Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 367

Chap.

BY PRINCIPnJM

II]

343

Hence our speaking, with reference to theology, of a special principium of knowing of its own, is the result of the entirely peculiar position, in which here the knowing subject stands over against God as the object to be known. Theology, taken in its original and only real meaning, as " knowledge of God," or as " the science of the knowledge of God," cannot go to work like the other sciences, but must take a way of its own; which not merely in its bends and botanist.

is to be distinguished from knowledge (via cognitionis), and therefore assumes a principium of knowing of its own

turns, but in its entire extent,

the ordinary

way

of obtaining

as its point of departure.

Even

if

the fact of sin were left out of account, and the

were not considered, formaliter a princimust still be claimed for theology. This claim may be more sharply accentuated by these two facts, but it may never be represented as though the necessity of a source of its own were only born formaliter from sin. special revelation

pium

of its OAvn

This necessity does not merely

lie in

the abnormal, but in

must ever find its ground in this that and fact, God is God^ that consequently the Eternal Being cannot become the object of creaturely knowledge, the normal as well, and

as coordinate

Let

with the creature.

it

be supposed that

the development of our race had taken place without sin

man would nevertheless have known the things be known of God, from the world of his heart and round about him, but

yiot

From

infinite,

;

may

the world

as the fruit of empiricism

conclusions based thereon.

can be drawn to the

that

and the

the finite no conclusion

neither can a Divine reality

known from external or internal phenomena, unless that real God reveals Himself in my consciousness to my ego reveals Himself as Crod ; and thereby moves and impels me be

;

to see in these finite

phenomena

a brightness of His glory.

Formaliter, neither observation nor reasoning would ever

have rendered service here as the principium of knowing. Without sin, this self-revelation of the Divine Ego to my personal ego would never have been, even in part, the fruit of Theopliany, or of incarnation, but would have taken

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