Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 137

;

Chap.

§ 43.

II]

SCIENCE

AND

SIN

113

God, and causes us in love to go If, now, experience shows that this sense has not worn awaj^ entirely^ and that this impulse has not ceased altogethet-, but that, in virtue of its own motive, sin has weakened this sense to such an extent as to render it oftentimes unrecognizable, and has so falsified this impulse, that all kinds of religious emotions go hand in hand with hatred of God, it is plain that every 110

bond which draws us

out unto him,

to

all science is

here impossible.

scientific reproduction of the

as

knowledge of God must

fail,

long as this sense remains weakened and this impulse

From which

falsified in its direction.

it

follows at the same

time that the knowledge of the cosmos as a whole, or, if you jilease, philosophy in a restricted sense, is equally bound to founder upon this obstruction wrought by sin. Suppose that

you had succeeded in attaining an adequate knowledge of all the parts of the cosmos, the product of these results would not yet give you the adequate knowledge of the whole. The whole is always something different from the combination of its parts. First because of the organic relation which holds the parts together but much more because of the entirely new questions which the combination of the whole presents questions as to the origin and end of the whole questions as to the categories which govern the object in its reflection in your consciousness; questions as to absolute being, and as to what wow-cosmos is. In order to answer these questions, you must subject the whole cosmos to 3'ourself, your own self included; in order to do this in your consciousness you must step out from the cosmos, and you must have a starting-point (So'9 (mol ttov cnoi) in the noncosmos and this is altogether impossible as long as sin confines you with your consciousness to the cosmos. From which it by no means follows, that you should sceptically doubt all science, but simply that it will not do to omit the fact of sin from your theory of knowledge. This would not be warranted if sin were only a thelematic conception and therefore purely ethic how much less, now, since immediately as well as mediately, sin modifies so largely all those data with which you have to deal in the ;

:

;

;

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