Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 264

240

§ 57.

THEOLOGICAL MODALITY

half of the eighteenth centiiiy,

[Div. Ill

whenever the dogmatici de-

scribed Dogmatics not as a subdivision of Theology or as

one of the departments of theological study, but as the theologia propria, to which exegesis, church history, church polity,

etc.,

were added

as

auxiliary studies.

They had

already lost the conception of Theology to such an extent that, although not theoretically, they practically applied the

Theology to the human study which was devoted to knowledge of God; but from their limitation of this name to Dogmatics it was evident that they took this to be the study that leads to the right understanding of the real knowledge of God. They were not concerned about all kinds of learning, but about God Himself, and that alone which could bring us a closer knowledge of that God could claim in It is indeed the more precise sense the name of Theology. true, as is shown by the history of Encyclopedia, that the Encyclopedists gradually began to understand bj' Theology the

name

of

this revealed

complex of the several departments but no one will contend that in doing

of theological study; this they contributed

to an organic interpretation of the conception of Theology.

Of Schleiermacher only unskilfulness

of

the

it

can

earlier

reallj^

be said that, seeing the

Encyclopedists, he seriously

knowledge of God, but taken as a theological science, to a unity of interpretation. It is too bad that he went to work at this so unhistorically; that he paid almost no attention to the development of the conception of Theolog}^ in former ages: and still more is tried to bring Theology, not as a

it

a pity that, mistaken in the idea of the object, he could

not attain to an organic interpretation, and advanced no further than to explain it as an aggregate, united by the

tendency of these several studies to aid in preparation By this he cut off the theological for the sacred office. understanding from the conception of Theology; and they who have come after him have no doubt superseded his aggregate by an organic conception, and his exceedingly limited object by a broader object, but have not removed the breach between what Theology was originally and what The rule continued to be lias since been understood by it.

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