alvation is attached to this belief. But faith in the
Gospel and the later dogmas of the Church are not related to each other
as theme and the way in which it is worked out, any more than the dogma
of the New Testament canon is only the explication of the original
reliance of Christians on the word of their Lord and the continuous
working of the Spirit; but in these later dogmas an entirely new element
has entered into the conception of religion. The message of religion
appears here clothed in a knowledge of the world and of the ground of
the world which had already been obtained without any reference to it,
and therefore religion itself has here become a doctrine which has,
indeed, its certainty in the Gospel, but only in part derives its
contents from it, and which can also be appropriated by such as are
neither poor in spirit nor weary and heavy laden. Now, it may of course
be shewn that a philosophic conception of the Christian religion is
possible, and began to make its appearance from the very first, as in
the case of Paul. But the Pauline gnosis has neither been simply
identified with the Gospel by Paul himself (1 Cor. III. 2 f.; XII. 3;
Phil. I. 18) nor is it analogous to the later dogma, not to speak of
being identical with it. The characteristic of this dogma is that it
represents itself in no sense as foolishness, but as wisdom, and at the
same time desires to be regarded as the contents of revelation itself.
Dogma in its conception and development is a work of the Greek spirit on
the soil of the Gospel. By comprehending in itself and giving excellent
expression to the religious conceptions contained in Greek philosophy
and the Gospel, together with its Old Testament basis; by meeting the
search for a revelation as well as the desire for a universal knowledge;
by subordinating itself to the aim of the Christian religion to bring a
Divine life to humanity as well as to the aim of philosophy to know the
world: it became the instrument by which the Church conquered the
ancient world and educated the modern nations. But this dogma--one
cannot but admire its formation or fail to regard it as a great
achievement of the spirit, which never again in the history of
Christianity has made itself at home with such freedom and boldness in
religion--is the product of a comparatively long history which needs to
be deciphered; for it is obscured by the completed dogma. The Gospel
itself is not dogma, for belief in the Gospel p