Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 403

Chap.

II]

AND THE NATURAL PKINCIPIUM

ment

into the

sum

of things, but, so far as their origin

379 is

con-

wondrous power which became manifest in the creation itself. The same is true of the several means, which God has employed, to introcerned, they are entirely identical with the

duce the special revelation into our human consciousness. In the interests of this also you see no new or otlier capacibut merely the application in a peculiar ties appear in man manner of what was given in the creation. Before the fall ;

God speaks with Adam, God causes a deep sleep to come upon Adam, and, by an encroaching act of God, Eve enters upon existence. God has entrance to our heart by nature, and not first by grace He is able to rule the human spirit by His Spirit and able to communicate to man what He will. The communication of the test-commandment is an immediate communication of a conscious thought, which could not rise from Adam's own consciousness. Actually, therefore, in special revelation no single means is used which was not already present by nature in or about man. No ;

;

new

structure

is

provided for

that has taken place

is,

that

God

human

All

consciousness.

the Lord has restored a few

broken strings of the instrument, tuned these restored strings in a different way, and by this immediate modification He has evoked such a tone from the instrument as, being without significance to sinless man, had become indispensable to the sinner. Hence there would have been no question of a second principium, if there were not this act of God, by Avhich He has accommodated Himself to the sinner. It is with this, as it is with you, Avhen for the sake of making yourself understood by a member of the family who has become deaf, you no longer choose his ear as a vehicle for your thoughts,^ but make him read with his eyes the words from your lips.. Thus, when we became deaf to God, He has employed a different means by which to make Himself knowable to us and in so far as with a deaf person the hearing of sound and the reading of Hps might be called a different "principium of knowledge," there is here also the mention of such different principles, but only in so far. There has gone out an act from God to reveal Himself to the sinner, however deaf this one ;

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