Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 366

342

§ 67.

WHAT

IS

HERE TO BE UNDERSTOOD

[Div. Ill

knowing draws knowledge from them. For, and I speak reverently, even when I posit God Himself as the object of theology, this God is then placed on trial by the theologian, and it is the theologian who does not cast himself down in worship before Him, saying, " Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth," but of his virtue of bis general principium of

own

right (suo jure) investigates

has shown that he

who

The

Him.

has taken

entirely revolutionarily reversed

result, indeed,

tJds attitude,

the

has either

order of things

and

placed himself as critic above his God, or has falsified the object of theology and

substituted

for

religious

it

phe-

method which seemed more innocent, but which actually led to a like result, since from this standpoint knowledge of God " remained wanting, and w^ant of knowl-

nomena

a

;

"•

God is little else than intellectual atheism. The propounding of a special principium in the theological sphere (even though we grant that this was not always edgfe of

done correctly), viewed in

itself,

was

else

little

than the

necessary result of the peculiar character of theology.

If

the object of theology had stood coordinate with the objects of

the other sciences, then together with those sciences

theology would have been obliged to employ a common principium of knowing. Since, on the other hand, the object of theolog}^ excluded every idea of coordination,

ing man,

who asked

after the

knowledge

God, stood in a

of

radically different relation to that

God than

kingdoms

had

of created things, there

the principium of knov.dng.

With every

that gave knoivledge.

to the several

to be a difference in

the thinking subject that took knowledge object itself

and think-

And

it was was the

other object ;

here this

it

antithesis

is

by the remark, that the flower also proThis vides the botanist with knowledge concerning itself. replaces a real manner of speech by a metaphorical one. The flower indeed does nothing, and the whole plant, on which the flower blooms, is passive. Even though it is maintained that the flower exhibits color and form, this is by no means yet the knowledge of the flower, but merely so many data, from which this knowledge is gathered by the least of all set aside

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