Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 538

514

§ 83.

THE FACTORS OF INSPIRATION

[Div. Ill

the success of Revelation, selected the most suitable persons

from among those who were accessible, but rather that He Himself caused these men to be born for this purpose, predestined them for it, and caused them to spend their youth amid such circumstances and surroundings, that in His own time they stood in readiness as suitable instruments. As Jeremiah declares that to him it was said: "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee. I have appointed thee a prophet unto This constitutes the fundamental the nations " (Jer. i. 5). thought which dominates the appearance of the revelationThe words, "I know thee by organs from first to last. name," in Ex. xxxiii. 12, indicate the same thing. And what is said of the ideal prophet in Isa. xlix. 1, 2, 5, by virtue of the comprehensive character of predestination, applies This predestination cannot be limited to these men to all. personally, for it embraces the whole sphere of life from which they sprang and in which they appeared. Such inspiration would simply have been inconceivable in England Our consciousness or among any of our Western nations. stands too greatly in need of sharp conceptions, visible outSince the world of thought that lines and rigid analysis. :

discovers itself to us in inspiration lies at in

its

centrum, from whence

it

first

concentrated

only gradually proceeds, there

could be no question here of sharply drawn lines as the result The lines of the acanthus leaf cannot be of rigid analysis.

admired so long as

this leaf still hides in the bud.

human

Inspira-

consciousness that was

therefore, demanded a more concentrically constituted, and this you find in the East, where dialectic analysis is scarcely known, while intuition is so much more penetrative, for which reason it describes tion,

its

content rather in images than in conceptions.

intuitive consciousness lends itself

siveness which, in a measure,

The Western mind

reacts

is

more

Moreover,

easily to that pas-

needful with

all inspiration.

more strongly and quickly against

impressions received; the Oriental has that passive receptivity

by which he surrenders himself to perceptions and drifts He is more deeply inspired by nat-

along with their current.

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