Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 525

Chap.

II]

§82.

THE INSTRUMENTS OF INSPIRATION

501

prophecy of the parousia and of the restitution of all things which it introduces. The miracle is the basis of the hope, in that entirely peculiar significance which in Scripture it has It shows that something different along y^iih. faith and love. is possible, and prophesies that such it shall sometime he. It is an utterance of that free, divine art, by which the supreme artist, whose work of creation is broken, announces the entire restoration of his original work of art, even in its Hence there can be no question of a "vioideal completion.

real

lation of the order of nature."

This assumes that this order

of nature has obtained an independent existence outside of

God, and that at times God interferes with this independent Every such representation is deistic at heart, and in fact denies the immanent and omnipresent omnipotence by which God supports the whole cosmos from order of things.

moment

to

moment, and every order

in that cosmos.

The

may

not be interpreted as being anything of the special principium, taken as utterance else than an utterance which, preformative and An principium essendi.

miracle, therefore,

preparative, and thereby at the

same time annunciatory,

views and ends in the parousia.

The Niphleoth,

therefore,

They include the spiritual as well as the material miracles. react savingly against sin as well as against the misery which flows from sin.

Hence the miracles are no disconnected phenomena, but stand in connection with each other, and, as was shown above, they form one organic whole, the centre of which is Christ The as the " Wonderful " and its circumference His people. great central miracle, therefore, is the Incarnation, which in turn lies foreshadowed in the Christophanies. With those

Christophanies the manifestation consisted in this, that, as in paradise God had created the body of Adam, He likewise here provided a human body, which presently returned to nothing,

and merely served

to render the appearance as of a

man

pos-

In the plains of Mamre Abraham does not perceive at first that he is dealing with anything else than a common human occurrence. Even where angel appearances are spoken sible.

of,

we may

not represent angels as winged beings.

.

Angels

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