its decisions it does not measure with the yard-stick of the ideas of truth, God, revelation and the like that happen to be current at the time, to-day this, to-morrow that, now under this prevailing point of view, now again under another. If it did that, it could not really itself be described and understood as an act of recognition, nor could it on its side make any claim to recognition. The value of the Confession lies in the fact that when it was being formed the Church, in face of the ideas of the time, inquired into the decision of Holy Scripture, and in the Confession did not simply express its faith as such, but what in its faith it thought it heard as the judgment of the Holy Scripture in points of Church proclamation that had become doubtful. In the Credo the Church bows before that God Whom we did not seek and find—Who rather has sought and found us.
Now it is just from this that the worth of Dogmatics also derives. It is preceded by Exegesis as primary theological discipline. That means that Dogmatics does not carry its norm in itself, as also it does not have its purpose in itself, but is reminded by the discipline of Practical Theology that follows on after it, of its task within the whole sphere of the Church’s service. The expert in Dogmatics is not the judge of Church proclamation. Only if he put more reliance on his philosophy or philosophy of religion than is permissible could he be willing to act as judge. His function is to point the Church’s proclamation in its whole range to the real judge. The real judge is the prophetic and apostolic witness to revelation, as that witness speaks through the Holy Spirit to our spirit. Every dogmatic effort to elucidate the cognitions already expressed in the Credo, and every dogmatic stirring of cognitions that are waiting to be expressed in a future Credo can, in their true substance, exist only in the confrontation of the propositions on occasion uttered in the Church with this judge. What Dogmatics has to exhibit with the utmost conscientiousness is the discussion that is inevitable when these two meet. No limitation or modification of this rule is involved when we add that any arbitrary appeal on the part of Dogmatics to the very Bible itself is forbidden by the fact that it is itself confession-bound, i.e. that it remembers its definite place in the Church, and therefore brings to the Confessions, in which the Church has already definitely expressed its understanding of the Bible, that respect which children owe by God’s command to the word of their human fathers.
5. The Credo finally shows the Church engaged in missionary work, directed towards the world which is not yet gathered into the Church, facing it with responsibility and appeal. How else is it to explain and defend itself, how else recruit and invite, link up and try to gain ground with its message than by confessing its faith, as far as possible in its fullness and yet in the shortest words, as free as possible from everything accidental, as far as possible purified from every ambiguity, as definite as it is possible for faith to be, i.e. in its relation to the object from which it derives its life? Even the material content of the Church’s proclamation will always have to be the Credo. Among all human factors only the fact of faith is able to summon to faith. In the Credo the Church attempts to place this fact on the map.
In Dogmatics, also, it is able to do and aims at doing nothing else. What is here added is the explanation of the Credo. It gives to the fact of faith a breadth, a distinctness and perspicuity in which the Credo as such is lacking. Dogmatics is the Credo speaking here and to-day, speaking exactly according to the needs of the moment. Be it understood: the missionary and apologetic power can even here be nothing else than faith, or the testimony to its object, or its object itself. Dogmatics has no means of throwing other bridges between Church and world than that of the Confession. But its very attempt to exhibit the Confession as, on its Scripture basis, self-consistent and comprehensible, is able to give to the Confession a peculiar language, which, with its peculiar dangers, yet also has its peculiar promise. And let it not be imagined that it is only perhaps in scientifically employed or oriented circles that many are looking for just this language, the language of the dogmatically rigorous and detailed confession.
6. What has been said would not be complete if finally we did not also remember the limits of the Credo and so also of Dogmatics. The life of the Church is not exhausted by its confessing its faith. The Credo as such and Dogmatics as such can by no means guarantee that proper proclamation with which they are connected. They are only a proposal and attempt in that direction. And even proper proclamation, secured not only on the human side by the Credo and Dogmatics, but really and decisively secured by God’s grace, has in the life of the Church three inevitable frontiers:
The first is the Sacrament, through which the Church is reminded that all its words, even those blessed and authenticated by God’s Word and Spirit, can do no more than aim at that event itself, in which God in His reality has to do with man. Just these visible signs of Baptism and Holy Communion have manifestly, in the life of the Church, the important function of making visible the bounds between what can be said, understood and to that extent comprehended of God by man—and the incomprehensibility in which God in Himself and for us really is Who He is.
The second frontier of the Credo and Dogmatics is very simply our actual human life, in its weakness and strength, in its confusion and clarity, in its sinfulness and hope, that human life of which all the Church’s words certainly do speak, without as words reaching and touching it, even where God Himself bears His witness to them. Much criticism and depreciation of Dogma and Dogmatics would remain unuttered if it were only clearly understood that human words as such must indeed serve the end, but can do no more than serve the end that our actual life be placed under God’s judgment and grace.
The third frontier is the frontier which separates eternity from time, the coming Kingdom of God from the present age, the eschaton from the hic et nunc. Credo and Dogmatics without doubt stand together under the word of Paul (1 Cor. 13:8 f.) according to which our gnosis and our prophecy are in like manner in part and will be done away, childish speech that will have to be put away when manhood is reached, a seeing in the dark mirror, not yet a seeing face to face. Meaning, essence and task of the Credo and of Dogmatics are based on conditions which, when God is all in all, will undoubtedly no longer prevail.
The existence of these three frontiers or limits might well be named at the outset the chief problem of Dogmatics. In any case we must never for a moment forget them. All that was said at the beginning holds good within these limits. And rightly understood, the very existence of these limits will no doubt give to what has been said a peculiar importance. Where you have limit, there you have also relationship and contact. Credo and Dogmatics stand facing the Sacrament, facing human life, facing the coming age, distinguished from them, but facing them! Perhaps in the way in which Moses in his death faced the land of Canaan, perhaps as John the Baptist faced Jesus Christ. Could anything more significant be said of them than this, their limitation?
IF the symbol begins with the decisive word, “I believe in God,” and if it is permissible for us to characterise this its first word as also the cardinal proposition of Dogmatics, then we must go on to establish the following: The relationship between this “in God” and what follows in the three parts of the symbol with regard to Father, Son and Holy Spirit cannot and must not in any circumstances be understood in the sense that this “in God” signifies, as it were, the specification of a general concept of known content which then receives in the three parts of the symbol its special historical ingredients, namely, the Christian filling out and elaboration. “God” in the meaning of the symbol—of the symbol which aims at giving again the testimony of the prophets and apostles—“God” is not a magnitude, with which the believer is already acquainted before he is a believer, so that as believer he merely experiences an improvement and enrichment of knowledge that he already had. When Paul says (Rom.
