Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 289

Chap.

THE FRUIT OF REVELATION

I]

2(35

he would have obtained an ever richer revelation of God. But apart from all this acquired knowledge of God, he had in himself the capacity to draw knowledge of God from what had been revealed, as well as a rich revelation from which to draw that knowledge. Our older theologians called these two together the "concreate knowledge of God"; and correctly so, because here there was no logical activity which led to this knowledge of God, but this knowledge of God coincided with man's own self-knowledge. This knowledge of God was given eo ipso in his own self-consciousness; it was not given as discursive knowledge, but as Even in our the immediate content of self-consciousness.

present degenerate condition,

when much

only be learned by observation, there

is

of ourselves can

always a back-

and of knowledge of our own existence, which is given immediately with our self-conBefore the fall, when no darkening had yet sciousness. taken place, this immediate self-knowledge must have been much more potent and clear. And thus it could not be otherwise but that in this clear and immediate self-knowledge there was, without any further action of the logos in us, an equally immediate knowledge of God, the consciousness of which, from that very image itself, accompanied him who had been created in the image of God. Thus the first man lived in an innate knowledge of God, which was not yet understood, and much less expressed in words, just as ground

our

of self-knowledge

human

ideals,

form

heart in

its first

which, however,

to.

we

unfoldings has a knowledge of

are unable to explain or give a

Calvin called this the seed of religion (semen reliwhich he indicated that this innate knowledge of

gionis), by

God

an ineradicable property of human nature, a spiritual may be dimmed, but always so that the lens, and consequently the eye, remains. In connection with this, now, stands faith, that wonderful TTtb-Tt?, the right understanding of which has been more and is

eye in us, the lens of which

more

by the exclusively soteriological conception of our Of course as a consequence of the fall faith also was modified, and became faith in the Saviour of the world. lost

times.

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