Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 301

Chap.

THE FRUIT OF REVELATION

I]

two Avays: the sinner

to

whom God

277

can no longer appear

personally can either attribute this inworking to some powerful, terrible creature,

this

monstrous

and

creature

for that reason direct his faith to itself;

or,

against this

terrifying

power in his inmost soul he can seek protection elsewhere, and thus centre his faith upon a creature that is sympathetic After he has become a sinner, man still continues to him. to seek after a something to which to cleave with his faith; even though, in Diabolism, Satan himself became this to him. And finally the third factor, the logical action by which that which faith receives by revelation is raised to subjective knowledge, remains also operative in the sinner, and,

cases of idiocy

The sinner

and lunacy excepted, maintains

also

is

the perceptions which by means of faith he as real,

and placed

stimulus

of

the

itself in

him.

impelled to reflect in his consciousness in relation to

logical

an author.

activity generally

has grasped

Though operates

the less

is the tendency of sin to by no means the case with all individuals, and so far as faith has turned into unfaith it can strongly stimulate this activity from sheer enmity Even then, this logical activity does not lead against God. to the knowledge of God, but simply to the erroneous effort to explain the potent and terrible perceptions, actually received in one's being by the inworking of God, in such a way that God is denied by the intellect, and all such inworking is That either explained away or explained from the creature. which is written of Satan: "The devils also believe and tremble," expresses the condition of the sinner under the perception of the inworking of God in his soul; only with this

strongly in the sinner, since

slacken

all activity,

yet this

it

is

difference, that the demons, as non-somatic, cannot deceive

themselves with reference to the reality of the existence of God, and can work no eclipse of His existence by the substitution of a creature,

which

is

the very thing that

sinner can do; at least so long as he

is

upon

man

earth,

especially in connection with the restraint of sin by

as

and

common

grace.

In case, therefore, that revelation had not been modified

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