nd experiment
I continue to be satisfied with my selection.

In taking up a theological book we are in the habit of enquiring first
of all as to the "stand-point" of the Author. In a historical work there
is no room for such enquiry. The question here is, whether the Author is
in sympathy with the subject about which he writes, whether he can
distinguish original elements from those that are derived, whether he
has a thorough acquaintance with his material, whether he is conscious
of the limits of historical knowledge, and whether he is truthful. These
requirements constitute the categorical imperative for the historian:
but they can only be fulfilled by an unwearied self-discipline. Hence
every historical study is an ethical task. The historian ought to be
faithful in every sense of the word; whether he has been so or not is
the question on which his readers have to decide.

_Berlin_, 1st May, 1894.

ADOLF HARNACK.

FROM THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

The task of describing the genesis of ecclesiastical dogma which I have
attempted to perform in the following pages, has hitherto been proposed
by very few scholars, and, properly speaking, undertaken by one only. I
must therefore crave the indulgence of those acquainted with the subject
for an attempt which no future historian of dogma can avoid.

At first I meant to confine myself to narrower limits, but I was unable
to carry out that intention, because the new arrangement of the material
required a more detailed justification. Yet no one will find in the
book, which presupposes the knowledge of Church history so far as it is
given in the ordinary manuals, any repertory of the theological thought
of Christian antiquity. The diversity of Christian ideas, or of ideas
closely related to Christianity, was very great in the first centuries.
For that very reason a selection was necessary; but it was required,
above all, by the aim of the work. The history of dogma has to give an
account, only of those doctrines of Christian writers which were
authoritative in wide circles, or which furthered the advance of the
development; otherwise it would become a collection of monographs, and
thereby lose its proper value. I have endeavoured to subordinate
everything to the aim of exhibiting the development which led to the
ecclesiastical dogmas, and therefore have neither, for example,
communicated the details of the gnostic systems, nor brought forward in
det