§ 67. What is here to be understood by Principium
When theology abandoned its proper and original character, it also ceased to speak of a principium of its own; and gradually we have become so estranged from the earlier theological life, that it is scarcely any longer understood what our old theologians meant by the principium theologiae. This principium of theology is not infrequently taken as synonymous with fons theologiae, i.e. with the fountain from which the science of theology draws its knowledge. Why is this wrong? When I speak of the fountains of a science, I understand thereby a certain group out of the sum of phenomena, from which a separate whole of science is distilled by me. For the Zoölogist these fountains lie in the animal world, for the Botanist in the world of plants, for the Historian in many-sided tradition, etc. But however much in each of these domains of science the fountains may differ, the principium of knowing (cognoscendi), from which knowledge comes to us with these several groups of phenomena, is ever one and the same. It is, in a word, the natural man who by his reason draws this knowledge from his object, and that object is subjected to him as the thinking subject. If now I proceed in like manner on theological ground, formaliter at least, then my principium of knowing remains here entirely the same that it is for the botanist or zoölogist, and the difference consists only in the difference of the object. Whether I seek that object in God Himself, or in the Christian religion, or in religious phenomena makes no fundamental difference. With all these it is still the thinking man who subjects these objects to himself, and by virtue of his general principium of knowing draws knowledge from them. For, and I speak reverently, even when I posit God Himself as the object of theology, this God is then placed on trial by the theologian, and it is the theologian who does not cast himself down in worship before Him, saying, “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth,” but of his own right (suo jure) investigates Him. The result, indeed, has shown that he who has taken this attitude, has either entirely revolutionarily reversed the order of things and placed himself as critic above his God, or has falsified the object of theology and substituted for it religious phenomena; a method which seemed more innocent, but which actually led to a like result, since from this standpoint “knowledge of God” remained wanting, and want of knowledge of God is little else than intellectual atheism.
The propounding of a special principium in the theological sphere (even though we grant that this was not always done correctly), viewed in itself, was little else than the necessary result of the peculiar character of theology. If the object of theology had stood coördinate with the objects of the other sciences, then together with those sciences theology would have been obliged to employ a common principium of knowing. Since, on the other hand, the object of theology excluded every idea of coördination, and thinking man, who asked after the knowledge of God, stood in a radically different relation to that God than to the several kingdoms of created things, there had to be a difference in the principium of knowing. With every other object it was the thinking subject that took knowledge; here it was the object itself that gave knowledge. And this antithesis is least of all set aside by the remark, that the flower also provides the botanist with knowledge concerning itself. This replaces a real manner of speech by a metaphorical one. The flower indeed does nothing, and the whole plant, on which the flower blooms, is passive. Even though it is maintained that the flower exhibits color and form, this is by no means yet the knowledge of the flower, but merely so many data, from which this knowledge is gathered by the botanist. 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 turns, but in its entire extent, is to be distinguished from the ordinary way of obtaining knowledge (via cognitionis), and therefore assumes a principium of knowing of its own as its point of departure.
Even if the fact of sin were left out of account, and the special revelation were not considered, formaliter a principium of its own must 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. This necessity does not merely lie in the abnormal, but in the normal as well, and must ever find its ground in this fact, that God is God, and that consequently the Eternal Being cannot become the object of creaturely knowledge, as coördinate with the creature. Let it be supposed that the development of our race had taken place without sin; man would nevertheless have known the things that may be known of God, from the world of his heart and the world round about him, but not as the fruit of empiricism and the conclusions based thereon. From the finite no conclusion can be drawn to the infinite, neither can a Divine reality be known from external or internal phenomena, unless that real God reveals Himself in my consciousness to my ego; reveals Himself as God; and thereby moves and impels me 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 Theophany, or of incarnation, but would have taken place normally in my personal being, and in such a way that even then the way by which knowledge is obtained would have divided itself into two, one leading to the knowledge of those objects which, being passive, I subject to myself, the other leading to the knowledge of that one Object, to which I myself am passively subjected. That “faith” assumes its peculiar office here, and that, as belonging to our human nature, it may turn into unfaith, but can never fall away, has been remarked before. In this place it is enough to note the distinction, that formaliter the thinking subject can obtain his knowledge from a twofold principium: either from himself, by going to work actively, or, if he must remain passive, not from himself but from a principium, the impulse of which proceeds from the object, in casu from God, and only thus operates in him.