays hold much more deeply into religious life. Many lose all faith and come to skepticism and agnosticism; here there is no longer any question of dogmatics, of faith, of confession, of communion; mere negation is incapable of founding communion. Others, however, no longer being able to maintain the faith of childhood, attempt, under serious exertion and struggle, to acquire for themselves a religious conviction of their own. Here too, of course, the influence of the environment makes itself felt; one never comes to a religious conviction wholly independently.
Only, in that case, there is this difference, that what was no longer found in a church is now sought in a philosophical school. Every philosophy in this century has in turn been seized upon, in order to awaken and maintain certain religious convictions. Also on this standpoint there is no longer any question of dogmatics. There is only still a religious faith, a Glaubenslehre, a philosophy of religion, a philosophical doctrine of religion.
Dogmatics is therefore possible only for him who stands in the communion of faith with one or another Christian church. [23] This also lies in the nature of religious faith. Religious representations are distinguished from scientific ones, inter alia, in that they do not rest on
one's own insight, on the authority of any man, but only on the authority of God. But this includes that they have also found faith and recognition in a religious circle, i.e. in a church. Only therein does the religious authority of a religious representation become knowable. A church does not believe its confession because it scientifically perceives the truth of it, but solely and only on the ground of the Word of God, whether this expresses itself only in Scripture or also through ecclesiastical organs. He who seeks his religious conviction with a philosophical school confuses religion with science and receives nothing but an always uncertain, by many contested, sententia or opinio doctoris. Religious faith, however, by virtue of its own nature is bound to a community and to its confession. Here too it is as everywhere else. Abstractions, universalia, do not exist in reality. The tree, man, science, language, religion, theology are nowhere to be found. There are only particular trees, men, sciences, languages, and religions; just as a language is connected with a people, just as science and philosophy are always practised in a certain direction and school, so religion and theology are to be found and to be cultivated only in a kindred community. A church is the natural soil for religion and theology. Just as there is not already the church, so there is also not religion and theology. There are only different churches, and thus also different theologies. And this will last until the congregation in Christ shall have reached its full maturity and all have come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God. This unity is not to be seized with violence, but can best be promoted if each thinks through the faith of his own church, and presents it most purely. Not apart from the existing churches, but through these, Christ prepares for himself his one holy, catholic congregation. And not apart from the different ecclesiastical dogmas, but through these, the unity of the knowledge of God
is prepared and obtained. In this way the dogmatician will also be able best to work fruitfully for the purification and the development of the religious life and the doctrine of his church. Attachment to what exists is a condition for [24] improvement in the future. In the now lies what will be, Twesten,
Vorles. über die Dogm. 2e Aufl. I 46. This significance of the church for theology and dogmatics is grounded in the connection that Christ himself has laid between both. He has promised to his church the H. Spirit, who would lead her into the truth. The history of dogma thereby comes to stand in a glorious light. It is the explication of Scripture, Lange, Christl. Dogm. I 3; Schoeberlein, Princip. und System der Dogm. 26; the exposition which the H. Spirit in the church has given of the treasures of the Word. The dogmatician therefore has not to draw the material for his dogmatics only from the written confession of his own church, but to consider this in connection with the whole distinctive faith and life of his church, and this again with the history of the entire church of Christ. He therefore stands on the shoulders of the forefathers. He feels himself surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, and lets his testimony flow together with that voice of many waters. Every dogmatics ought also to join in the hymn of praise that is brought to God by the church of all ages.
8. But by that the history of dogma and the confession of the church have not yet been elevated to an infallible authority. There is a distinction between the path along which the dogmatician is formed and the principle from which dogmatics receives its material. In every science the practitioner begins to live from the tradition. The first knowledge of his discipline he always acquires through authority. He must first take up into himself the history of his discipline and climb to the level and the present state of his science, in order thereafter to set to work independently and to
acquire for himself an own insight into the object of his investigation. But no one will therefore regard the tradition, which was of so great importance pedagogically, as the source of his science. It is no different with the dogmatician. Pedagogically the church precedes Scripture. But according to logical order Scripture is the principium unicum of church and theology. In case of difference, the possibility of which from a Reformation standpoint can never be denied, church and confession must yield to Scripture.
Not the church but Scripture is αὐτοπιστος, judex controversiarum, [25] sui ipsius interpres. Nothing may be placed on one and the same level with it. Church, confession, tradition, everything must regulate itself according to it, submit itself to it. The Remonstrants did indeed accuse the Reformed that they, by the confession, fell short with respect to the authority, the sufficiency, and the perfection of Holy Scripture. But the Reformed, although in this dispensation of the church deeming confession necessary, in order to explain the Word of God, to ward off heresies, and to maintain the unity of the faith, contended as strongly as possible that the confession would have even the least authority alongside Scripture. Scripture alone is norma and regula fidei et vitae, the confession deserves faith only because and insofar as it agrees and remains in agreement with Scripture, as a fallible work of men, revisable and examinable by Scripture. The confession is thus at most norma secundaria, non veritatis sed doctrinae in aliqua ecclesia receptae, and therefore binding for all who wish to live in communion with the church. Within the church the confession has authority as an accord of communion, as an expression of the faith of the congregation, but it believes and maintains that confession only on the ground of Scripture, Voetius, Pol. Eccl. IV 1-74; Turret, Theol. El. Loc. 18. cap. 30; Examen van het Ontwerp van Tolerantie, 8e Sam. bl. 59-136;
Moor, Comm. in Marckii Comp. VI 353 s., etc. All Christian churches are one in the confession that Holy Scripture is the principium of theology, and the Reformation unanimously recognized it as principium unicum. The Netherl. Confession expresses that in art. 5, and all Lutheran and Reformed theologians are in agreement with this, Schmid, Dogm. der ev. luth. K. § 4;
Heppe, Dogm. der ev. ref. K. loc. 2. It is true that in art. 2 of the Ned. Conf. it is confessed that God is known by two means, namely by nature and Scripture, and by all Reformed theologians the theologia naturalis has been maintained in its truth and value. But in the first period, before rationalism had falsified Reformed theology, it was clearly seen that nature and Scripture did not stand independently and separately alongside one another, any more than the theologia naturalis and revelata. Calvin incorporated the theol. naturalis into the corpus of Christian dogmatics, and said that Scripture was the spectacles by which the believer beheld God more clearly also in the works of nature, Instit. I. 6, 1. The theologia naturalis originally had absolutely not as its aim to pave the way gradually and progressively to the theologia revelata; with it one did not adopt the provisional standpoint of reason, in order then by reasoning and proof to climb up to the standpoint of faith. But from the beginning the dogmatician stood on the foundation of faith, and as a Christian, as a believer, now also viewed nature; and then he discovered, with his Christian eye, armed with Holy Scripture, also in nature traces of that God whom he through Scripture, in Christ, had learned to know as his Father. Subjectively, therefore, in dogmatics it was not first natural reason and then faith that spoke; it was always the believing
Christian who in the catechism, in the confession, in dogmatics expressed his faith. And likewise, objectively, nature did not stand as an autonomous and independent principium alongside Holy Scripture, both supplying their
own set of truths. But nature was viewed in the light of Scripture, and Scripture contained not only the truth revealed in the strict sense, but also contained the truths which the believer can discover in nature. Thus Alsted in his Praecognita Theologiae 1623. p. 115, indeed acknowledges a theologia naturalis in the unregenerate but this is confused and dark; for the believer the principia et conclusiones theologiae naturalis are in Scripture clearly and distinctly repeated, Hodge, System. Theol. I 11. 15; Shedd,
Dogm. Theol. I 68.
Even though there is therefore a knowledge of God from nature, dogmatics nevertheless has only a single principium externum, viz. Holy
Scripture, just as it also has only a single principium internum, viz. believing reason. And now not merely in such a way that Holy Scripture would be only norma and no source, but specifically in the sense of principium theologiae. There is a great difference between earlier theologians and those of the present time. Since Schleiermacher went back from the object to the subject, a crowd of theologians have come to see in the congregation and its confession the source of dogmatic truth. Not only have they, and rightly, recognized and expressed the confessional and ecclesiastical character of dogmatics, but they have also made the confession of the congregation into a source of knowledge and lowered
Holy Scripture to norma, Schleiermacher, Glaub. § 19; Rothe, Zur Dogm.
27; Schoeberlein 23; Gunning en Saussaye, Het ethisch beginsel 12; [27] Dr. Van Dijk, Begrip en methode der dogm. 14 v.; Dr. Daubanton, Confessie en Dogmatiek 29 v., or also placed the confession alongside Holy Scripture as a source of knowledge, Lange, Dogm. II 3; Van Oost § 9; Von der Goltz,
§ 18; Reiff, I 256. And Dr. Gunning t. a. p. 31-34 even asserted that the doctrine of Scripture as source instead of as norma was not Reformed, but
actually Remonstrant. But this representation rests on an incorrect conception of the relation between church and Scripture. In the first time of the Christian congregation there could still be talk of a pure tradition, which ran parallel with the writings of the Apostles. But those two streams have long since flowed together. There is now no knowledge of Christian truth any longer, except only from Holy Scripture. Even though the religious life in the congregation nourishes itself much more from devotional works than from Scripture, Ritschl, Rechtf. u. Vers. II2 12, they are nevertheless only channels through which the truth of Holy Scripture is supplied to believers in a more comprehensible form. Moreover, dogmatics is something entirely different from symbolics. This describes and explains the confession of the church. But dogmatics dogmatizes, i.e. it sets forth what in the religious domain does not count as truth, but must count as truth. It ought indeed to stand in connection with the confession, as also with the school and the church. But dogmatics nevertheless stands independently alongside the confession; it expounds the truth of God in a way that is its own. Scripture has been given to the church, but also to the school, to science; and both read and investigate, explain and describe its content. Confession and dogmatics thereby act upon one another; the confession in its turn is just as dependent on dogmatics as the latter is on the former. Dogmas have not been produced by the church, but are fruit of theology. First there were the Apologists, then came Nicaea. First the Reformers appeared and later the Protest. confessions followed etc., Harnack, Dogmengesch. I 10, and my article Theol. Stud. 1891, bl. 258-275. And finally the doctrine of Holy
Scripture as unicum principium theologiae is also only purely Reformation and Reformed. The Nederl. Conf. teaches in art. 2 and 7 expressly that the knowledge of God and his service is drawn only from Scripture and that it
is thus indeed a source and not only norma. Calvin, Instit. I. cap. 6, Melanchthon in the praefatio before his Loci and all [28] dogmatici declare that the knowledge of God can be obtained only clearly and perfectly from Scripture. Every dogmatics almost begins with the doctrine of Scripture as unicum principium theologiae. The properties of the auctoritas, sufficientia, perfectio, which the Protestants ascribed to Holy Scripture over against Rome, argue the same, Daubanton, Theol. Stud. 1885, bl. 191-210. That in doing so they preferred not to speak of fons, but of principium, does not in the least weaken this wholly unique significance of Scripture for dogmatics.
The name principium is even to be preferred above that of fons. The latter expression indicates the relation between Scripture and theology as a mechanical one; and makes it appear as if the dogmas could be drawn from Holy Scripture as water from the spring. But principium points to an organic connection. Dogmas are not in Scripture, but their material lies contained in it. Scripture contains the germs, the seeds from which the dogmas, under the instruction of the Spirit in the church, grow up.
Dogmatics is the truth of Scripture, passed through the thinking consciousness of man, and reproduced in scientific form.
9. Thereby, however, the personal character of doctrinal theology has not been done away with. That cannot and may not be, because dogmatics is not a historical report, but an indication of what, in the religious domain, must count as truth. This personal character of dogmatics, however, does not flow from the fact that every bond to the object is cut through and each person now simply sets forth whatever he pleases. For then dogmatics ceases to be a science and is nothing but a private opinion. If dogmatics, according to Prof. Van Manen bl. 23, must abandon the delusion that there is a truth given from without, objective, then there is no dogmatics any
more. Then there are only subjective opinions, of which the one is just as good as the other. Every science which lays claim to that name must have its own object, existing in the real world; further presupposes that that object is knowable; and is then bound to that object as strictly as possible.
For dogmatics no other requirement holds; it too must have its own object, that object must be knowable, and to that object it is absolutely bound. But the denial of such a proper, knowable object may never [29] be made good with an appeal to the personal character of doctrinal theology. That is a confusion of two entirely different questions. Of a personal character of dogmatics there can only then be mention, if it is established beforehand that it has its own object.
For every science, of nature, history, law, morals, etc., has an object that is present in the real world. But for that reason every science nevertheless still bears a personal character; the one certainly less than the other, mathematics e.g. to a far lesser degree than history. But in proportion as the sciences are less formal, and lie nearer to the center, in that proportion the influence of personality increases. A human being can, in the practice of science, no more than anywhere else, rid himself of himself; he brings his upbringing, view of life, heart and conscience, sympathies and antipathies with him, and these of themselves exercise influence on his research and reflection. This now is in itself not wrong; the dualism that divides the human being into two halves and, in the practice of the sciences, reduces him to a pure intellect, is practically impossible and theoretically falsely conceived. The only requirement is that the human being always and everywhere, also when he practices science, be a good human being, a man of God suitably equipped for every good work. And it is no different in dogmatics; indeed here all this is a fortiori the case. For dogmatics has
precisely to do with the deepest convictions of faith of the human being and with the center of all science. Here above all it is the requirement that the human being be a good human being, that he stand in the right relation to God, whom to know is eternal life.
Therefore it is also the doctrine of Scripture, that the objective revelation is completed in the subjective illumination. The Reformed doctrine of Scripture stands in the closest connection with that of the testimonium
Spiritus Sancti. The verbum externum does not remain outside us, but through faith becomes a verbum internum. The H. Spirit, who gave
Scripture, also gives testimony to that Scripture in the heart of believers.
Scripture itself provides for its own triumph in the consciousness of the congregation of Christ. For that reason the believer feels himself bound with his whole soul to Scripture. In it he is introduced by [30] the H. Spirit, the Doctor ecclesiae. And all his intention is, to take up those thoughts of God, laid down in Scripture, into his consciousness and to understand them by thinking. But in doing so he remains a human being, with his own disposition, upbringing, insight; faith itself does not arise in every human being in the same way and is not in all of the same strength; reason differs in sharpness, depth, clarity of thought; the influence of sin continues to have effect, also in his consciousness and understanding. And as a consequence of all these influences, doctrinal theology continues to bear a personal character. That is the case here, as in every science. Even prophets and apostles saw the same truth from different sides. The unity of faith has no more been attained than the unity of knowledge. But precisely through the diversity God leads His congregation toward unity. When that unity of faith and of knowledge has been attained, dogmatics too has completed its task. As long as, however, its calling remains entrusted to it, to interpret on
the estate of science the thoughts which God has laid down for us in the H.
Scripture. For this task the dogmatician will be equipped in the most excellent way, if he lives in communion of faith with the church of Christ and confesses Scripture as the only and sufficient principium of the knowledge of God. The dogmatician thus receives the content of his faith from the hands of the church. In a paedagogical sense he comes through the church to Scripture. But in doing so he may, no more than any believer, remain standing there. He has the calling, to analyze the dogmata, which he has come to know through the church, down to their very fibers, and to investigate how they are rooted in the H. Scripture. Thus his task would consist in this, that he first handed over the dogmata objectively, and thereafter reduced them to the H. Scripture; his method would then be historical-analytical. But although this method for a single dogma in itself may perhaps have much that is recommendable; and although it is in dogmatics also of subordinate value; yet it has this against it, that with it one does not arrive at a scientific system. The dogmatician therefore does better to walk another path; not from the river to the source, but from the source to the river. Without doing injustice to the truth, that the church in a paedagogical sense precedes Scripture, he can nevertheless take his position in Scripture itself as the principium theologiae, and then from [31] there develop the dogmata. He then reproduces, as it were, the labor of thought of the church; he shows us how the dogmata have grown organically out of Scripture; how not one single text, but Scripture in its entirety is the firm, broad soil on which the dogmatic building has arisen. This synthetic, genetic method then provides him in the second place the advantage, that he can also point out the unity and the mutual connection of the dogmata. The different dogmata are not isolated propositions, but they form a unity. There
is actually only one dogma, which has been born from Scripture and has branched and split into all kinds of particular dogmata. The method of the dogmatician can and may be nothing other than systematic. And finally he still has the calling, in this genetic and systematic development of the dogmata also to draw attention to possible deviations, to supplement possible gaps, and thus to labor at the development of the dogmata in the future. That is the critical task, to which the dogmatician is called, but which in the systematic treatment of the dogmatic material is of itself already enclosed. In that way he seeks in dogmatics to give an exposition of the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge, which are hidden in Christ and are displayed in Scripture.