(A1) Legal and Theological Doctrines (“Dogmatics”) as Symbolic Staging of Normativity

Legal and theological doctrine (“dogmatics”) constitutes a special manifestation of political-legal and religious normativity. Only the immanent functions of such dogmatics (the reduction of normative complexity, stabilisation of normative expectations) have been well researched, not their social function and effect. If one turns one’s attention to the connection between normative claims for legitimacy and form, dogmatics nevertheless appears as one – specifically western – “staging” of law and religion in the shape of scholarly knowledge. In particular, doctrinal propositions have, namely, despite their normative form, a “descriptive meaning” (Hans Kelsen). This results in a particular potential for legitimacy, because normativity, which is represented as clear and capable of being true and thus in principle, capable of being rationally founded, seems for this reason to be legitimate. In addition there is the fact that doctrines form a crucial factor in the creation and stabilisation of the autonomy of law and religion. For making something an academic doctrine transforms the normative – despite its rationality – into epistemological arcana that have to be managed by a group of experts who are allowed to claim the appropriate trust in advance.

The central question is how far the phenomenon of “dogmatics,” which is seemingly internal to law and religion, should actually be understood historically as this kind of staging and as having the suspected social relevance: To what extent have processes of dogmatisation fashioned answers to law’s and religion’s social crises of legitimacy and influenced the authority and political strength of religious or juristic elites; and to what extent have the social perception and relevance of law and religion changed as a result of processes of dogmatisation? A comparison of legal and theological processes and their respective effects on society promises here to be especially informative, whereas it is of course still to be examined, to what extent the concepts of doctrine or dogmatics within law and religion correspond to one another and permit telling comparisons. Particular attention is owed to the linguistic and aesthetic aspects of the staging of dogmatics: the stylistic peculiarities of the respective specialised vocabularies (apparently rational substantivisation, Latinisms, and termini technici) and the representative creation of doctrinal works. Periods of significant dogmatisation will form the focal point. In law these are the end of the Roman republic and the early Principate, the time after the “rebirth” of the study of Roman law in northern Italy (eleventh and twelfth centuries) as well as the nineteenth century; particularly the latter two should also be of interest from a theological perspective (stabilisation of the Gregorian reforms; the infallibility dogma of the nineteenth century).

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