Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 673

Chap. V]

§ 102.

THE INTERNAL CONFLICT

her mystical -practical

life to

energetic activity of spirit, and to

create theologically from her ino-ly

own

life-principle a correspond-

And this was

adequate world of thought.

logically

649

and Soteriologically.

done Christo-

First Christologically, because

the central starting-point of her activity lay in the Christ, so that the just relation between the Divine and human,

between nature and grace, had

dogma concerning

Christ.

first to

And

be established in the

after that, Soteriologically,

because in the application of the salvation which had appeared in Christ, everything depended upon a correct insight into the true relation between God's action and man's action in In both these questions the

bringing about his salvation.

sin-

cere Christians proved the stronger, because the conflict was

prosecuted from out their own life-principle. As long as it was merely the formal question between the Divine and human factors in the process of attaining certainty in Divine things,

the philosophers were their superiors, and their defence could

not be one of principle.

From

the scientific view-point, their

But when called upon to formulate dogmatically who Christ was, and how grace operates in the Child The pseudo-Christians had of God, the tables were turned.

apology was weak.

to deal with a matter foreign

to them,

while

those

who

were sincere handled what constituted a component part of their

own

life,

the object of their love and worship, the cause

their eternal jo}^

of

Thus

the sympathy of a holy love

sharpened their intellectual capacities, and it explains itself, how these unexcelled Fathers of the Church have caused the stream of theologic life to flow from the rock as with a magic

wand, and at the same time have given to theology its inner Theology could never have substantiated itself by certainty. any demonstration from without and only by starting out from the Christ and the work of grace in the sinner, and, ;

objectively as well as subjectively, formulating accurately the antithesis between the life of nature

did

it

and the

life of

grace,

clear for itself formally also the waj^ to vindicate its

view-point.

For

this reason the antithesis

between philosophy and the

Christian religion could not be a stimulant in this period.

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