Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 415

;

Chap.

II]

§ 72.

UNIVEESALITY OF THIS PRINCIPIUM

391

sality must prevail here also, and must always be well understood by those who live by this principium. These only are taken into account, just as in natural science we reckon with those alone who are men of sound sense, i.e. who live by the natural principium. All these, then, must be able, if they follow your demonstration, to perceive the correctness of it. This accounts for the fact that in later ages only the question arose of a science of theology. Be-

was theology as knowledge of God even measurably in a dogmatic sense; but as yet no theologiThis could only originate when the Revelation cal science. fore that time there

was completed, and liberated from the

Then

to Israel.

nations, that circle of

character,

who

restrictions peculiar

there arose that universal circle

live

by

among all human

confessors in their general

this special principium.

This communal character, which, along with every other principium,

no

is

common

to the special principium, received

sufficient recognition in the conflict of the

From our

side, the line of personal faith

Reformation.

was ever drawn too

while Rome, from her side, substituted the instituChurch too largely for the organic communion. Each of the two parties defended thereby an element of truth, but it was done by both in an insufficient and one-sided manner. Very properly did our Reformers maintain the personal character of faith, which does not reach its full unfolding, until it places our inner life in direct communion with the Eternal Being but they lost sight of the fact that this is the fullest tightly

;

tional

;

development of the faith, not its beginning, and that in its maturity it cannot flourish as it should, except in the communion of saints. Rome, on the other hand, defended very rightly the common feature, which marks faith, but committed a double mistake, first, that it did not allow

—

the personal character of faith to assert

itself, and made it more than communion with God through the intermediation of the Church, and secondly, that it substituted the ecclesiastical institution for organic communion. This might, perhaps, have been more clearly seen if in their dogmatic exposition our Reformers had added, at once,

amount

to nothing

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