Should a theological treatise like mine not begin with the Bible instead of with a history of concepts – after all, the Second Vatican Council demands that dogmatic theology ‘be so arranged’ that ‘biblical themes are proposed first of all’ (Optatam totius, No. 16)? According to the wish of the Council Fathers, scripture is to provide dogmatics with themes, and not vice versa, with the Council thereby criticizing the tendency to constrain and exploit the Bible for reasons of dogma. This was something that neo-scholasticism had done, for example, when it treated the Bible as a reservoir of dicta probantia, of statements proving the truth of dogmatic propositions. It threw in quotations from scripture where it was deemed they would help the argument. Franz Diekamp, the neo-Thomist already mentioned in the previous chapter, expresses this in almost disarming clarity when he states that because the magisterium is ‘the closest and most direct guide to the Catholic faith’ (regula proxima fidei), and the Bible, which always needs the ‘magisterium to safeguard and interpret it’, is only the regula remota fidei, reference to scripture is only of secondary importance in theology and could indeed be dispensed with completely (see Diekamp 1930: 64–65).