Compendium Theologiae Dogmaticae Tomus I: De Christo Legato Divino, De Ecclesia Christi, De Fontibus Theologicis

I have often received requests that I publish a Compendium of Dogmatic Theology, written in a strictly scholastic method. Other labors stood in the way of my granting this wish. At last, having found some leisure, I completed the work. It will certainly displease all those who detest the scholastic manner of defining, proving, and disputing. I have therefore not written for them, but rather for those who think that a method tested by the use of so many centuries can still be employed with good results in schools for teaching dogmatic discipline. Let those who think so see and judge whether I have managed to write a book that is not entirely useless. Yet it is self-evident that one cannot please everyone in every respect; for among the things that various learned men proposed I should provide, some were so opposed to one another that there was no way to reconcile them. I will therefore briefly indicate the aim and the conditions I had in view in publishing this work.

In most theological institutes, apologetics is usually taught in one year, and dogmatic theology in the three following years, with one lecture assigned each day. For this reason, I have not only included dogmatic theology in the strict sense in three volumes, but have also set out a treatise on apologetics in a separate volume. Now, some wish all questions pertaining to Sacred Scripture to be omitted from apologetics, since these belong to the subject matter of an introduction to Sacred Scripture; others, on the contrary, want apologetics to treat the genuineness, inspiration, canon, and interpretation of Scripture, as well as the authenticity of the Vulgate, since all these matters are presupposed in dogmatic theology. What is to be done? I chose a middle course. I established the genuineness of the Gospels, because this is the most necessary foundation of apologetics; likewise, I explained the doctrine of biblical inspiration somewhat more fully, because this question must be settled chiefly by dogmatic arguments. As for the other biblical questions, however, I omitted historical investigations and briefly indicated only the dogmatic principles. Accordingly, those who think that certain matters I have treated do not belong to apologetics may omit them; those who desire more will easily be able to supplement them from the Compendium of Introduction to Sacred Scripture, published by Father Cornely, or from another book available to students.

Most teachers treat the doctrine of theological faith either in apologetics or in dogmatic theology. I placed this treatise after the treatise on grace and, because of the close connection among these subjects, added treatises on hope and charity. I left the moral virtues to moral theology, as is usually done. Anyone who desires a dogmatic treatment of them will find one in the ninth volume of my Praelectiones dogmaticae. I also omitted other questions that are not commonly discussed in dogmatic theology, such as human acts, divine law, and Christian perfection. But before the treatise on apologetics I placed a philosophical inquiry into religion and revelation in general, because this is the practice almost universally received. I placed the eschatological treatise together with the treatise on God as the ultimate end in the second volume, because in this way the material is distributed more evenly among the individual volumes, and the fourth volume is kept entirely for sacramental matters, which in our time are of the greatest importance because of the controversies that have arisen. I treated the subject within such bounds that each volume can conveniently be completed in one year, with one lecture each day.

As for citing authors, I did not wish to fill the pages with book titles, but before each chapter or article I listed a few other books in which the same subject is treated either more fully or in another way. Neither in the statement of the question nor in the objections did I list a multitude of proper names, which for most people remain sounds without meaning, and which, even if they are memorized with great effort, are soon afterward forgotten—usually without harm, since such names alternate from one year to another. It should therefore be enough to know those that offer a sure or at least probable hope of greater stability. I cite the «Enchiridion Symbolorum, Definitionum et Declarationum», edited by H. Denzinger, according to the revised and enlarged edition by Cl. Bannwart, indicating simply the marginal number (e.g. Denz. n. 100). Similarly, I cite the «Enchiridion fontium historiae ecclesiasticae antiquae», by C. Kirch, Freiburg 1910, but add «Enchir.» (e.g. Kirch, Enchir. n. 112)¹. Where cf. is used, it abbreviates conferatur or conferantur (“let it be compared” or “let them be compared”).

There is scarcely any need to say that I gave special attention to those matters that are more necessary in our time, such as the refutation of the errors of modernism and rationalism, although a positive exposition and affirmation of Catholic truth is far more useful and pleasing than the discussion of individual false opinions and objections. For, as Leo XIII says in the encyclical «Providentissimus Deus»: «Many things drawn from every kind of learning have long and often been hurled against Scripture [and the doctrine of the Church], but now, as empty things, they have grown completely obsolete… The fabrications of opinions are erased by time; truth remains and grows stronger forever.»