as put sometimes on one of these
elements and sometimes on the other. Baur, in particular, insisted on
the first; V. Hofmann, after the example of Schleiermacher, on the
second, and indeed exclusively (Encyklop. der theol. p. 257 f.: "The
history of dogma is the history of the Church confessing the faith in
words"). Nitzsch (Grundriss der Christl. D.G. I. p. 1) insisted on the
third: "The history of dogma is the scientific account of the origin and
development of the Christian system of doctrine, or that part of
historical theology which presents the history of the expression of the
Christian faith in notions, doctrines and doctrinal systems." Thomasius
has combined the second and third by conceiving the history of dogma as
the history of the development of the ecclesiastical system of doctrine.
But even this conception is not sufficiently definite, inasmuch as it
fails to do complete justice to the special peculiarity of the subject.

Ancient and modern usage does certainly seem to allow the word dogma to
be applied to particular doctrines, or to a uniform system of doctrine,
to fundamental truths, or to opinions, to theoretical propositions or
practical rules, to statements of belief that have not been reached by a
process of reasoning, as well as to those that bear the marks of such a
process. But this uncertainty vanishes on closer examination. We then
see that there is always an authority at the basis of dogma, which gives
it to those who recognise that authority the signification of a
fundamental truth "_quae sine scelere prodi non poterit_" (Cicero Quaest.
Acad. IV. 9). But therewith at the same time is introduced into the idea
of dogma a social element (see Biedermann, Christl. Dogmatik. 2. Edit.
I. p. 2 f.); the confessors of one and the same dogma form a community.

There can be no doubt that these two elements are also demonstrable in
Christian dogma, and therefore we must reject all definitions of the
history of dogma which do not take them into account. If we define it as
the history of the understanding of Christianity by itself, or as the
history of the changes of the theoretic part of the doctrine of religion
or the like, we shall fail to do justice to the idea of dogma in its
most general acceptation. We cannot describe as dogmas, doctrines such
as the Apokatastasis, or the Kenosis of the Son of God, without coming
into conflict with the ordinary usage of language and with
ecclesiastical law.

If we s