Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 434

410

§ 74.

THE SPECIAL PRIXCIPIUM

[Div. Ill

when divine thoughts take pleasure in the garment of human words, the Scripture is the only form in which they

fore,

can

rest.

But

this does

not exhibit in full the excellency of the

we mentioned the two other and purity, which protect the word of thought against the dangers that threaten from the With respect to tradition we have to conresults of sin. tend not merely with the limitation of the human memory, by which so much becomes lost, broken, and impaired, but almost more still with its multiformity/ and untrusttvorthiness ; and it is against these two dangers that the spoken word is shielded in the fixedness and accuracy of the written or printed word. Every religious sense from its very nature is in need of Scripture as such, and therefore

characteristics of fixedness

As long as the divine reflects itself only in the changing stream of the human, it fails to take hold of us, simply because this trait of changeableness and movability is The quod in conflict with the idea of the divinely majestic. uhique, quod semper may have been pushed too far by Rome, on the ground of hierarchical bj-views, but in the realm of religion antiquity is of so much more value than the 7ieiv and constantly changing idea, simply because the old makes the So impression of fixedness and of being grounded in itself. fixedness.

far

now

as the sinful

mind

of

revelation, he will always be

man

chafes against the divine

bound

to break this fixedness.

Hence the injurious multiformity in tradition. A little liberty, which each successive transmitter allows himself, brings it to pass that in the course of two or three centuries tradition is wrenched entirely away from the grooves of its fixedThis may occur unconsciously or without ill intent, but in every case it breaks the working power of the transmitted revelation. This is seen in the unwritten tradition, which from paradise spread among all nations, becoming almost irrecognizable this is seen in the traditions committed this is to writing at a later date in the apocryphal gospels seen in the different authority of tradition in the Eastern and Western churches. It is this same infatuation against the ness.

;

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