Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 424

400

§ 73.

hope of

in you, the

THIS PRINCIPIUM

glory.'"

By

[Div. Ill

away every con-

this falls

ception as though revelation after the fall had progressed

and we get the conception which goes through its definite stages, and thus moves along towards its final goal which goal has been reached only when the whole earth unlocks itself for the reception of this revelation, and this directs itself, not aphoristically or atomistically

;

of a revelation

;

nor yet to a single nation, but to our human race as a whole. If thus lesser or greater parts of the Holy Scripture, and finally even the whole Old Testato single persons,

ment,

may have rendered

Holy Scripture

provisional service in Israel, the

such obtains

only an organic u'hole and causes the Catholic Church to appear in humanity. Tlie holy apostle Paul expresses this most pertinently, when of the Old Testament he declares in Rom. xv. 4, " For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning" a thought which he repeats in 1 Cor. ix. 10 and in 1 Cor. x. 11, and in the latter especially emphasizes very strongly. There he does not only say that " all these things are written for our admonition,'''' but even prefaces this by saying that all these things happened unto

when

as

its

full

significance

special grace directs itself to our race as

;

Israel,

"by way

of

example.^'

Entirely apart therefore

from the question, how God saved individual persons in the times when the revelation had not yet been placed in the centrum of our human race, the fact must be held fast, that the Holy Scripture was intended to discharge its full task from that moment only when our race, taken as a whole, in its heart and centre, was apprehended with a view to salvation. Only when the saving hand was extended to the cosmos, and God " so loved the ivorld that He gave His only begotten Son," had the moment come,

when

the Hol}^ Scripture also

tirely exceptional significance.

would

All that

lies

attain

its

en-

back of this

is

merely j^reparation, and now for the first time, when in Christ the divine esse has been brought into our race, in the Holy Scripture also the divine uwrd goes out not to one nation, but to all nations, and to those nations as an organic unity.

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