Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 365

CHAPTER

II

THE FUNDAMENTAL, REGULATIVE, AND DISTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE OF THEOLOGY, OR PRINCIPIUM THEOLOGIAE What

§ 67.

When

is

here to be understood by

Principium

theology abandoned

acter, it also ceased to

its proper and original charspeak of a principium of its own ;

and gradually we have become so estranged from the earlier theological life, that it is scarcely any longer understood what our old theologians meant by the principium theologiae.

This principium of theolog}^

is

not infrequently taken

synonymous Avith foiis theologiae, i.e. with the fountain from which the science of theology draws its knowledge. Why is this wrong ? When I speak of the fountains of a science, I understand thereby a certain group out of the sum of phenomena, from which a separate whole of science For the Zoologist these fountains lie in is distilled by me. as

the animal world, for the Botanist in the world of plants, for the Historian in

many-sided tradition,

But how-

etc.

much

ever in each of these domains of science the fountains may differ, the principium of knowing (cognoscendi), from

which knowledge comes to us with these several groups of phenomena, is ever one and the same. It is, in a word, the natural man who by his reason draws this knowledge from his object, and that object is subjected to him as the thinking subject. If now I proceed in like manner on theological ground, formaliter at least, then my principium of knowing remains here entirely the same that it is for the botanist or zoologist,

and the difference consists only

of the object.

Whether

I

or in the Christian religion, or in religious

no fundamental difference. thinking

man who

in the difference

seek that object in

With

all

God

Himself,

phenomena makes

these

it

is

still

subjects these objects to himself, and 341

the

by

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