A condensation of C.D., I/1, §2

§02 The Task of Prolegomena to Dogmatics

1. The Necessity of Dogmatic Prolegomena

Prolegomena are the discussions and expositions of how knowledge is attained in a science. Here we ask on what ground dogmatic prolegomena are necessary.  Some say that changes in world culture in the last 300 years call theology into question and so make such prolegomena necessary to fight “the self-assurance of the modern spirit and yet appeal to man’s natural “questing after God” (Brunner). This basis is to be rejected for three reasons: 1. There is no theological basis for the assumed difference between our age and earlier times. 2. The task of dogmatics is set aside when we pursue such eristics or apologetics. 3. This view of the necessity of dogmatic prolegomena does not do justice to the “responsibility and relevance” that are the basis of its concern. Yes, the Christian Church must speak to unbelief apologetically and polemically, but this has never been effective unless it is not deliberately planned, for three reasons: a) In such apologetics faith takes unbelief seriously and thus doesn’t take itself seriously; b) all independently ventured apologetics assumes that dogmatics has done its work; and c) an independent eristics runs the risk of making dogmatics think that its conflict with unbelief has been brought to an end.

2. The Possibility of Dogmatic Prolegomena

How are dogmatic prolegomena possible?

Since the Enlightenment it has been proposed that the Church and faith are links in a greater nexus of being. Thus dogmatic prolegomena consist in demonstrating that faith is 1) an anthropological possibility and 2) a historico-psychological reality, and 3) in establishing its methods. This proposal understands such prolegomena themselves not to be dogmatic. It also assumes that there really is such a nexus of being superior to that of the Church. But this is a highly theological assumption. It understands the being of the Church to be piety, an aspect of the reality of man. With this Modernist faith we agree that the being of the Church implies a determination of human reality. But that reality is not a human possibility.

Roman Catholic dogmatic prolegomena assert that the objective principle of knowledge is to be found in the form of Holy Scripture, Church tradition, and the living teaching apostolate of the Church, and that the subjective principle is to be found in the catholic faith, which accepts revelation as proposed by the Church. This presupposes that the being of the Church, Jesus Christ, is no longer the free Lord of its existence, but that he is incorporated into the existence of the Church. It affirms an analogia entis, the possibility of applying the secular “There is” to God and the things of God.

If the being of the Church is identical with Jesus Christ, then the place from which the way of dogmatic knowledge is to be seen and understood can be nether a prior anthropological possibility nor a subsequent ecclesiastical reality, but only the present moment of the speaking and hearing of Jesus Christ Himself, the divine creation of light in our hearts. Thus prolegomena to dogmatics are possible only as a part of dogmatics itself. Evangelical dogmatics realizes that all its knowledge can only be an event, and cannot therefore be guaranteed as correct knowledge from any place apart from or above this event. In the prolegomena to dogmatics, therefore, we ask concerning the Word of God as the criterion of dogmatics, and thus already on the way, we give an account of the way which we tread. We shall attempt a doctrine of Holy Scripture in the context of an embracing doctrine of the Word of God.