There can be no doubt that these two elements are also demonstrable in Christian dogma, and therefore we must reject all definitions of the history of dogma which do not take them into account. If we define it as the history of the understanding of Christianity by itself, or as the history of the changes of the theoretic part of the doctrine of religion or the like, we shall fail to do justice to the idea of dogma in its most general acceptation. We cannot describe as dogmas, doctrines such as the Apokatastasis, or the Kenosis of the Son of God, without coming into conflict with the ordinary usage of language and with ecclesiastical law. If we start, therefore, from the supposition that Christian dogma is an ecclesiastical doctrine which presupposes revelation as its authority, and therefore claims to be strictly binding, we shall fail to bring out its real nature with anything like completeness. That which Protestants and Catholics call dogmas, are not only ecclesiastical doctrines, but they are also: (1) theses expressed in abstract terms, forming together a unity, and fixing the contents of the Christian religion as a knowledge of God, of the world, and of the sacred history under the aspect of a proof of the truth. But (2) they have also emerged at a definite stage of the history of the Christian religion; they show in their conception as such, and in many details, the influence of that stage, viz., the Greek period, and they have preserved this character in spite of all their reconstructions and additions in after periods. This view of dogma cannot be shaken by the fact that particular historical facts, miraculous or not miraculous are described as dogmas; for here they are regarded as such, only in so far as they have got the value of doctrines which have been inserted in the complete structure of doctrines and are, on the other hand, members of a chain of proofs, viz., proofs from prophecy.