Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 584

560

TESTIMONIUM SPIRITUS SANCTI, OK

§ 86.

may hearken again As said

order that in contrition and sorrow he

Holy

to the

Spirit as the

speaker in His Word.

before, however, this incisive chai'acter

not borne by the

is

witness of the Holy Spirit in every person, nor at

As

the conversion of

[Div. Ill

many

all times.

people has taken place almost

which often happens in the quieter walks and the conversion of a few only, who at

^yithout observation, of Christian life,

first wandered far off, is incisive like that of an Augustine, such also is the case here. For the most part this witness works gradually and unobserved, and only in exceptional

cases

is

it

as lightning that

suddenly flames through the

skies.

From

the nature of this witness of the

follows at the same time, that

simply to the Holy Scripture in

it

its

Holy

Spirit,

it

begins with binding us centrum.

It is the central

truth concerning our ego^ concerning the world about us,

and us,

of the true reality

which

is

with God, that takes hold of

convinces and follows after us, until

captive to

and

we

give ourselves

This central truth will take hold of one by

it.

by that utterance, in proportion as our tuned to it but the first impressions will always cause us to descend into the depths of misery and ascend to the heights of redemption. How far the authority, which from this spiritual centrum obtains its hold on us, extends itself later to those things in the Scripture that lie on the this,

inner

of another

life is

periphery,

;

is

a question devoid at

first of all spiritual sig-

Conditions are conceivable in which, after one is captured centrally by the Scripture, the clashing is continued nificance.

many years between our thinking and acting on the one hand, and that which the Scripture lays upon us in the name of the Lord as faith and practice (credenda and agenda). for

Gradually, however, an ever more vitally organic relation itself between the centrum of the Scripture

begins to reveal

and

its

periphery, between

its

fundamental and

its

derivative

it comThat authority which at first addressed us from that centrum only, now begins to appear to us from what has proceeded from that centrum. We feel ourselves more and

thoughts, and between

municates.

its

utterances and the facts

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