re of
the individual. In this and in the deeper conception of the nature and
significance of positive religion, lay the advance beyond Rationalism.
And yet the wish to understand history, has in great measure checked the
effort to obtain a true knowledge of it, and the respect for history as
the greatest of teachers, has not resulted in that supreme regard for
facts which distinguished the critical rationalism. The speculative
pragmatism, which, in the Hegelian School, was put against the "lower
pragmatism," and was rigorously carried out with the view of exhibiting
the unity of history, not only neutralised the historical material, in
so far as its concrete definiteness was opposed, as phenomenon, to the
essence of the matter, but also curtailed it in a suspicious way, as may
be seen, for example, in the works of Baur. Moreover, the universal
historical suggestions which the older history of dogma had given were
not at all, or only very little regarded. The history of dogma was, as
it were, shut out by the watchword of the immanent development of the
spirit in Christianity. The disciples of Hegel, both of the right and of
the left, were, and still are, agreed in this watch-word,[35] the
working out of which, including an apology for the course of the history
of dogma, must be for the advancement of conservative theology. But at
the basis of the statement that the history of Christianity is the
history of the spirit, there lay further a very one-sided conception of
the nature of religion, which confirmed the false idea that religion is
theology. It will always, however, be the imperishable merit of Hegel's
great disciple, F. Chr. Baur, in theology, that he was the first who
attempted to give a uniform general idea of the history of dogma, and to
live through the whole process in himself, without renouncing the
critical acquisitions of the 18th century.[36] His brilliantly written
manual of the history of dogma, in which the history of this branch of
theological science is relatively treated with the utmost detail, is,
however, in material very meagre, and shews in the very first
proposition of the historical presentation an abstract view of
history.[37] Neander, whose "Christliche Dogmengeschichte," 1857, is
distinguished by the variety of its points of view, and keen
apprehension of particular forms of doctrine, shews a far more lively
and therefore a far more just conception of the Christian religion. But
the general p