The evolution of dogma is possible; why is it necessary? Simply because the material of which it is composed is in a state of constant flux and evolution.... We do not mean to say that everything in the old formulas should be condemned. There are to be found in them many great and excellent ideas which still retain their truth and power. We simply say that there is nothing absolute in them, nothing that may be imposed by authority on Christian thought. It is always with notions borrowed from current science and philosophy that the Church constructs her dogmas. But science and philosophy are continually evolving and carrying dogma in their train. Everything changes, even our manner of thinking. Why do certain things appear absurd or grotesque in the imaginations of the past? Because we have lost the faculty for comprehending them. It is as impossible for us to think in Greek as to speak in Greek. Since the end of the Middle Ages two or three intellectual revolutions have occurred which have profoundly separated us from antiquity and changed the inner and the outer world in which we live. It will suffice to recall them in a few words in order to deepen our sense of the decadence of Graeco-Roman dogmatic Christianity, and of the necessity incumbent upon us to reform and renovate it, if only we are strong enough to answer to the call of God. 3. _The Crisis of Dogma_ The first of these revolutions was a religious one. Our specific consciousness as Protestant Christians dates from the Reformation. Now, the Evangelical Reformation of the sixteenth century was the rupture of the tradition of the Church, of which the Dogmatics of the great Councils was the framework and the centre. In breaking the authority of the Church, the Reformers broke up the basis on which those ancient dogmas had been built. In appealing to the Word of God against traditional doctrines, they at least called in question the Dogmatics of the Councils. After protesting against all the infiltrations of pagan manners and superstitions into the morals of the Church, into its organisation and its hierarchy into its worship and its rites, why should they regard as sacrosanct the ancient philosophy which had entered into the construction of its dogmas?