Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 86

;

62

§ 37.

ETYMOLOGY AND

[Div. II

language requires that " science " shall make us knoiv what there is, that it is there, and how it is there. That the men of " science " themselves have adopted this name, and have preferred to drop all other names, especially that of Philosophy, only shows that they were not so much impelled by the desire to investigate, as by the desire to know for themselves and to make real knowledge possible for others and that indeed a knowledge so clear and transparent that the scaffoldings, which at first were indispensable, can at last be entirely removed, and the figure be unveiled and However keenly it may be felt that under present seen. conditions this result, in its highest significance, lies beyond

our reach, the ideal should not be abandoned, least of

common

There

parlance.

of things

which

shall

all in

knowledge be the outcome of immediate sight, is

in us a thirst after a

without the bodily eye. And since we are denied this satisfaction in our present dispensation, God's word opens the outlook before us in which this immediate seeing of the heart of things, this OeaaOai, this seeing of face to face, shall be the characteristic of our knowledge in another sphere of reality. The accepted use of the

even

if

this sight takes place

word which holds on

to the conception of sight in

knowledge

agrees entirely with Revelation, which points us to a science that shall consist in sight.

The

objection that,

when

interpreted in relation to

its

etymology and accepted use of the word, "science" is synonymous with " truth," ^ stands no test. In the first place, the root of this word, ver-, which also occurs in ver-um, in ver-bum, in word, in fepelv, etc., does not point to what is seen or known, but to what is spoken. This derivation discourages, at the same time, the growing habit of relating truth to a condition or to a moral disposition, and of speaking of a thing or of a person as "being real." Truth, moreover, is always an antithetical conception, which science never is. The thirst after knowledge has its rise in our desire to reflect in our consciousness everything that exists,

while the thirst after truth originates from the desire to 1

[That

is

'

ivaarheid,''

the

Dutch word

for

'

truth.'

—

Traiislator.']

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