Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 267

Chap.

§58.

I]

THE IDEA OF THEOLOGY

243

Theological faculty. By a cM erent notion of the idea, and by lowering your ideal, you degrade theological science itself. According to its idea, Theology does not at first demonbut it springs out of the overstrate that there is a God ;

whelming impression which, as the only absolutely existing One, God Himself makes upon the human consciousness, and finds its motive in the admiration which of itself powerfully quickens the thirst to know God. Though Theology may be permitted to seek after proofs for the existence of God, by which it may open the eyes of those half-blind, it cannot itself start out from doubt, nor can it spend itself in the investigation of religious phenomena, or in the speculative

development of the idea of the absolute.

It

may do

all this

convenient and as a dialectic auxiliary, but all at most, a temporary bridge, by secondary only this is other side or bring others there, the reach which itself to

when

it

is

;

purpose, wading the mountain stream, remains to come to the mountain itself, and in the sweat of its brow to climb the mountain path, until at length the highest peak is

but

its

reached, the top

itself,

where the panorama, the knowledge

Only when thus interpreted does God, unveils itself. Theology regain its necessary character, and otherwise it Thus only it regains lapses into an accidental dilettantism. conception of utility or every from apart and, value, its significance an absolute recovers it purpose, eudemonistic the beyond advances it idea its very Thus in in itself. into extends itself and existence, boundary of our present of

the eternal and the infinite. The older Theologians derived this more accurate insight

Theology and this necessary distinction between the idea and the several conceptions of the one Theology from the Holy Scriptures. In the Scriptures " the knowledge of God " is clearly stated as the forma of " eternal life," and of that knowledge of God several degrees are indicated. The distinction is evident at once between the knowledge of God disclosed to man before he sinned, and that modihed knowledge of God given to the sinner. There was a knowl" Neither doth any know edge of God for Him who said into the nature of

:

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