Dogma (Gr.), in the Septuagint and New Testament, signified a decree or precept; by classical Greek writers it is used in the sense of a philosophical tenet. Its general meaning is a principle or maxim laid down in the form of a positive assertion, and hence 'the Dogmatic Method' is the method pursued in such a science as Mathematics, which starts from axioms and postulates, and deduces everything from these by means of proofs. But where the fundamental principles are either unknown or much contested, the Dogmatist is one who assumes certain principles without proof as the foundation of his system. He uses reason, without first investigating its capacity and limits; and in this sense all philosophers may be said to be dogmatists, except those of the sceptical and critical schools.
The name dogma is specially used to signify the whole (or any one) of the doctrinal forms in which the religious experience of the Christian church has from time to time authoritatively expressed itself, as distinguished from the opinions held by church-teachers individually.
HISTORY OF DOGMAS is the scientific exposition of the origin and development of the dogmas in which the beliefs of the Christian church have found their authoritative expression. It is a separate section of Church History (q.v.), and forms as it were the bridge between general church history and doctrinal theology or dogmatic (see THEOLOGY). Between the history of dogmas treated as a separate science and as a constituent part of church history there is merely a formal distinction—as Hase remarks, 'they simply touch the different poles of the one axis'; the former deals rather with dogma as the idea in the course of its development, the latter with dogma in the midst of persons and events. The periods in the development of doctrine do not always coincide with those into which general church history is divided, because that which marks an epoch in the one may be of comparatively little significance for the other. Hagenbach divides the history of dogmas into the following periods: (1) From the close of the Apostolic Age to the death of Origen—the age of apologetics (70–254 A.D.); (2) from the death of Origen to Joannes Damascenus—the age of polemics (254–730); (3) from Joannes Damascenus to the Reformation—the age of scholasticism, taken in its widest sense (730–1517); (4) from the Reformation to the rise of the philosophy of Leibnitz and Wolf in Germany—the age of the conflict of confessions (1517 to about 1720); and (5) from about 1720 to the present day—the age of criticism, of speculation, and of the antagonism between faith and knowledge, philosophy and Christianity, reason and revelation, including the attempts to reconcile them. Harnack divides the subject into only two parts—(1) the rise, and (2) the development of dogmatic Christianity. In his view the first part of the history appears complete as soon as one logically formulated doctrine has been raised to the position of the 'constitutive article of the church,' and is universally recognised as such by its members. This point was reached at the end of the 3d and beginning of the 4th century, when the doctrine of Christ as the pre-existent and personal Logos of God had come to be everywhere recognised as the fundamental article of revealed truth. The second part has three stages: (1) The eastern development of doctrine according to the standard of its original conception, from the Arian controversy to the image controversy and the seventh General Council in the year 787; (2) the Western or medieval development of doctrine, under the influence of the Christianity of Augustine and the policy of the Roman see; (3) the development of doctrine since the Reformation (a) in the churches of the Reformation, and (b) in the Roman Catholic Church from the Council of Trent to the Vatican Council in 1870.
Much valuable material for the history of dogmas is contained in the works of the Catholic writers Baronius, Bellarmine, Petavius, and Thomassin; those of the humanists Valla and Erasmus; and those of Luther, Ecolampadius, Melanchthon, Flacius, Hyperius, Chemnitz, and Forbés of Corse. The learned labours of the Benedictine and Maurine fathers on the one side, and of the Protestant scholars Casaubon, Vossius, Pearson, Daillé, Spanheim, Bull, Lardner, Grabe, Basnage, &c. on the other, prepared the way for the work of the 18th century; and the criticisms of the history of doctrine attempted by Gottfried Arnold in Germany, and by the Deists in England, contributed in different ways to the same result. The scientific investigation of the history of dogmas begins with Mosheim, 'the Erasmus of the 18th century,' and disciple of Leibnitz. Mosheim was followed by Walch, Ernesti, Lessing, and Semler. By Lange (1796) the subject is for the first time treated as a separate branch of study. His work was followed by the manuals of Münscher (1811), Baumgarten-Crusius (1831), Meier (1840), and Gieseler (1855). The writings of the celebrated disciple of Hegel, F. C. Baur (q.v.), for the first time presented the whole process of the history of dogmas as a unity. The works on this subject by Strauss (1841) and Marheineke (1849) were also written from a Hegelian point of view; while that of Schleiermacher was represented in those of Neander (1857) and Hagenbach (1840; 5th ed. 1867; Eng. trans. 3 vols. 1883). Dorner endeavours to reconcile both in his Lehre von der Person Christi (3 vols. 1846–56; Eng. trans. 5 vols. 1861–63). Of modern Roman Catholic writers on this subject, the chief are Klee (1837–38), Zobl (1865), Schwane (1862–82), and Bach (1875). The histories of dogma by Kliefoth (1839), Thomasius (1876; 1887), Schmid (1859) and Kahnis (1864) are from the standpoint of confessional Lutheranism. Nitzsch's history of the patristic period appeared in 1870. Ritschl's Christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung (3 vols. 1870; 2d ed. 1882–83) contains an elaborate critical history of the development of that doctrine (Eng. trans. by Black, vol. i. 1872). Landerer's Neueste Dogmengeschichte was edited by Zeller (1881). A useful work is Shedd's History of Christian Doctrine (3d ed. 1881). Specially important for the study of the early history are Rothe's Anfänge der Christlichen Kirche (1837); Ritschl's Entstehung der Altkatholischen Kirche (2d ed. 1857); Renan's Histoire des Origines du Christianisme (7 vols. 1863 et seq.); Overbeck's Anfänge der Patristischen Literatur;
Archdeacon Farrar's Lives of the Fathers (1889); Harnack's Outlines, and, above all, his History of Dogma (2 vols., trans. 1895–96).