Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 526

502

§ 82.

THE INSTRUMENTS OF INSPIRATION

[Div. Ill

have no bodies; they are spirits; and they appear with wings In real only in the symbolic representation of the vision. appearances they always stand before us in the form of a man. All this, however, was altogether outside our nature. It gave us to see what was like unto our nature, not what was of our nature.

Thus Christ

is

the

"Wonderful"

connection with this there arranges

itself

and

(Is. ix. 6),

in

about His person

the whole miracle-cyclus of His baptism, the temptation in the wilderness, the transfiguration

upon Tabor, the voice

in the

temple, the angel in Gethsemane, the signs at the cross,

the resurrection and the ascension, in order to be succeeded

by the second miracle-cyclus

we

see

of the parousia.

In like manner

that entire series of Niphleoth, or mighty works,

going out from Christ and becoming established by Him in the sphere of the elements, in the vegetable kingdom, in the

—

a series of miracles, the animal kingdom, and among men still gleams in the miracles of the apostles. afterglow of which

Peter, indeed, testifies (Acts

iii.

16) that the authorship of

the healing of the crij^ple lay in Christ.

In this organic connection the one group of miracles apis immediately connected with Christ. To this is joined a second group of miracles which does not point to the Christ, but to the appearance and the maintepears before us which

nance of His people. The fixed point in this group is the miraculous birth of Isaac, placed in the foreground as the What lies great "wonder" by Paul in Rom. iv. 17 sq. behind this merely serves to prepare the ground, and render the appearance of God's people possible.

Only by the callwhen he and Sarah

Abraham and the birth of Isaac, had become physically incapable of procreation, is this people born upon this prepared ground, and come to its incarnaThis was the great mystery. After this follows in the tion. ing of

second place the miracle-cyclus of Egypt, of the wilderness, Then the miracles which and of the taking of Canaan. group themselves about Elijah and Elisha in conflict with the worship of Baal.

which, outside of heathen,

when

And

Canaan,

finally the is

group of miracles

seen in the midst

the great conflict between Israel

of

the

and the

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