Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 361

Chap.

§ 60.

I]

SACRED THEOLOGY

337

word "Sacred^'' before Theology. If it is asked what was meant b}' this qualification of theology, no special reason seems to have been given. As in the Proverbs " the knowledge of the holy " was spoken of, it was thought proper that that knowledge and science, whose principium lies in

tlie

Holy Scriptures, should be distinguished from all other knowledge and thus it may be said, that in the sixteenth ;

century Sancta theologia chiefly indicated the antithesis between that which came to us from profane literature and

from the Holy Scriptures. At present, however, this general indication fice.

The

significance of

and the method

subject,

will not suf-

this epithet for the

object, the

of theology should be

more accu-

And with reference to the object, the pri7icipium proprium of theology stands certainly in the foreground. AVhat we understand by this " proper principle " of theology, we will endeavor to explain in the following rately analyzed.

here it is merely remarked that the ectypal knowledge of God, in which the science of theology finds its object, does not come to us in the same way, from the same fountain and by the same light, as our other sciences. There

chapter

is

;

a difference here,

which in

its

to a straightforward antithesis,

deepest root reduces

itself

which places two principles

knowing (principia cognoscendi) over against each other. The particular principium of theology characterizes itself by

of

the entrance of an immediate, divine action, which breaks

through what is sinful and false, in order in the midst of these false and sinful conditions to reveal unto us, by a light of its own, what is true and holy in antithesis to what is sinful and false. The heathen antithesis between profane and sacred has no application here. That was simply the pride of the initiated that expressed itself at the

The

expense of the

profanum vidgus et arceo is refuted and censured by the character of everything that is holy in the Scriptures, and we might wish that our theologians would never have employed the word profane as an antitheuninitiated.

sis.

odi

In Scrij^ture the antithesis

and the natural, which

is

is between the special source more sharply emphasized by the

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