nd theology is scarcely even
touched by him. But he has an impression that the central dogmas contain
for every period the whole of Christianity, and that they must therefore
be apprehended in this sense.[41] The presentation is dominated
throughout by the idea of the self-explication of dogma, though a
malformation has to be admitted for the middle ages;[42] and therefore
the formation of dogma is almost everywhere justified as the testimony
of the Church represented as completely hypostatised, and the outlook on
the history of the time is put into the background. But narrow and
insufficient as the complete view here is, the excellences of the work
in details are great, in respect of exemplary clearness of presentation,
and the discriminating knowledge and keen comprehension of the author
for religious problems. The most important work done by Thomasius is
contained in his account of the history of Christology.

In his outlines of the history of Christian dogma (Grundriss der
Christl. Dogmengesch. 1870), which unfortunately has not been carried
beyond the first part (Patristic period), F. Nitzsch, marks an advance
in the history of our subject. The advance lies, on the one hand, in the
extensive use he makes of monographs on the history of dogma, and on the
other hand, in the arrangement. Nitzsch has advanced a long way on the
path that was first entered by F.K. Meier, and has arranged his material
in a way that far excels all earlier attempts. The general and special
aspects of the history of dogma are here almost completely worked into
one,[43] and in the main divisions, "Grounding of the old Catholic
Church doctrine," and "Development of the old Catholic Church doctrine,"
justice is at last done to the most important problem which the history
of dogma presents, though in my opinion the division is not made at the
right place, and the problem is not so clearly kept in view in the
execution as the arrangement would lead one to expect.[44] Nitzsch has
freed himself from that speculative view of the history of dogma which
reads ideas into it. No doubt idea and motive on the one hand, form and
expression on the other, must be distinguished for every period. But the
historian falls into vagueness as soon as he seeks and professes to find
behind the demonstrable ideas and aims which have moved a period, others
of which, as a matter of fact, that period itself knew nothing at all.
Besides, the invariable result of that proce