493                                                               RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA                                                 Doremns

                                                                                                                                                                           Dorothea

 

 

experiences is the Christ of Scripture, which alone enables the Christian to understand and assert faith and the mystery of his new personality. Justification, he used to say, is the only completed fact in the Christian; everything else is growth.

 

3. Later Life. In Berlin.

 

    In 1843 Dorner became professor at Königsberg, in 1847 at Bonn, in 1853 at Göttingen, and finally in 1862 at Berlin as successor of Nitzsch. Here he was also superior consistorial councilor (Oberkirchenrath), and for twenty-two years he exerted a mighty influence on the Evangelical Church of Prussia, and on students from all parts of the world. He visited America in 1873 as delegate to the conference of the Evangelical Alliance in New York. His last years were clouded by a painful cancerous affection of the face and by the incurable illness of a son. Nevertheless, he worked on his Christliche Sittenlehre till the last weeks of his life, which were spent at Wittenberg in view of the Luther house.

 

4. Dorner's Theology. His Personality.

 

    Dr. Dorner was one of the profoundest and most learned theologians of the nineteenth century, and ranks with Schleiermacher, Neander, Nitzsch, Julius Müller, and Richard Rothe. He mastered the theology of Schleiermacher and the philosophy of Hegel, appropriated the best elements of both, and infused into them a positive Evangelical faith and a historical spirit. The central idea of his system was the divine-human personality of Christ, as the highest revelation of God, the perfect ideal of humanity, and the Savior from sin and death. The primary postulate of faith in regard to the Redeemer is that he was free from sin and not himself in need of redemption. From this, faith proceeds to the supernatural origin of his person. Christ is the center of humanity, and not merely an individual. God's indwelling in him was not merely a dynamic divine immanence, but a personal self-communication of God. In him the divine and human natures were united. This union involved no diminution of the Logos. The kenosis of the Logos is to be thought of as a self-humiliation in love to meet the needs of mankind. Dorner's theology is preeminently Christological, and his monumental history of Christology is a rich mine of accurate and extensive scholarship and Christian experience. He lectured on exegesis, on New Testament theology, on symbolics, but more especially on dogmatics and ethics, in which he excelled all his contemporaries. He was one of the revisers of Luther's Bible, and proposed a correspondence with the Anglo-American revision committee, while in New York, 1873, which was carried on for a short time. He was alive to all practical church questions, and labored as Oberkirchenrath for synodical church government, and the development of the lay agency and the voluntary principle. He took a deep interest in the work of the Innere Mission (q.v.) and was one of its directors. With Wichern and Von Bethmann-Hollweg, he was one of the founders of the Church Diet (q.v.) in the revolutionary year 1848, and one of the leading speakers and managers at its annual sessions. He was a most devoted and conscientious teacher, and a favorite among students. The Johanneum and the Melanchthon House in Berlin are memorials of his active interest in indigent students. The leading traits in his personal character were purity, simplicity, courtesy, gentleness, humility, and love.

 

5. His Works.

 

    Dorner's more important publications not already mentioned were as follows: Der Pietismus, insbesondere in Wurttemberg…mit besonderer Beziehung auf das Verhaltniss des Pietismus zur Kirche (Hamburg, 1840); Das Verhdltniss zwischen Kirche and Staat (inaugural address at Berlin, Bonn, 1847); Sendschreiben izer Reform der evan

gelischen Landeskirchen im Zusammenhang mit der Herstellung einer evangeliseh-deut-schen Nationalkirche (Bonn, 1848); Ueber Jesu siindlose Vollkommenheit (Goths, 1862; Eng. transl., by Henry B. Smith, in the American Presbyterian Review, 1863); Geschichte der protestantischen Theologie (Munich, 1867; Eng. transl., History of Protestant Theology, 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1871); System der christlichen Glaubenslehre (2 vols., Berlin, 1879-81; 2d ed., 1886-87; Eng. transl.,

A System of Christian Doctrine, 4 vols., Edinburgh, 1880,82; the eschatological portion, advocating the doctrine of a future probation, was edited, with introduction and notes, by Newman Smyth under the title Dorner on the Future State, New York, 1883); Gesammelte Sehriften auf dem Gebiet der systematischen Theologie, Exegese and Gesehichte (Berlin, 1883; contains valuable metaphysical essays on the unchangeability of God, and criticism of the kenosis theory of the incarnation); System der christlichen Sittenlehre (Berlin, 1885, edited by his son, A. J. Dorner; Eng. transl., System of Christian Ethics, Edinburgh, 1887). A collection of letters between Dorner and his lifelong friend, Bishop H. L. Mar

tensen, appeared after his death (2 vols., Berlin, 1888). With K. T. A. Liebner he founded and edited the Jahrbücher fur deutsche Theologie (Stuttgart and Gotha, 1856-78). (PHILIP SCHAFF†) D. S. SCHAFF.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY: P. Schaff. Germany: its Universities, Theology, and Religion, pp. 376-380, Philadelphia, 1857; Dekan Jager and Diakonus Knapp, zur Erinnerung an Dr. Isaak August Dorner, Tuttlingon, 1884 (funeral addresses); P. Kleinert, Zum GeddeAtnise I. A. Dorners, Berlin, 1884 (a eulogy delivered at Berlin); Andover Review, ii (1884), 176; J. Bobertag, I. A. Dorner, aein Leben and seine Lehre, Gfitersloh, 1906. A good account of his theological system is given by his son, A. J. Dorner, Dem Andenken von Dr. I. A. Dorner, in TSK, 1885.

 

 

  DOROTHEA: 1. St. Dorothea is said to have been a virgin of Cæsarea in Cappadocia, and to have suffered martyrdom during the persecutions of Diocletian. She is mentioned in the various recensions of the so-called Martyrologium Hieronymianum, the Codex Wissenbergensis giving the day of her death as Feb. 6. But she is unknown

to the Orient, and accordingly seems to be merely legendary. A Dorothea who was "a virgin consecrated to God" is also mentioned by Rufinus (Hist. eccl., viii. 17), who states that she escaped by flight from the persecutions of Maximinus.

                                                                                                                                                                    (A. HAUCK.)