§ 1. Significance of the Name
Since the encyclopedic, scientific and theological viewpoint of this Theological Encyclopedia differs in more than one respect from the ideas that are most widely accepted in our times, even among “believing” theologians, clearness demands that we indicate this difference and give an account of it. The conception of “Theological Encyclopedia” itself should therefore be investigated first, and this investigation should be preceded by the definition of the general conception of Encyclopedia.
This definition starts out with the etymological explanation of the word which is used as the name of this department of science. Not as evidence from etymology; this is excluded by our plan: but because the indication of the first activity in the human mind which has given rise to the origin of any department is frequently found in the historical choice of the name. This is not always so. To our Western consciousness Algebra is a meaningless term, however capable it may be of an etymological explanation in its original. Metaphysics originated by mere accident. Anemology is an artificially fabricated term. But as a rule there is a history in a name, which it will not do to pass by. And this is the case in a special sense with the name Encyclopedia. To exclude arbitrariness, and to keep ourselves from ideal subjectivity, the conservative path must again be discovered, at least to this extent — that no definition of any conception should be admitted, which does not take account of what went on in the human spirit (even though with no very clear consciousness) when the germ of this conception first originated. (See Dr. Georg Runze, Die Bedeutung der Sprache für das wissenschaftliche Erkennen, Halle, 1886.)
§ 2. Use in the Greek Classics
As for most scientific conceptions, the germ of the conception of “Encyclopedia” also is found among the Greeks. They were the people who, in contrast with the intuitive powers of the Eastern nations on the one hand, and in distinction from the limited form of the life of the spirit in Rome on the other hand, were divinely endowed with the disposition, tendency and talent of extricating its thinking consciousness from the world of phenomena and of soaring above it on free wings. And yet, as far as we know, the word Encyclopedia in its combination was unknown to them. The first trace of this combination is discovered in Galen, the physician and philosopher, who died about two hundred years after the birth of Christ.1 The Greeks left the two parts of the word standing side by side, and spoke of ’Εγκύκλιος παιδεία.
The sense of παιδεία in this combination needs no further explanation. Παιδεία means instruction, training, education; that by which a παῖς becomes an ἀνήρ. The difficulty lies in the definition which makes this παιδεία, ἐγκύκλιος. In its simplest sense, ἐγκύκλιος is all that which presents itself to you as being included in a κύκλος, i.e. a ring or circle. But this idea admits of all sorts of shades, according as it indicates something that forms a circle by itself; something that lies in a sphere or circle, or within a certain circumference, and is thus included in it; or something that moves within such a circle. A round temple was called ἱερὸν ἐγκύκλιον, because such a temple forms a circle. The δίκαια, or common civil rights, were called ἐγκύκλια, because they reside in the circle of citizens, and confine themselves to its limits. In Athens, the λειτουργίαι were called ἐγκύκλιαι, and they spoke of ἐγκύκλια ἀναλώματα, ἐγκύκλιαι δαπάναι, ἐγκύκλια διακονήματα, etc., to indicate services in the interest of the state which are rendered in turn, expenses that returned periodically, or activities that constantly changed after a fixed programme of rotation. Aristotle (Polit. II., p. 1269ᵇ, 35) calls even the daily, and therefore periodically, returning task, τὰ ἐγκύκλια. Thus unconsciously the idea of that which was of a daily occurrence, and in a certain sense ordinary and normal, was included under ἐγκύκλιος;2 and it was in this process of thought that ἐγκύκλιος was added to παιδεία by which to indicate that kind and that measure of instruction or knowledge which was deemed indispensable for a normally developed Athenian citizen; in part, therefore, in the same sense in which Demosthenes calls the legal rights that are common to all citizens, ἐγκύκλια δίκαια (XXV. 74),3 or, in a better sense still, Aristotle wrote his ἐγκύκλια φιλοσοφήματα, i.e. popular philosophy. It is a mistake, therefore, to interpret ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία as a group of sciences which in the abstract formed a circle or a whole, and it is equally ill-advised to understand by it nothing more than “everyday matters of knowledge.” The idea of a circle or rotation must certainly be maintained; only the definition of what falls within this circle must not be derived from the mutual connection of these departments of knowledge as such, but from their connection in relation to the forming of the young Greek.
The explanation of Quintilian (I. 10): orbis doctrinae, quem Graeci ἐγκύκλιον παιδείαν vocant, is based on a misunderstanding, as is also that of Vitruvius I. 6, praef., and I. 2, encyclios disciplina uti corpus unum ex his membris compositum est: in so far as both evidently argued from the general significance of the word ἐγκύκλιος, instead of asking themselves the question how it was actually used by the Greeks in connection with παιδεία. This use referred chiefly to what was normal, as Hesychius also interprets it by saying, τὰ ἐγκυκλούμενα τῷ βίῳ καὶ συνήθη; and Strabo, who writes that we should not call “him who is wholly uneducated a statesman, but him who partakes of the all-round and customary training of freemen.” We should say: the normal measure of knowledge which a civilized citizen has at command. But Quintilian and Vitruvius were correct in so far as they showed themselves impressed with the fact that there was a reason why the Athenians did not speak of συνήθης παιδεία, but purposely spoke of ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία. The Greek language was not a crystallized one, like the Latin. A Greek understood and saw through the word ἐγκύκλιος, and, when he used it in the sense of normal, he did not abandon the original significance of κύκλος. With reference to his conception of it, the use of this word in connection with παιδεία plainly shows: (1) that from the knowledge of his times taken as a whole he separated certain parts; (2) that he did not choose these parts arbitrarily, but that he arranged them after a given standard; and (3) that he derived this standard from a circle of life, and that, in connection with this circle of life, he grouped his separated parts of human knowledge so as to form one whole. And this threefold action of his mind assumed, at the same time, that he had more or less objectified for himself the whole of human knowledge.