Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 401

Chap.

AND THE NATURAL PRINCIPIUM

II]

377

Whatever still remains in the sinner of this seed of religion and the knowledge of God connected with this, is, therefore, adopted by special revelation, as the indispensable instrnWithout this, it neither reaches raent by which it operates. nor touches man, remains an a,bstraction, and misses its form of existence.

How

can there be a sense of sin without the

sense of God, or susceptibility for grace without the consciousness of guilt

The Holy

?

Bible

therefore, neither

is,

law-book nor a catechism, but the documentation of a part of human life, and in that human life of a divine process. Of the Apocalyptic vision only, it can be said that it misses this quality in part but because of this very antithesis with the Apocalypse, one perceives at once the a

;

real

human

character of

all

the other parts of the revelation-

Nowhere in the Scriptures do you find, therefore, an attempt to divide into certain compartments what is severally supplied by natural and special knowledge but, throughout,

life.

;

you

find the special

Natural knowledge only in this does pinnacle which the steeple, but lifted

is is

up on high.

is

it

revelation grafted

upon the

natural.

not only assumed by the special, but fully assert itself.

Knowledge

is

the

not placed on the ground alongside of

supported by the body of the steeple and is You may not say, therefore This is my :

natural revelation, in addition to which comes the special.

For

as a result,

you obtain but

07ie

"knowledge

content of which has flowed to you from

hotJi

of

God," the whose

sources,

waters have mingled themselves.

And if for this reason an exhibition of the special knowledge without the natural is inconceivable, the representation is equally absurd that the tiatural knowledge of God, without enrichment by the special, could ever effect a satisfying result. The outcome has shown that this natural knowledge, as soon as

it

threw

off

the bridle of paradise tradition,

and brutalization, and the finer minds to false philosophies and equally false morals. Paul indicates one of these two phases by the remark, that there was first a condition in Avhich the natural knowledge of God allowed " that which may be known of God " (Rom. i. 19} to

led the masses to idolatry

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