Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 459

Chap.

II]

SELF-TESTIMONY OF THE SCRIPTURE

435

When such an appeal is introduced, not by saying: Thus spake Moses, but by the formula " It is tvritten,'" it admits no other interpretation than that, according to the judgment of word derived its Divine authority from the fact

Jesus, this

that it is written; in the same way in which an article of law has authority among us, because it is in the laiv. To attribute a weaker significance to this is simply z'Zlogical and subverts the truth. Even though one may refuse to attribute such an authority to the Old Testament Scripture, it may never be asserted that Jesus did 7iot attribute this to them; at least so long as it is not affirmed that none of these utterances of Jesus are original with Him which even the most strin;

gent criticism has not as yet asserted. But Jesus goes farther. It is not simply that He attributes such an authority to this and other utterances of the Old

Testament, but in these utterances He attributes that authoreven to single ivords. This we learn from His argument with the Sadducees concerning the resurrection from the dead, Matt. xxii. 32. From the fact that God, centuries after the death of the patriarchs, still reveals Himself as the ity

God

of

Abraham,

Isaac,

three patriarchs were

and Jacob, Jesus concludes that these

still

in existence, since

God

could not

Himself their God if they were no more alive. This demonstration would have no ground if by a little addition or modification in the construction, "I am the God of thy father," were intended in the preterite. Then God would have been their God. This expression, in its very form, is call

nevertheless so authoritative for Jesus, that from this form of He concludes the resurrection of the dead. Jesus

the saying

extends this authority even to a 17,

He

says that

it is

letter, when, in Luke xvi. heaven and earth to pass away, law to fail; which, as appears from the

easier for

than for one tittle of the preceding verse, does not refer to the ten commandments, nor even to the laws adduced, but to the law and the prophets, i.e. to the entire Scripture. This tittle, which referred to the apostrophized iod, was the smallest letter in the apographa, and the saying that even no tittle shall fail, vindicates the authority even to the letter.

In Matt.

xxii. 41, the strength

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