Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 687

Chap. V]

DEVELOPMENT OF MULTIFORMITY

§ 104.

663

Without attracting at once a special theological tendency. attention to itself as such, this multiformity was sealed

dogma

Church as the Romishmaintained, it was entirely unity was of delusion papal should be identified with Church visible the natural that confessionally in the

of

the visible

revelation of the invisible Church.

the invisible.

Where

there

essence, a graded difference

is

So long

only one revelation of the

may

be viewed as an obstacle

to the adequateness of the revelation.

even

this

as the

But Rome removed

objection by the separation between

and the Laity.

As

the Clergy

soon, however, as other church for-

mations arose, each of which pretended to be the revelation of the Church, while they lacked the courage to reject each other's baptism, or to deny salvation in its absolute sense to those of the other confessions, the essence and the From revelation of the Church fell of themselves apart. henceforth what one saw could no longer be the Church, the body of Christ, and hence of necessity, simultaneously

church formations, the dogma originated of the visible Church as not being adequate to the invisible Church, or to the mystical body of Christ. With this an entirely different state of things entered in So long as uniformity maintained itself, for theology. with

the

multiformity of

there was no other theology conceivable than that which It scientifically systematized the confession of the Church.

could take no other point of departure than in the instituted Church, and could arrive at no other result than had

been found by the instituted Church. Investigation of the Holy Scripture had no aim when the instituted Church tendered an official Latin translation, and in exegesis prescribed the analogy of faith even to minutest particulars. Everything was known from the start; hence there could be no thirst after truth

;

to

furnish a dialectic proof for

the confession of the Church was superfluous for believers,

and could serve no purpose for unbelievers, since these were bound to maintain silence for fear of the anathema All the benefit, therefore, which one deof the Church. rived from Scholastic Theology was the pleasure, noble

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