From the outset Protestant theology was conscious that its scientific objects were in one respect historical phenomena. In the 18th century, however, and against the background of its growing knowledge of history, theology had to renounce its traditional distinction of divine “dogma” and human “history”. Even the eclectic method, developped around 1700 , became insufficient when dogmatic interest itself began to move away from traditional dogma. A new mentality which saw itself as both religious and enlightened, demanded a historical criticism (...) of dogmatic tradition; a criticism which would consequently reach the Bible, making the revealed canon a historical source . In this critical “history of dogma” and “history of the Old and New Testament” theology handed over its traditional role as the basic science to philosophy and became itself a positive discipline.The measure of its criticism, however, was admittedly only religious subjectivity, grounding itself on the dogmatic construction of an “essence of Christianity” and in the historical construction of a divine “education of mankind”, and trying to prove the “perfectibility of Christianity” in the course of human history. Founded only on subjectivity, the historical consciousness of enlightened theology was therefore ambiguous; it was continually forced to ignore its own historical determination. Only the realization of the historicity also of the subjective principle of theology resolved this ambiguity ; that meant that the theological enlightenment in the first sense had been overcome. (shrink)