Page:What We Want.djvu/61

 New light has been thrown first of all on the concept of revelation itself. The scholastic theologians, unprovided with the instrument of historical criticism, considered God, man, the universe, and their mutual relations, from the ontological point of view; and, having an absolute conception of truth and of our knowledge of it, conceived of revelation as a communication of truth directly and by external means from God to man, and as a communication on matters which men could not otherwise have known. This truth uttered by God could not change, must be as immutable as God Himself, and be received without discussion and without variation. Such a conception assuredly does not answer to historico-psychological reality.

The application of criticism to the Old Testament very soon proved to demonstration that the Divine truths, little by little, opened a path for themselves in the spirit of the Israelitish people as it