ABSTRACT
The relationship of course had a particular influence on de Wette's dogmatics. But in a peculiar way it also affects his exegetical work. Attentive observers have always been struck by contradictions and shifts in de Wette's theological attitude. The solution of the problem about the second period is to be found in de Wette's dependence on Fries. The task of criticism is a limited one, and in its limitation purely negative; it destroys all attempts to understand the text contrary to its own intention, that is to say, as a historical document. The religion of the Old Testament came into being in the course of a long development process, and experienced successively the stages of direct self-consciousness, the development to objectivity, and the mediation of self-consciousness with objective consciousness. It is true that in his second period de Wette also undertook the synthesis with the help of a philosophical system.
