Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 435

Chap.

AND THE WRITTEN WORD

II]

fixedness of the truth, which

now

411

appears again in the oppo-

sition against every confessional tie,

and no

less in the

loud

protest against the written character of revelation, and this in a time

which otherwise emphasizes so strongly the written

On the other hand, it is seen in the holy books, which every more highly developed form of religion has created for itself, in India, China, among the for the entire Cultur.

Persians and Islam, etc., how the pious sense which, from the ever changing, seeks after a basis of fixedness, applies writing, as soon as found, as a means of resistance against

the destructive power of what in tradition.

What Paul

is individual and multiform wrote to the church at Phil. iii. 16,

whereunto we have already attained, by that same rule let is unchangeably the fundamental trait of all religion, which does not end in individual wisdom or fanaticism, but organically works in upon our human life as such. And since writing only, and in a more telling sense, the press, is able to guarantee to the Divine thoughts which are revealed to us that fixed form, it is not by chance, but of necessity, that special Revelation did not come to us by way of oral tradition, but in the form of the Scripture. This brings with it the purity, which likewise can be guaranteed by writing only, among sinful men, and this only in a limited sense. Since Divine revelation directs itself asrainst the mind and inclination of the sinner, sinful tendency could "

us walk,"

not be wanting, to represent that revelation differently from what it was given. Not merely did forgetfulness and individualism threaten the purity of tradition, but the direct

modify what was revealed according to which psychologically is done the one knows the revelation only from tradition, and

effort also wilfully to

one's

own

sooner,

if

idea and need

;

thus thinks himself entitled to mistrust its certainty. One begins by asking whether the revelation might not have been different, and ends in the belief that it was different. If printing in

its

from the times

present completeness had been in existence of the beginning of revelation, it

would have been the surest safeguard against such falsification. If what was spoken at the time had been taken down by stenography

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