Weingarten, 1875, 2 vols, gave most significant suggestions towards a
really historical conception of the history of the church and of dogma.
To Rothe belongs the undiminished merit of realising thoroughly the
significance of nationality in church history. But the theology of our
century is also indebted for the first scientific conception of
Catholicism, not to Marheineke or Winer, but to Rothe. (See Vol II. pp.
1-11 especially p. 7 f.). "The development of the Christian Church in
the Graeco-Roman world was not at the same time a development of that
world by the Church and further by Christianity. There remained, as the
result of the process, nothing but the completed Church. The world which
had built it had made itself bankrupt in doing so." With regard to the
origin and development of the Catholic cultus and constitution, nay,
even of the Ethic (see Luthardt, Die antike Ethik, 1887, preface), that
has been recognised by Protestant scholars, which one always hesitates
to recognise with regard to catholic dogma: see the excellent remarks of
Schwegler, Nachapostolisches Zeitalter. Vol. 1. p. 3 ff. It may be hoped
that an intelligent consideration of early Christian literature will
form the bridge to a broad and intelligent view of the history of dogma.
The essay of Overbeck mentioned above (Histor. Zeitschrift. N. F. XII p.
417 ff.) may be most heartily recommended in this respect. It is very
gratifying to find an investigator so conservative as Sohm, now fully
admitting that "Christian theology grew up in the second and third
centuries, when its foundations were laid for all time (?), the last
great production of the Hellenic Spirit." (Kirchengeschichte im
Grundriss, 1888. p. 37). The same scholar in his very important
Kirchenrecht. Bd. I. 1892, has transferred to the history of the origin
of Church law and Church organization, the points of view which I have
applied in the following account to the consideration of dogma. He has
thereby succeeded in correcting many old errors and prejudices; but in
my opinion he has obscured the truth by exaggerations connected with a
conception, not only of original Christianity, but also of the Gospel in
general, which is partly a narrow legal view, partly an enthusiastic
one. He has arrived _ex errore per veritatem ad errorem_; but there are
few books from which so much may be learned about early church history
as from this paradoxical "Kirchenrecht."]

CHAPTER II

THE PRESUP