Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 285

Chap.

THE FRUIT OF REVELATION

I]

261

Imagine that there were no i-easonable creatures, and that the creation consisted of nothing but entirely unconscious

God

creatures, incapable of consciousness, the perfections of

revealed in His creation could not be evident to any one but

God

Himself.

He who

This, however,

would be a contradiction

in

Himself the Author of revelation, knows the entire content of His revelation before He reveals it. Hence nothing can become known to Him by His revelation, which at first He did not know. This is possible in part with us. When by the grace of God a poet first carries a poetical creation in his mind, and afterwards reveals it in his poem, many things become known to him in this poem which at first were hid from him. This is accounted for by the fact that this poet was inspired in his poetic creation by terms.

is

know all With God, on

a higher power, so that he himself did not

the

obscure contents of his imagination.

the

simply because God cannot be inspired by one higher than Himself, and because there is nothing in His Being which He does not see with fullest clearness of vision. This implies that there can be no mystery for God, either in His Essence, counother hand, such cannot be the

sel,

or plan of

revealed or

creation;

known

to

cas'B,

and hence nothing can become

God by

creation.

By

creation the

contents of His virtues are in nothing enriched

in

;

no

particular do they become more glorious to Himself; hence

would be no revelation

there

activity of God,

in creation or in

there were no creature to

if

any

whom

later

all this

For though we and hears the beautiful in His

could become the revelation of a mystery. grant that

God Himself

sees

deny that this display in creation is a greater God than the view of His perfections in Himself. Every effort to seek a necessary ground in this sense for creation

;

Ave

joy to

the creation of the cosmos results in cancelling the self-

and in making God, by knowledge and possession of His and by a little deeper thought this of

sufficiency of the Eternal Being,

His creation, come

own

divine riches

to the ;

back again to the theory of the world's coexistence with God. itself

leads

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