dogmaticsn.

1693 E. Settle (title) The new Athenian comedy containing the politicks, oeconomicks.., theologicks, poeticks, mathematicks, sophisticks, pragmaticks, dogmaticks, &c. of that most learned society.

1798 C. F. Triebner Let. to Rev. Burkhardt 11 In possession of most all the dogmatics, and systems of the Lutheran and Calvinistic divines.

1845 ‘G. Eliot’ in Life (1885) 137 ‘Dogmatik’ is the idea, I believe—i.e. positive theology. Is it allowable to say dogmatics, think you?

1858 London Rev. Oct. 220 To expound the polemical dogmatics of the Reformation.

1893 A. M. Fairbairn Place Christ in Mod. Theol. i. i. i. 29 (note) The book ‘De Theologicis Dogmatibus’, published at Paris 1644–50..the first attempt at a scientific history of dogmata, and..notable as suggesting to modern theology the term Dogmatics.

1910 T. C. Hall Hist. Ethics within Organized Christianity iii. iii. 148 The formulation of dogma was, in fact, to play a much larger part in Christian history than the formulation of an ethics, and so ethics was most rapidly swallowed up in dogmatics.

1966 N. Pettit Heart Prepared v. 130 The process of conversion for New England would be patterned after Cotton's interpretation of Reformed dogmatics.

2000 C. Welch in A. Hastings et al. Oxf. Compan. Christian Thought 483/2 He argued that dogmatics, or systematic theology, has to be understood as the articulation of the contemporary religious consciousness of the church.