Hypcrius has been further termed the father of Homiletics. L. Danaeus (Daneau), a French Protestant, has the merit of publishing for the first time on Christian Ethics (1577). It has been supposed that the Reformed divinity here set itself to remedy the dogmatic dryness of Protestant scholasticism, fifty years before the Lutheran G. Calixtus moved in the matter (Theol. Moralis, 1634). Too much has been made of this. Danaeus hardly represents at all what moderns mean by Christian ethics. He does not contrast the Christian outlook upon ethics with all others, but dwells chiefly upon the super-eminence of the Ten Commandments as a summary of duty. Other distinctions are named after an interval of two centuries. J. T. Gabler, for the first time "with clearness" (R. Flint), wrote in 1787 De Justo Discrimine Theologiae Biblicae et Dogmaticae. Biblical Theology is a historical statement of the different Bible teachings, not a dogmatic statement of what the writer holds for truth, qua truth. Again, P. K. Marheineke is named as the first writer (1810) on Symbolics, the comparative study of creeds and confessions of faith. In 1764 the introductory study of theology as a whole, which Hyperius invented, had been given by S. Mursinna the name it has since usually borne—“Theological Encyclopaedia.” Most of such Encyclopaedias have been “material,” i.e. connected treatises, giving a brief outline of theology as a whole; not, of course, alphabetic indexes or dictionaries. The most famous of all, however—Schleiermacher’s Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums (1st ed. 1811)—belongs to the class of “formal” encyclopaedias. It states how theology should be divided, but does not profess to give a bird’s-eye view of results.
Schleiermacher’s treatise is highly individual. Theology is viewed as essentially a branch of church administration. True, in the theologian properly so called the scientific interest is strong; where the religious or practical interest is stronger, you get church rulers or administrators in a narrower sense. Still, even to the theologian the practical interest in church welfare is vital. Theology loses its savour when studied in a spirit of merely scientific curiosity; and it does not concern the lay Christian.
In spite of what may be deemed eccentric in this standpoint, Schleiermacher’s summary is full of interest. He divides as follows:—I. Philosophical Theology: A. Apologetics; B. Polemics. II. Historical Theology: A. Exegetical—including the determination of the canon; B. Church History proper; C. The depicting of the present state of the Church; (1) its faith—Dogmatics; the belief of one branch of the Church; (2) its outward condition—Statistics; these should be universal. Symbolics is to be a branch of statistics. Biblical " Dogmatics " also is said to be nearer this than it is to Dogmatics proper. III. Practical Theology: A. the service of the (local) church; Homiletics, Liturgies, &c. ; B. the Government of the (national or international) Church; questions of relation to the State, &c. The reader will note Schleiermacher’s peculiar way of dealing with Dogmatic as the belief of the Church — an unprecedented view, according to A. Ritschl—and his requiring that belief to be reported qua historical fact.
It is singular that Schleiermacher on the whole sums up in the Kurze Darstellung against the separation of Christian Ethics from Dogmatics. But he grants that much may be said on both sides of that question, and in his own Glaubenslehre he follows ordinary usage and as far as possible banishes Ethics to a Christliche Sittenlehre, a book which has caused him to be regarded by Protestants as the founder of modern Christian Ethics. There are therefore three parallel studies, on all of which Schleiermacher published—Dogmatic or Glaubenslehre, Christian Ethics, Philosophical Ethics.
Curiously enough, it is from Schleiermacher’s philosophical ethics that a threefold division—the Chief Good, Virtues, and Duty or the Law—passed into almost all text-books of Christian Ethics, till recently a rebellion rose against it on the ground of redundancy and overlapping. Books on Christian Ethics have also found room for a quasi Synoptic doctrine of the Kingdom of God, which Paulinized dogmatic systems were slow to admit. It should also be noted that Schleiermacher’s place for Apologetics is by no means undisputed. Many dislike the subject; some would thrust it into practical theology. Again, the new study of the religions of the world is seeking its place in the curriculum of Christian theology, just as it is seeking—in some way—to modify Christian thought. The recognized place, the assured results, have not yet been attained.
Further details must be sought in text-books. But it may be affirmed that Dogmatic must remain the vital centre; and so far we may soften Flint’s censure of the British thoughtlessness which has called that study by the name “systematic theology.” Systems of ethics and apologetics are welcome to the theologian; “encyclopaedia” Some conclusions. is a new and broader-based “systematic theology” in itself; but none of these is central as Dogmatic is. One may also venture to declare that Dogmatic rests upon philosophical and historical studies, and exists for practical uses. Thus a triple or fourfold division of theological sciences seems natural. Lastly, it must be confessed that at the beginning of the 20th century there is more life or health in history than in philosophy, and much more in either than in dogmatic theology.
Sub-divisions of Dogmatic, whether well chosen or ill, throw light upon theology as developed in the past. The six usual Protestant headings are as follows: Theology proper, Anthropology, Christology (C. Hodge here inserts Hamartiology), Soteriology, Ecclesiology (omitted by C. Hodge), Eschatology. The Lombard’s Sentences deal in bk. i. with God; bk. ii. the creatures; bk. iii. Incarnation, Redemption, Virtues; bk. iv: Sacraments and Last Things. Aquinas’s Summa has no such clear lines of division.
The Church carried forward from the middle ages a tradition of “Moral Theology”[1] answering to Christian Ethics, alongside of Dogmatics or of all-inclusive Summae. Casuistry (with parallels in early Protestantism like Jeremy Taylor’s Ductor Dubitantium), growing out of the Confessional, is characteristic of this Roman Catholic Ethic; yet the study is not restricted to the technical equipment of confessors. The Roman Catholic contributors to the volume on Christianity in Die Kultur der Gegenwart write on:—I. Dogmatic: A. Apologetic or General Dogmatic; B. Special Dogmatic or Dogmatic proper. II. Moral Theology. III. Practical Theology. The Protestant contributors, representing somewhat varied standpoints in German religion, follow much the same plan. Apologetic has no separate place with them; but the system of theology (in a sense midway between the dogmatists and the encyclopedists), is allotted between Dogmatics, Christian Ethics and Practical Theology.
Literature.—A bibliography of theology cannot name every important book. The effort is made here (1) to mention writers of great originality and distinction, (2) writers of special importance to some one Christian confession, (3) without needless repetition of what has already been said, (4) dogmatic treatises being preferred but not to the exclusion of everything else.
Origen is great in scholarship as well as in system. Athanasius’s On the Incarnation of the Eternal Word represents his central thoughts not less interestingly because it is earlier than the Arian controversy. Cyril of Jerusalem’s Catechetical Lectures are a statement of doctrine for popular use, but arranged as a complete system. Gregory of Nyssa’s Great Catechesis is an instruction to catechists how they should proceed—though of course stating the writer’s theology and apologetic, with his belief in universal salvation. Theodoret has an outline of theology in the last book (v.) of his treatise Against Heresies. Theodore of Mopsuestia is a more suspected representative of the same scholarship—that of Antioch; John Chrysostom is the orator of the school. Cyril of Alexandria represents the later Alexandrian theology. With John of Damascus the progress of Greek divinity ends. A good modern statement is in Chr. Androntsos’s Δογματική). In the West, Augustine is the chief agent in breaking new ground for theology. The Enchiridion ad Laurentium is a slight but interesting sketch of a system, while the De Doctrina Christiana is another lesson in the imparting of Christian instruction, as is also, naturally, the De Catechizandis Rudibus. The City of God and the Confessions are of unmatched importance in their several ways; and nothing of Augustine’s was without influence. Gregory the Great’s Magna Moralia should also be named.
In the middle ages Isidore (at its gateway), then Peter Lombard, then Aquinas (and his rivals), are pre-eminent for system, Anselm and Abelard for originality, Bernard of Clairvaux as the theologian who represents medieval piety at its purest and in its most characteristic forms, while Thomas à Kempis’s devotional masterpiece, On the Imitation of Christ, with Tauler’s Sermons and the Theologia
Germanica, belong to the world’s classics. All the Protestant reformers are of theological importance—Luther, Melanchthon and- ↑ “Mystical Theology” is described in Addis and Arnold’s Catholic Dictionary as a “branch” of Moral Theology.
