If then the discipline of the history of dogma is to be what its name purports, its object is the very dogma which is so formed, and its fundamental problem will be to discover how it has arisen. In the history of the canon our method of procedure has for long been to ask first of all, how the canon originated, and then to examine the changes through which it has passed. We must proceed in the same way with the history of dogma, of which the history of the canon is simply a part. Two objections will be raised against this. In the first place, it will be said that from the very first the Christian religion has included a definite religious faith as well as a definite ethic, and that therefore Christian dogma is as original as Christianity itself, so that there can be no question about a genesis, but only as to a development or alteration of dogma within the Church. Again it will be said, in the second place, that dogma as defined above, has validity only for a definite epoch in the history of the Church, and that it is therefore quite impossible to write a comprehensive history of dogma in the sense we have indicated. As to the first objection, there can of course be no doubt that the Christian religion is founded on a message, the contents of which are a definite belief in God and in Jesus Christ whom he has sent, and that the promise of salvation is attached to this belief. But faith in the Gospel and the later dogmas of the Church are not related to each other as theme and the way in which it is worked out, any more than the dogma of the New Testament canon is only the explication of the original reliance of Christians on the word of their Lord and the continuous working of the Spirit; but in these later dogmas an entirely new element has entered into the conception of religion. The message of religion appears here clothed in a knowledge of the world and of the ground of the world which had already been obtained without any reference to it, and therefore religion itself has here become a doctrine which has, indeed, its certainty in the Gospel, but only in part derives its contents from it, and which can also be appropriated by such as are neither poor in spirit nor weary and heavy laden. Now, it may of course be shewn that a philosophic conception of the Christian religion is possible, and began to make its appearance from the very first, as in the case of Paul. But the Pauline gnosis has neither been simply identified with the Gospel by Paul himself (1 Cor. III. 2 f.; XII. 3; Phil. I. 18) nor is it analogous to the later dogma, not to speak of being identical with it. The characteristic of this dogma is that it represents itself in no sense as foolishness, but as wisdom, and at the same time desires to be regarded as the contents of revelation itself. Dogma in its conception and development is a work of the Greek spirit on the soil of the Gospel. By comprehending in itself and giving excellent