The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 208

— HOLY SCRIPTURES

i68 the

Sermon on the Mount, but

taught by

St.

Paul

;

IN

NEW TESTAMENT

reject the doctrine of justification as

while those

who wish

to

break with Christianity

entirely are inclined to consider the Pauline epistles as its real ex-

ponent, but only to reject them with the entire Pauline Christianity.

For the Church of the living God, which receives both, there is in unholy tendency an exhortation to have an open eye for the difference between the gospels and the epistles, and to acknowledge that our opponents are right when they call it a marked difference. Yet while our opponents use the difference to attack either the authority of the apostolic doctrine or that of Christendom itself, the Church confesses that there is nothing surprising in this difference. Both are parts of the same doctrine of Jesus, with this distinction, that the first part was revealed directly by Christ, while the other He gave to His Church indirectly by the apostles. Of course, so long as the apostles are considered as independent persons, teaching a new doctrine on their ow/i authority, our solution does not solve the difficulty. But confessing that they are holy apostles, i.e., organs of the Holy Spirit through whom Jesus Himself taught His people from heaven, then every objection is met, and there is not even a shadow of conflict. For Jesus simply acted like an earthly father in the training of his children, who teaches them according to their comprehension and in case of his death, his task still unfinished, he will leave them written instructions to be opened after his departure. But Jesus died to rise again, and even after His Ascension He continued to be in living contact with His Church through the apostolate. And what we would write before our decease, Jesus caused to be written by His apostles under the special direction of the Holy Spirit. Thus the Scriptures of the New Testament originate a New Testament in a sense now easily understood. The correctness of this representation is proven by Christ's own words, which teach us First, that there were things declared to the apostles before His departure, and there were things not declared, because they could this

;

—

not bear them then. Secondly, that Jesus would declare the latter also, but by the

Holy

Spirit.

Thirdly, that the Holy Spirit would reveal these things to them,

not apart from Jesus, but by taking them from Christ and declaring

them unto them.

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