De Moor I:34: The Object of Revealed Theology: True Religion

After the Principium, in order to establish the specific Difference of Theological Doctrine, the Object concurs, which is known, 1.  from the name of the discipline, which is Theology; and, 2.  from the argument of Sacred Scripture, which is the sole Principium of Revealed Theology.  Theology, of course, means the Doctrine concerning God, and consequently relates the Knowledge and Worship of God.  Hence, either true Religion, to be learned from Revelation; or God, as He has revealed Himself in Scripture, and as He has made Himself ours through the grace of Christ, constitutes the Object of the Theological discipline, even the Formal Object.  Of course, the Material Object denotes the matter concerning which the one speaking speaks in general; the Formal Object also includes the mode, or special regard, under which the one speaking dwells upon it:  for example, Man is the material object of painting, of physical science, ethics, medicine, but considered under one and another formal reckonings:  he is the formal object of the painting art as paintable; of physical science as he has a species of body to be referred to the genus of physical bodies; man is the object of ethics as capable of virtue and felicity; of medicine as sick and curable.  Thus God is the material object of Pneumatics, of Theology natural and revealed:  but God is the formal object of Pneumatics and natural Theology as He is to be known and worshipped from nature and according to the dictate of reason:  God is the formal object of revealed Theology as He is to be known and worshipped from the precept of Revelation; not to be known categorically under the reckoning of Deity, as Thomas and a great many Scholastics maintain, which knowledge is of itself not saving, but rather condemning to sinners:  but as God is made ours, and that as He is covenanted in Christ, just as He reveals Himself to us in the Word.

And, as God is thus the primary Object of Theology, so also the Works of God, and among those Man himself, as the greatest work of God, and the End and Object of His greatest works, are able to be held as the Secondary Object of Theology, that is, as far as the Sacred Scripture also treats of all these, and all the same have a relation to God, whether of origin, or of conservation and dependence; and they were made by God, subsist through Him, are subordinate to Him, and ought to tend toward Him.  If you ask concerning Sin, the treatment of which also enters into Theology, in what manner it might be able to be referred unto God and Divine Things? I respond that, not as it is of God, but as it has a certain σχέσιν/relation to God, and lies under His Providence and Justice; just as Medicine treats of diseases and poisons, although its principal object is the healing of man.