§ 1. The purpose of this Introduction is, first, to set forth the conception of Dogmatics which underlies the work itself; and secondly, to prepare the reader for the method and arrangement followed in it. 1. It can never be superfluous to begin the treatment of any branch of study with a definition of that branch, except when complete agreement on the matter can be confidently taken for granted. And this can only be done when there has never been any controversy as to how the study is to be practised, or when it belongs to a larger scientific whole which is always delimited and articulated in the same way.
As regards the first of these conditions: we can, of course, start from the fact that most Christian churches have made use of Dogmatics in their internal tradition and in their external intercourse with other churches; but what it really is, and what gives propositions of religious and Christian import a dogmatic status—on these questions agreement would be hard to find.
As regards the second condition: Dogmatics would indeed by general consent be placed in that province which we designate by the term ‘theological sciences.’ But one need only compare the most reputed of the encyclopædic surveys of this department to see how variously it is articulated, how differently different writers understand the individual disciplines, relate them to each other, and estimate their value; and this is true in an especial degree of Dogmatics. It would doubtless be a natural thing for me to take as my basis the definition of Dogmatics given in my own Outline;1 but that book is so short and aphoristic that it is not superfluous to come to its aid with some elucidations. The very title of the present work, in which the name ‘Dogmatics’ is avoided, contains the elements of a definition, but not with completeness; and, moreover, the component parts of the title are themselves not beyond all need of definition. Therefore this part of the Introduction will go its own way independently, and only as the argument gradually unfolds itself will the reader be referred to the relevant passages of the Brief Outline. And since the preliminary process of defining a science cannot belong to the science itself, it follows that none of the propositions which will appear in this part can themselves have a dogmatic character.
- The method and arrangement of a work, when the nature of the subject permits of diversities (and this is the case in a marked degree with Dogmatics, as the facts themselves show), will of course best justify themselves by the result. But the most favourable results can only be obtained if the reader is made acquainted with both method and arrangement at the outset. For that will make it possible for him to view each proposition at once in all its manifold relations. Moreover, the comparison of particular sections with the corresponding sections of similar works which have a different structure may under these conditions become instructive, while they would otherwise be merely confusing.
The greatest diversities in order and method will, of course, be those which follow from the particular way in which Dogmatics is conceived, and which thus disappear when a different conception of Dogmatics is taken as basis. But there are also lesser diversities among which choice may be exercised even by those who start from the same definition of the subject.
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Footnotes
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Kurze Darstellung, § 3. [Eng. trans., Brief Outline of the Study of Theology, p. 92.] ↩