Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 241

Chap. V]

IN

THE ORGANISM OF SCIENCE ?

217

would not be that despot himbut "the knowledge of his person," such as he had

object of your investigation self,

purposed to hand down to posterity.

God

here.

And

this is the case

has not unintentionally left behind

Him

traces

His works and revelations of His thoughts in monuments and documents, from which we are to search out who God is. But purposely, and fully conscious of what He was doing, the Lord our God has imparted a knowledge of His Beingsuch as He desired that this knowledge should be. And He has done this in such a way that this revelation does not contain His absolute image, but conveys this knowledge in that particular form which alone can be of service to you. What we supposed in the case of the Asiatic despot to have sprung from the desire to have a different image of himself outlive him from that which he had exhibited in reality, takes place here by means of the third term of comparison (tertium comparationis). The image which is purposely exhibited here is different from the real Being, simply because it is only in that definite form, " according to the measure of man" (pro mensura hominis), that it can be taken up by us. of

We

are therefore fully authorized to say that that

which

monuments and documents is real Being of God, which we are

presents itself to us in these

not the knowledge of the

to search out from them, but, on the contrary, that in these

monuments and documents Himself, such as

we

He

investigate these

lies

an image of God, drawn by

desires us to receive.

Hence, when

monuments and documents,

which we search out

is

ectijpal knoivledge of Grod,

the object

not the Divine Being, but that

which

is

posited in

them by God

Himself, and which corresponds entirely to the character of our human nature and our human consciousness. The investigation of

those

monuments and documents, and

search after the ectypal knowledge of in, is

God

the

contained there-

a scientific task in an equally rigorous sense as, in the

supposed case, the historic expounding of the image of such a Pharaoh or Asiatic despot. We admit, of course, that in this section it is only an hypothesis that the Lord our

God

has placed such

monu-

\

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