Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 508

;

484

§ 82.

THE INSTRUMENTS OF INSPIRATION

[Div. Ill

heard God, as though His voice walked in the garden upon the

wind

of the

day

;

an entirely natural description of the now no longer within him, but

perception of God's voice, outside

of

him

;

not as

internal address, but as external

by sin the susceptibility for was blunted, but this does not take it away, that also after sin, in still the same way, but now from the special principium, the Lord was able to reveal His thoughts and thus also His words in man, viz. in the It is self-evident that

address.

this internal address

prophets.

This internal address takes account, of course,

of the observation of conceptions that are present in our memory, and of the language in which we express these

thoughts and conceptions. There is something in this that offends, if one takes it that the forming of our conceptions and of our words is arbitrary and the fruit of conclusions (^eVi?) but it has nothing strange in it, when one perceives that the forming of conceptions and of words is the fruit of our natural disposition (^yo-t?) and is thus necessary, and has been Moreover, we appointed, therefore, for us by God Himself.

leave

it

entirely undecided whether, in this internal address,

God forms these thoughts and words in our consciousness, or whether He merely occasions such an urgency in our consciousness as interprets itself to our conception in those given

words and thoughts. We read, to be sure, in Deut. xviii. 18, " I will put my words in his mouth," an expression which, in comparison with Exod. iv. 15 (where it is said to Moses " Thou shalt speak unto him and put the words in his mouth," i.e. of Aaron), makes one almost think of a ivhispering in the ear, even as Christ promises His apostles that " it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall speak" (Matt. x. :

19) but by no means prevents our accepting with this figure of speech also that the inworking has taken place in the centrum itself of the human consciousness, and from thence ex;

This, however, by no itself to the organs of speech. organ of speech of the through speaking excludes the means out to his organ go action the a human being without having magnetic sleep, one in It is well known how, of speech.

tended

person

is

able

to accomplish

this

with the other.

With

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