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ted. Questions about church authority are henceforth questions about the pope's authority. What he calls heresy, under the sanction of excommunication or that more formal excommunication known as anathema, is heresy. What he finds it necessary to condemn even in milder terms as bad doctrine is infallibily condemned; that is certain, Roman Catholic theologians tell us, though not yet _de fide_. Finally we have to glance at a new list of definitions which perhaps in some cases seek more or less to formulate modern Protestant ideas, but which in general represent rather the world of disinterested historical scholarship. That world of the learned offers us non-dogmatic definitions, drawn up from the outside; definitions which do not share the root assumptions either of Catholicism or of post-Reformation Protestant orthodoxy. It might have been best to surrender the term "dogma" to the dogmatists; but few scholars have consented to do so. 1. We may brush aside the view[18] for which J. C. Doderlein, J. A. A. Tittmann, and more recently C. F. A. Kahnis are quoted. According to this definition, "dogma" means the opinion of some individual theologian of distinction. That might be a conceivable development of usage. It has been said that persons who dislike authority often show great devotion to "authorities"; and the word dogma might make a similar transition. But, in its case, such a usage would constitute a violent break with the past. 2. Though there is no formal definition in the passage, it is worth recording that, towards the end of his _Chief End of Revelation_ (1881), A. B. Bruce sharply contrasts "dogmas of theology" with "doctrines of faith."[19] While he manifests no wholesale dislike to doctrine, such as is seen in the Broad Church school, Bruce inverts the Catholic estimate. Dogma stands lowest, not highest. It seems hardly better than a _caput mortuum_, out of relation to the original faith or the original facts that are held to have given it birth. There is more than a touch of Matthew Arnold in this; though, while Arnold held nothing in religious experience beyond morality to be objectively genuine, Bruce believed in God's "gracious" purpose.[20] 3. Much more like Chrismann's view is the "generally accepted position" among Protestant scholars, as its leading representative to-day, F. Loofs, has called it;[21] the doctrine enforced within any one church community is dogma. This definition is significant. I
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