Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 616

592

§91.

THE CHURCH AND THE OFFICE

virtue of the guidance of the therefore, for

him simply

Holy Ghost.

own way

a

It is not lawful,

to slight this confessional life of

the Church in order, while drifting on his struct in his

[Div. Ill

new system

own

oars, to con-

knowledge of God. bound in the end to see

He who

of

undertakes to do this is his labor stricken with unfruitfulness, or he destroys the churchly life, whose welfare his study ought to further. this, however, it does not follow that his studies have no other tendency than to confirm the confession of his Church, as if this were clothed with infallible This was the fault committed by Scholasticism. authority. of the Holy Spirit truly intends to be immediguidance The in its final result but it compels itself least of effective ately in every part of its action. A guide is given you all to be this of whom you know that in the end he will bring you where you want to be, but he does not necessarily lead you along a straight line and at once to that end. You approach this end only by stages and for the sake of having your own thought and activity develop themselves, this guide allow^s you to take circuitous routes, and to try roads that run out, from

From

are

to

;

;

which you

your own accord wdiile amid all movements he keeps the end to pass, that finally you go to it of

will return of

;

these apparently contradictory in view,

yourself.

and brings

And

it

in this very connection scientific theology

of a practical significance to the Church.

the end in

itself,

shine also in

of causing the glory of

the world

of

is

It carries, indeed,

God's truth to

our consciousness.

But

it

is

of

equally called to examine critically the confessional the Church, by ever and anon testing the confession of the life

Church by the principium of theology, i.e. the Word of God. For which reason the theologian can never be a man of Of two things he must do one. As a man abstract study. remain in harmonious contact with the must he study of he confirms by his study. Or he confession whose Church, suit against the Church, whose dangerous ever an enter must confession he antagonizes in one point or another, on the ground of the Word of God. If now this touches an inferential question,

which

lies in

the most distant circumference

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