Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 524

500

§ 82.

THE INSTRUMENTS OF INSPIRATION

[Div.

HI

the reality of the miracle, or the general revelation of God's power, which it reveals, than about the sense, thought, or

which hides in these "wonderful works." In lies a language, and in the matter of inspiration that language claims our attention. This peculiar language lies in all the phenomena and events which are extraordinary and therefore no distinction need here be made between the Theophanies, the miracles in In nature, the miracles of healing and of destruction, etc. all these miracles a thought of God lies expressed, and in the matter of inspiration that thought of God is the principal For this reason, however, the reality should not interest.

significance

those miracles and signs there also

;

be looked upon for a moment as accidental or indifferent. Without that reality even thought misses its ground in God, and it is by this very union and combination of to o^ with the

mind

that thought receives

its ratification,

and comes

to us,

not as an idea suggested by ourselves, but as a communicaThe principal thought in all miracles tion from God to us.

now

is

the thought of redemption.

When

the existing order

and turns us pessimistic, and places curse over against us and above us, as a power

of things distresses us,

nature with

its

against which

all

that that power

is

resistance

is

vain, the miracle proclaims

not the highest, that the heavens of brass

above us can be opened, and that there is still another reality, entirely different from this order of things, which does not clash with our moral aspirations, but is in harmony with

became by the curse, and now is, under the tempering of that curse by common grace-, offends the only fixed point which the sinner retains in

them.

his

The world, such

moral consciousness,

umphs again and

as

it

viz. his

life and outward such as our sense of right which presented itself with which no solution is given

the hidden

Wrong

sense of right.

tri-

Between no harmony,

again, while innocence suffers.

conditions there postulates.

is

It is this

problem

great force in Israel, and for

except in the miracles.

The

miracles voice a palingenesis which, first in the psychical and after that in the physical world, sliall hereafter dissolve all dissonance in entire harmony.

Every miracle

is

a

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