Second Part. DEVELOPMENT OF ECCLESIASTICAL DOGMA. SECOND BOOK. Expansion and Remodelling of Dogma into a Doctrine of Sin, Grace and means of Grace on the basis of the Church. A ་་ "Domini mors potentior erat quam vita. Lex Christianorum crux est sancta Christi." Die Ehrfurcht vor dem, was unter uns ist, ist ein Letztes wozu die Menschheit gelangen konnte und musste. Aber was gehörte dazu, die Erde nicht allein unter sich liegen zu lassen und sich auf einen höheren Geburtsort zu berufen, sondern auch Niedrigkeit und Armuth, Spott und Verachtung, Schmach und Elend, Leiden und Tod als göttlich anzuerkennen, ja selbst Sünde und Verbrechen nicht als Hindernisse, sondern als Fördernisse des Heiligen zu verehren!" -Goethe. CHAPTER I. HISTORICAL SITUATION.1 THE history of piety and of dogmas in the West was so thoroughly dominated by Augustine from the beginning of the fifth century to the era of the Reformation, that we must take this whole time as forming one period. It is indeed possible to doubt whether it is not correct to include also the succeeding period, since Augustinianism continued to exert its influence in the sixteenth century. But we are compelled to prefer the views that the Reformation had all the significance of a new movement, and that the revolt from Augustine was marked even in post-tridentine Catholicism, as well as, completely, in Socinianism.2 In this second Book of the second Section, therefore, we regard the history of dogma of the West from Augustine to the Reformation as one complete development, and then, in accordance with our definition of dogma and its history, we add the "final stages of dogma" in their triple form-Tridentine Catholicism, Socinianism, and Protestantism. 2. In order rightly to appreciate the part played by Augustine, it is necessary first (Chap. II.) to describe the distinctive character of Western Christianity and Western theologians 1 Baur, Vorles. üb. die christl. D.-G., 2nd vol., 1866. Bach, Die Dogmengeschichte des Mittelalters, 2 vols., 1873, 1875. Seeberg, Die Dogmengesch. des Mittelalters (Thomasius, Die christl. Dogmengesch, 2 Ed., 2 vol., Division I.) 1888. All begin in the period after Augustine, as also Schwane, D.-G. der mittleren, Zeit 1882. Loofs, Leitfaden der D.-G., 3 Ed., 1893. Seeberg, Lehrbuch d. D.-G., Division I., 1895. 2 The complete breach with Augustine is indeed marked neither by Luther nor Ignatius Loyola, but first by Leibnitz, Thomasius, and-the Probabilists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 3 Vol. I., § I. anterior to his appearance. It will then appear that while the West was prepared to favour Augustinianism, those very elements that especially characterised Western Christianitythe juristic and moralistic-resisted the Augustinian type of thought in matters of faith. This fact at once foreshadows the later history of Augustinianism in the Church. 3. Augustine comes before us, in the first place, as a reformer of Christian piety, altering much that belonged to vulgar Catholicism, and carrying out monotheism strictly and thoroughly. He gave the central place to the living relation of the soul to God; he took religion out of the sphere of cosmology and the cultus, and demonstrated and cherished it in the domain of the deepest life of the soul. On the other hand, we will have to show that while establishing the sovereignty of faith over all that is natural, he did not surmount the old Catholic foundation of the theological mode of thought; further, that he was not completely convinced of the supremacy of the religious over the moral, of the personal state of faith over ecclesiasticism; and finally, that in his religious tendencies, as generally, he remained burdened by the rubbish of ecclesiastical tradition. (Chap. III.) 4. Augustine falls next to be considered as a Church teacher. The union of three great circles of thought, which he reconstructed and connected absolutely, assured him, along with the incomparable impression made by his inexhaustible personality, of a lasting influence. In the first place, he built up a complete circle of conceptions, which is marked by the categories, "God, the soul, alienation from God, irresistible grace, hunger for God, unrest in the world and rest in God, and felicity," a circle in which we can easily demonstrate the co-operation of Neoplatonic and monastic Christian elements, but which is really so pure and simple that it can be taken as the fundamental form of monotheistic piety in general. Secondly, he gave expression to a group of ideas in which sin, grace through Christ, grace in general, faith, love, and hope form the main points; a Paulinism modified by popular Catholic elements. Thirdly, he constructed another group, in which the Catholic Church is regarded as authority, dispenser of grace, and administrator of the sacraments, and, further, as the means and aim of all God's ordinances. Here he always constructed, along with a wealth of ideas, a profusion of schemes-not formulas; he re-fashioned Dogmatics proper, and, speaking generally, gave the first impulse to a study which, as an introduction to Dogmatics, has obtained such an immense importance for theology and science since the Scholastics. 5. On the other hand, Augustine always felt that he was, as regards Dogma, an Epigone, and he submitted himself absolutely to thetradition of the Church. He was wanting in the vigorous energy in Church work shown, e.g., by Athanasius, and in the impulse to force upon the Church in fixed formulas the truths that possessed his soul. Consequently the result of his life-work on behalf of the Church can be described thus. (1) He established more securely in the West the ancient ecclesiastical tradition as authority and law. (2) He deepened and, comparatively speaking, Christianised the old religious tendency. (3) In the thought and life of the Church he substituted a plan of salvation, along with an appropriate doctrine of the sacraments, for the old dogma1 and the cultus, and instilled into heart and feeling the fundamental conception of his Christianity that divine grace was the beginning, middle, and end; but he himself sought to harmonise the conception with popular Catholicism, and he expressed this in formulas which, because they were not fixed and definite, admitted of still further concessions to traditional views. In a word, he failed to establish without admixture the new and higher religious style in which he constructed theology. Therefore the ancient Greek dogma which aimed at deification, as well as the old Roman conception of religion as a legal relationship, could maintain their ground side by side with it. Precisely in the best of his gifts to the Church, Augustine gave it impulses and problems, but not a solid capital. Along with this he transmitted to posterity a profusion of ideas, conceptions, and views which, 1 The ancient dogma has thus formed building material in the West since Augustine. It has been deprived-at least in the most important respect-of its ancient purpose, and serves new ones. The stones hewn for a temple, and once constructed into a temple, now serve for the building of a cathedral. Or perhaps the figure is more appropriate that the old temple expanded into a cathedral, and wonderfully transformed, is yet perceptible in the cathedral. |
