DOGMA (Gr.), meant originally an opinion or proposition, put in the form of a posi tive assertion, its truth being supposed to have been previously shown. In theology, it was understood to signify a doctrine founded on Scripture, and advanced not for dis cussion but for belief. But as this method of stating truth easily degenerates into the assertion of opinions without ground, and without regard to the aspect they may pre sent to others, dogma and dogmatism have come in English to be almost synonymous with assertion without proof.
In continental theology, however, the word is still used without implying any cen sure, dogmas (Ger. dagmen) meaning simply doctrines; and this is the case in our own expression, dogmatic theology, or dogmatic, which is that branch of theology that of the systematic arrangement of the doctrines of Christianity. Older names for the same thing were Loci Theologiei and Theologia Positiva. —The first attempt to give a con nected view of Christian doctrine was made in the 3d c. by Origen in his work De Prin cipies. He was followed in.the 4th c. by Augustine, who in his book .De Doetrina Chris tiana, and others, treated of the whole body of doctrine held by the church, though without any very scientific arrangement. The contributions to dogmatic, made in the 5th, 6th, and 7th centuries, were mere collections of "sentences." In the east, in the 8th c. the doctrines of the Greek church were treated by John of Damascus in a form already Aristotelian, and his work may be considered the first systematically-arranged treatise on dogmatic. He makes no mention of purgatory. His book was as influen tial in the Greek church as the writings of Augustine in the Latin. The regular sys tematizing of doctrines began with the SCHOLASTICS in the 11th c., but degenerated often into hair-splitting. The first cultivators of dogmatic theology among the Scholas tics were Hildebert of Tours and Abelard, who were followed by Petrus Lombardus, Alexander de Hales, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, etc.
The era of the reformation awoke dogmatic to a new life, leading it back from Aris totle to Biblical theology. But the controversies between the different churches in the 17th c., and the too great importance attached to confessions of faith, cramped anew its freedom, and gave it again a Scholastic turn. Many of our still standard treatises
on systematic divinity wear traces of these fetters, and contrast strikingly with the independence and vigor of inquiry displayed in the similar works of Melanchthon, Calvin, and other reformers. A fresh revival followed in Germany the spread of the critical philosophy of Kant, when Biblical theology rose up in contradistinction to the theology of confessions, and dogmatic was grounded on the critical interpretation of Scripture rather than on traditional formulas. Hence, however, have sprung widely diverging views. One party still held fast by the existing confessions; another looked chiefly to the contents of Scripture; while a third subjected confessions and Scripture alike to the test of reason. Besides these, there arose in more recent times, a school of dogmatic theologians, formed on the philosophical systems of Jacobi and Schelling, who looked for the essence of religion in the human soul itself, and considered Christianity as the historical revelation of it. Of this school, Schleiermacher, and in some respects Neander and Rothe also, may be considered the representatives; and of all the German schools, it is that which seems to ne exercising the greatest influence on the speculative theology of Britain. An important contribution to this department of theology was Peter Lange's Philosophische Dogmatik (2 vols., Heidelb. 1849-51). The dogmatic of D. F. Strauss is constructed from the Hegelian point of view, and in its leading results comes back to the system of Spinoza.
It deserves remark that Christian dogmatic and morality, which it had been the custom to discuss separately since the 17th c., have recently been treated in combina tion by Nitsch and Beck. The scientific investigation of Christian doctrine in Ger many has not been 'confined to the Protestant churches. A number of Catholic theolo gians have occupied themselves with this branch o sacred science; some, as G. Hermes of Bonn, inclining to freedom of investigation, and others, as Liebermann, to the defense of the usual formulas.