tart, therefore, from the supposition that Christian dogma is an
ecclesiastical doctrine which presupposes revelation as its authority,
and therefore claims to be strictly binding, we shall fail to bring out
its real nature with anything like completeness. That which Protestants
and Catholics call dogmas, are not only ecclesiastical doctrines, but
they are also: (1) theses expressed in abstract terms, forming together
a unity, and fixing the contents of the Christian religion as a
knowledge of God, of the world, and of the sacred history under the
aspect of a proof of the truth. But (2) they have also emerged at a
definite stage of the history of the Christian religion; they show in
their conception as such, and in many details, the influence of that
stage, viz., the Greek period, and they have preserved this character in
spite of all their reconstructions and additions in after periods. This
view of dogma cannot be shaken by the fact that particular historical
facts, miraculous or not miraculous are described as dogmas; for here
they are regarded as such, only in so far as they have got the value of
doctrines which have been inserted in the complete structure of
doctrines and are, on the other hand, members of a chain of proofs,
viz., proofs from prophecy.

But as soon as we perceive this, the parallel between the ecclesiastical
dogmas and those of ancient schools of philosophy appears to be in point
of form complete. The only difference is that revelation is here put as
authority in the place of human knowledge, although the later
philosophic schools appealed to revelation also. The theoretical as well
as the practical doctrines which embraced the peculiar conception of the
world and the ethics of the school, together with their rationale, were
described in these schools as dogmas. Now, in so far as the adherents of
the Christian religion possess dogmas in this sense, and form a
community which has gained an understanding of its religious faith by
analysis and by scientific definition and grounding, they appear as a
great philosophic school in the ancient sense of the word. But they
differ from such a school in so far as they have always eliminated the
process of thought which has led to the dogma, looking upon the whole
system of dogma as a revelation and therefore, even in respect of the
reception of the dogma, at least at first, they have taken account not
of the powers of human understanding, but of the Divine enli