Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 598

574

§ 88.

THE PRINCIPIUM

outward relation

this

ment can

is

act along the

IN

ACTION

entirely accidental.

same

lines,

[Div. Ill

Civil govern-

and has often done

it.

Individuals, also, in free institutions can do the same thing.

On the other hand, the Church may found a theological school of an entirely different kind, to which it allows entire freedom of faith and doctrine. And therefore we did not take our start in these outward and by consequence accidental relations, but in the essential and necessary relation

between the Holy Scripture and the Church as from this we might borrow the rule the Church and theology which is between for the relation to appear in its method. There is, to be sure, a theological illusion abroad, which has its relative right, which conveys the impression that, with the

which

exists

its product, in order that

Holy Scripture in hand, one can independently construct his theology from this principium. This position was defended only recently by a Protestant theologian at Vienna, Professor Dr. Bohl (^Dogmatih^ Amst. 1887, p. xiii, v) and it must be conceded to him that in the days of the Reformation, also, it ;

was generally imagined that a leap backward had been taken across fourteen centuries, for the sake of repeating what had once been done by the first Christians viz. to investigate the Bible, while yet no confession or dogma had been framed. But from the nature of the case this illusion is ;

not for a

moment

tenable.

He who

harbors

it

claims for

himself the unattainable honor of doing the work of bygone

And besides being unhistoric to this extent, he forgets also that no single person, but thinking, regenerated humanity, is the subject of theology. Isolated investigation can never furnish what can only be the result Actually, thereof the cooperation and mental effort of all. generations.

fore,

this

illusion is a denial of

the historic and the or-

ganic character of the study of theology, and for this reason No theologian, following the direcit is inwardly untrue.

own compass, would ever have found by himwhat he now confesses and defends on the ground of Holy Scripture. By far the largest part of his results

tion of his self

the is

adopted by him

from theological

tradition.,

and even

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