27. [XXIII.]—On Questions Outside the Faith—What They Are, and Instances of the Same.

But he is greatly mistaken in this opinion. The questions which he supposes to be outside the faith are of a very different character from those in which, without any detriment to the faith whereby we are Christians, there exists either an ignorance of the real fact, and a consequent suspension of any fixed opinion, or else a conjectural view of the case, which, owing to the infirmity of human thought, issues in conceptions at variance with truth: as when a question arises about the description and locality of that Paradise where God placed man whom He formed out of the ground, without any disturbance, however, of the Christian belief that there undoubtedly is such a Paradise; or as when it is asked where Elijah is at the present moment, and where Enoch—whether in this Paradise or in some other place, although we doubt not of their existing still in the same bodies in which they were born; or as when one inquires whether it was in the body or out of the body that the apostle was caught up to the third heaven,—an inquiry, however, which betokens great lack of modesty on the part of those who would fain know what he who is the subject of the mystery itself expressly declares his ignorance of,173    2 Cor. xii. 2. without impairing his own belief of the fact; or as when the question is started, how many are those heavens, to the “third” of which he tells us that he was caught up; or whether the elements of this visible world are four or more; what it is which causes those eclipses of the sun or the moon which astronomers are in the habit of foretelling for certain appointed seasons; why, again, men of ancient times lived to the age which Holy Scripture assigns to them; and whether the period of their puberty, when they begat their first son, was postponed to an older age, proportioned to their longer life; or where Methuselah could possibly have lived, since he was not in the Ark, inasmuch as (according to the chronological notes of most copies of the Scripture, both Greek and Latin) he is found to have survived the deluge; or whether we must follow the order of the fewer copies—and they happen to be extremely few—which so arrange the years as to show that he died before the deluge. Now who does not feel, amidst the various and innumerable questions of this sort, which relate either to God’s most hidden operations or to most obscure passages of the Scriptures, and which it is difficult to embrace and define in any certain way, that ignorance may on many points be compatible with sound Christian faith, and that occasionally erroneous opinion may be entertained without any room for the imputation of heretical doctrine?

27. Sed multum eum ista fallit opinio. Longe aliter se habent quaestiones istae, quas esse praeter fidem 0398 arbitratur, quam sunt illae in quibus salva fide, qua christiani sumus, aut ignoratur quid verum sit, et sententia definitiva suspenditur, aut aliter quam est, humana et infirma suspicione conjicitur. Veluti cum quaeritur, qualis vel ubi sit paradisus ubi constituit Deus hominem quem formavit ex pulvere; cum tamen esse illum paradisum fides christiana non dubitet: vel cum quaeritur, ubi sit nunc Elias vel Enoch, an ibi, an alicubi alibi; quos tamen non dubitamus, in quibus nati sunt corporibus vivere: vel cum quaeritur, utrum in corpore an extra corpus in tertium coelum sit raptus Apostolus; quanquam sit ista impudens inquisitio id scire volentium, quod se ille cui hoc praestitum est, salva utique fide, nescire testatur (II Cor. XII, 2): vel quot sint coeli, in quorum tertium se raptum esse commemorat: vel utrum elementa mundi hujus conspicabilis, quatuor an plura sint: quid faciat solem lunamve deficere, his defectibus quos praedicere astrologi certa temporum dinumeratione consuerunt: cur antiqui homines tam diu vixerint, quam sancta Scriptura testatur; et utrum proportione longioris aetatis filios sera pubertate gignere coeperint: ubi potuerit Mathusalem vivere, qui in arca non fuit, qui, sicut in plerisque codicibus et graecis et latinis numerantur anni, reperitur supervixisse diluvio; vel utrum paucioribus, qui rarissimi inveniuntur, potius credendum sit, in quibus ita est numerus conscriptus annorum, ut ante diluvium defunctus fuisse monstretur. Quis enim non sentiat in his atque hujusmodi variis et innumerabilibus quaestionibus, sive ad obscurissima opera Dei, sive ad Scripturarum abditissimas latebras pertinentibus, quas certo aliquo genere complecti ac definire difficile est, et multa ignorari salva christiana fide, et alicubi errari sine aliquo haeretici dogmatis crimine?