of racial nexus and the disordered state of man's moral nature. Nor is it to deny the dictim of John Donne: "No man is an island."
The critics of theological realism contend there are better and more valid ways to explain: (1) the racial nature of mankind; (2) the racial fact of human depravity; (3) the racial meaning of death; (4) the racial work of Christ's redemption; and (5) the realization of the new race of those born from above by grace through faith.
See REALISM. REPRESENTATIVE THEORY, REALISM AND NOMINALISM, ORIGINAL SIN, TOTAL DEPRAVITY, BUDDHISM, TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION, NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS, IN ADAM, MAN, NATURE, PLATONISM.
For Further Reading: Miley, Systematic Theology, 2:474-92; Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 2:64-94; Tennant, Philosophical Theology, 1:219-56; Wiley, CT, 2:109-14.
Ross E. Price
REALITY THERAPY. Reality therapy is a counseling theory which emphasizes responsible behavior. The leading exponent of the theory is William Glasser. In his book Reality Therapy he assumes that it is impossible to maintain self-esteem if one is living irresponsibly. He declares, "Morals, standards, values, or right or wrong behavior are all intimately related to the fulfilment of our needs for self-worth" (11). Thus he aims at teaching counselees to maintain a satisfactory standard of behavior, to correct themselves when they do wrong, and to credit themselves when they do right. Self-respect comes through self-discipline and loving closeness to others.
Glasser maintains that persons have only two essential personality needs—to love and to be loved, and to feel that one is worthwhile to oneself and to others. This may be reduced to a single indispensable need—to experience authentic love in a dependable relationship.
Responsibility is defined by Glasser as the ability to fulfill one's needs, and to do so in a way that does not deprive others of the ability to fulfill their needs (xv).
While there is much about reality therapy which may be useful to the Christian minister, the redemptive dimension is missing. Fallen man is not able to merit salvation apart from the grace of God (Rom. 3:10-18, 23; Eph. 2:8). The danger of this counseling technique is that, in its emphasis on the humanistic, to love one's neighbor as oneself, the vertical dimension may be neglected, to love God with all one's heart, soul, strength, and mind (Luke 10:27).
See INTEGRITY THERAPY, COUNSELING, TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS.
For Further Reading: Clinebell, Basic Types of Pastoral
Counseling; Glasser, Reality Therapy; Hamilton, The Ministry of Pastoral Counseling.
Norman N. Bonner
REALIZED ESCHATOLOGY. This designates the approach to interpreting Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom of God which was proposed by the British scholar C. H. Dodd in his book Parables of the Kingdom. This interpretation of the kingdom of God in the ministry of Jesus sees the reign of God as fully present, i.e., realized in the person and work of Jesus. Dodd formulated his approach in reaction to the earlier position of the German scholar Albert Schweitzer, which was known as consistent or thoroughgoing eschatology. Schweitzer had argued that Jesus was a Jewish apocalyptic prophet, who announced that the kingdom of God was about to break into history in a climactic way. But history did not come to an end with the cataclysm which Jesus expected. Jesus had been mistaken.
Dodd sought to deemphasize any futuristic expectation in the teaching of Jesus. He was convinced that the eschatological dimension of Jesus' preaching consisted in the affirmation that all for which the prophets had hoped had now been fulfilled in history by Jesus' appearing. Dodd was strongly criticized for minimizing the futuristic aspect of the kingdom of God, and that criticism led him to modify his position. It is now the general consensus of NT scholarship that for the ministry of Jesus, the kingdom of God is in a real sense both present and future. The eschatology of Jesus is to be thought of as an eschatology in process of realization.
See ESCHATOLOGY.
For Further Reading: Bruce, "Eschatology," Baker's DT, 187-93; Evans, "Kingdom of God," IDB, 3:17-26; Hunter, The Work and Words of Jesus, 90-100, 122-30; Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament, 57-69; Perrin, The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus, 58-78.
Hal A. Cauthron
REASON. Reason is the power of the person to experience order in the universe and to bring order into his own thoughts and actions. When something is meaningful or makes sense, it is because it is appropriately ordered by reason. Thus the various forms of reason (e.g., logic) do not exhaust or reduce reason to themselves.
Often the term reason is used to refer to the human power to have knowledge by mediation, in which we infer that one thing is true because something else is true. By a series of necessary relationships we arrive at a conclusion. Immediate knowledge would be contrasted with media-
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tion (not necessarily with reason, as defined above); immediate knowledge would be gained from sense experience, memory, and intuitions. Yet reason need not be reduced to mediation and eliminated from the immediate.
Reasoning is often contrasted with free association. The necessary relationship is opposed to the mere drifting from idea to idea.
Rationalism is the utilization of certain modes of reasoning as the only insight into truth. Empiricism (gaining knowledge through the senses) is usually contrasted with rationalism; in this relationship empiricism is rejected as confused or distorted knowing (cf. Plato). Attempts to employ all dimensions of the human capacity for knowing would regard either rationalism or empiricism as one-sided approaches to reality and truth (cf. Hegel).
The critique of reason by romanticism, mysticism, authoritarianism, existentialism, and biblical literalism reveals both the many-sided character of reason as well as the numerous problems which it poses to man's quest for truth.
Some people contrast faith and reason as if there is no basis upon which they can exist simultaneously in the same mind. Others think of faith as primary with reason included or of reason as primary with faith included. The problem of the relation between philosophy and theology is comparable to this, for philosophy employs reason and theology is based upon faith. If one observes the broader meaning of reason along with an equally intelligible meaning of faith, then to say that faith and reason require each other is very intelligible. It means that nonsense and absurdity cannot be believed; only that can be believed which makes some kind of sense or has some meaning.
Christianity calls for all a person's ransomed powers to be employed in the service of eternity; and certainly this includes man's reason.
See rationalism, faith, humanism, revelation, rationality.
For Further Reading: Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers, 339-40; Harris, "The Power of Reason," The Review of Metaphysics, June, 1969.
R. Duane Thompson
REBAPTISM. Rebaptism is the practice of baptizing adults who have already been baptized as infants. It was the practice of the Anabaptists in Europe during the period of the Reformation and has since been a mark of such groups as the Mennonites and Baptists. Rebaptism is in effect a protest against infant baptism or christening, and a denial of its validity. The underlying belief is that the sacrament of baptism was in NT times administered only in the case of adults becoming believers, and was intended to serve as an expression of a personal and voluntary commitment to Christ. A corollary is that baptism is unique to the NT and not the counterpart of circumcision, a rite administered to Jewish infants at eight days of age.
Basic to the believer baptism posture is the belief that repentance and faith (the new birth) are prerequisites of and are symbolized by baptism. Baptism is the sign that one has heard God's convicting and saving Word, that one's life has been buried with Christ, that one has arisen with Christ to new life (Rom. 6:1-11), has experienced the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:37-39), and has become a part of the new community.
See baptism, infant baptism (pro and con), sacraments, sacramentarianism.
For Further Reading: Cullmann, Baptism in the New
Testament; Jewett, Infant Baptism and the Covenant of
Grace; Barth, The Teaching of the Church Regarding Bap-
tism. Martin H. Schrag
RECEIVING THE HOLY SPIRIT. While there is a unique reception of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer subsequent to the new birth, it is the same Spirit whom we receive at conversion. De-votionally speaking, there is no difference between Christ and the Holy Spirit, for the Spirit is the exalted Christ (Acts 2:33; 2 Cor. 3:18). Theologically speaking, there is a real differentiation among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but it is a differentiation in unity. This triunity of God's being means that whatever unique function one of the divine Persons has, the other divine Persons also share in the same activity. The concept of the Trinity does not mean three independent centers of consciousness within the divine life. Nor do the progressive stages of Christian experience lend itself to the notion that one can have the Son without the Spirit, as if the Christian life were made up of disjointed events.
Terminologically, we can speak of the deeper "Christian life as the fullness of the Spirit without depreciating the reception of Christ in conversion, even as we can speak of the unique coming of the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost as a deeper revelation of God without depreciating the person of Jesus Christ in His earthly ministry. The Spirit of Pentecost is the continuation of the earthly Jesus. Even as there were stages in salvation in which God was progressively known as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so there may be stages in one's personal history of salvation in which one may know God successively as Father,
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Son, and Holy Spirit. Yet it is the one and same God who is known. The dispensation of the Spirit signifies that the fullness of the Triune God has been revealed and that this fullness is given to the believer.
See dispensation of the holy spirit, baptism with the holy spirit.
For Further Reading: Wood, Pentecostal Grace; Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, 155; GMS, 484-88.
Laurence W. Wood
RECONCILIATION. The Christian doctrine of reconciliation is derived primarily from four major statements on the subject in Paul's letters: Rom. 5:10-11; 2 Cor. 5:18-19; Eph. 2:16; and Col. 1:20-22. The term presumes on the one hand a previous enmity and on the other a subsequent friendship. Both of these need to be thoughtfully held in view if one is to appreciate the richness of biblical reconciliation.
The enmity is represented by Scripture to be in the mind and heart of man. Cain, the Pharaoh of the Exodus, and Ahab and Jezebel are notable examples of those who apparently maintained their enmity to the end. Yet to all of these, God extended gracious overtures of friendship.
When the references in Paul's letters are consulted, it will be seen that without exception reconciliation is linked to the atoning death of Christ. There is propitiation in the Atonement— the appeasing of the wrath of offended Deity whose just laws have been violated; but Christ's death was not necessary to initiate God's love, for the propitiation was God's own action. God's infinite love is never seen in Scripture to have ever wavered at man's sin, no matter how selfishly, cruelly, and inhumanely expressed. Rather, in the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son, whose sacrificial death redeems us from the guilt and wretchedness of sin's bondage.
Theology defines various aspects of the salvation experience and sometimes the order of events. We may differ in the way these are realized, but there is certainly justification and the forgiveness of sins. The rebel who once hated God because of His moral demands surrenders and exercises simple faith in the fact of Christ and His meritorious death. Reconciliation flows naturally and immediately. The new believer may not realize it, but by faith he has been adopted into the family of God. Glimpses of divine reality and glory follow, and love grows as God is revealed in the heart by the Holy Spirit. Friendship of the closest order now prevails, for the soul is "in Christ."
See justification, repentance, atonement, in
christ
For Further Reading: Wiley, CT, 2:229-32; Banks, ed., Reconciliation and Hope, 104-24; GMS, 403-5.
Myron D. Goldsmith
REDEEMER, REDEMPTION. Salvation is the end result of redemption; redemption itself is the means. The NT word (usually lutron and its family) refers to "ransom," payment for deliverance from some evil, "the price of release."
Love is the grand motivation for redemption, and it focuses in Jesus Christ the Redeemer, though God as Redeemer worked toward His salvation goal throughout the OT. "God so loved the world, that he gave" (John 3:16) is the cornerstone of the house called redemption. This cannot surprise us, for God's very nature is love (1 John 4:7-8; 2 Cor. 13:11). His love is universal, not confined to the Jews (John 3:16). That verse also lets us know His love is sacrificial; so does 1 John 4:9-10; Gal. 2:20; Eph. 5:2; and Rev. 1:5. The amazing truth is that He loves us though unworthy, and even when we are His enemies (Rom. 5:8; 1 John 4:10). The NT teaching is that His love is merciful (Eph. 2:4-5). More, the love that made redemption's plan complete saves and sanctifies us (2 Thess. 2:13).
An important personage in OT society was the Go'el, "redeemer," the nearest of kin charged with the responsibility of buying back an inheritance which had been alienated from the family line to which it properly belonged. Boaz, by redeeming Elimelech's property, and with it obtaining Ruth, prevented the line of Elimelech from terminating with the death of the two sons Chilion and Mahlon. In this respect also Jesus fulfills the type. Hs is our Go'el, our Redeemer, in restoring us to our proper owner and lineage.
The payment of the lutron was common in OT times and applied to anything that released a man from an obligation or debt of his own. But of special significance was the ceremony of the firstborn, traced to sparing sons on Passover night in Egypt. Customarily, the firstborn were given to the Lord and could be bought back for five shekels (Num. 18:16; cf. Barclay, New Testament Words, 190). It is worth noting in passing that lutron may also refer to buying a slave's freedom (sinners are slaves capable of being freed).
Mark 10:45 and Matt. 20:28 tell us Jesus is our lutron, our ransom to free us. Man, caught in the grip of sin and quite incapable of releasing himself, is rescued. (Thus one definition of salvation is "rescue.") Sometimes the figure implies or indi-
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cates rescue in and from a battle (sin and righteousness are at war).
Redemption is through the blood of Christ (Eph. 1:7), and one OT meaning of this term is "blood money." This redemption means the forgiveness of sins (Col. 1:14).
Redemption also means a new interpersonal relationship with God (Rom. 3:24). This new relationship means transformation and adoption into the family of God (Gal. 4:5). The old life is forgotten, the new life is present reality, and the future filled with possibilities. Note carefully: The plain NT view is that redemption is due entirely to Jesus Christ, His life in God, His works and teachings, His death and resurrection—the entire person and work of the Redeemer. The lutron He paid cost His entire life; we do well to remember this enormously significant fact.
Redemption carries provision for the future life too. True, the new life it enables begins now, but continues throughout eternity.
See RANSOM, SACRIFICE, ATONEMENT, PROPITIATION, EXPIATION, PASSOVER, RESURRECTION.
For Further Reading: Barclay, New Testament Words (agape and lutron); Burtner and Chiles, A Compend of Wesley's Theology, 64 ff; "Redeemer, Redemption," NBD.
Donald E. Demaray REFORMATION. See Protestant reformation.
REGENERATION. Regeneration is the inward quickening of the repentant and believing sinner from spiritual death to spiritual life which occurs in Christian conversion. As such it is simultaneous with the other aspects of this religious experience, viz., justification, adoption, and initial sanctification.
The Greek equivalent of regeneration, pal-ingenesia, "new birth," or being "born again," is used only once in reference to conversion (Titus 3:5); however, the idea is expressed frequently by other equally precise terms (Eph. 2:1, 5; Jas. 1:18; 1 Pet. 1:23).
The most incisive declaration of the necessity of being "reborn" is our Lord's well-known dialogue with Nicodemus (John 3:1-8). In this conversation Jesus laid down the major elements involved in what the Christian faith intends by the terms "regeneration," the "new birth," and "born again." In reply to questions concerning the kingdom of God, Jesus shifted the discussion drastically. "I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Clearly Nicodemus was being led to see that moral goodness, zeal for religious observance, and the performance of exact legal duties were insufficient to qualify him for the Kingdom.
Jesus' idea of the inner transformation which regeneration implies was not new in Scripture. Ezekiel, as God's spokesman, declared, "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh" (Ezek. 36:26). The language is figurative; and Nicodemus' perplexed response to the words of the Lord in John 3:4, 9 suggests that our Lord's insistent words could only be understood in this way.
The NT unfolding of the meaning of regeneration begins with the assumption that man, by the Fall, has been placed in a state of sin—a state so negatively profound that he cannot lift himself from his predicament. The reply of grace to this is, that the Holy Spirit offers a change in human nature so decisive that the dominion of sin which is natural to man is broken, so that repentant and believing persons may serve God freely and walk in His ways.
The effective agent of regeneration is the divine Spirit, who moves quietly into the penitent and believing heart (which has been justified), to bring the inner life into conformity with the new relationship as child, as heir of God, and joint heir with Christ (see Rom. 8:16-17). Clearly this has elements of the mysterious about it; our Lord put this in words as He said: "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit" (John 3:8).
More formally, regeneration means literally "to be again" and involves the replacement of the old individual with "a new creature" (2 Cor. 5:17). This indicates at least an initial— though partial—restoration to the moral image of God which was lost in the Fall, plus the reestablishment of a relation of devotion and obedience to God. The "new man" is, in regeneration, made alive, given new patterns of incentive and motivation, and enabled to walk in "newness of life" (Rom. 6:4). The felt reality of this produces the response of the human spirit which is a confirming counterpart of the witness of the Spirit.
See NEW BIRTH, CONVERSION, FIRST WORK OF GRACE, JUSTIFICATION.
For Further Reading: "Conversion," Baker's DCE; "Regeneration," ZPEB; Wiley, CT, 2:402-39.
Harold B. Kuhn
REINCARNATION. This is the reinhabitation of a personal spirit, released by death from its former
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house, in another bodily form. The spirit of a human may return as another human or as an animal. Whether the reincarnation is an improvement or a downgrading depends on Karma, or just fate. The doctrine is variously called Metempsychosis, Transmigration, or Rebirth. It is congenial to Platonism, which supposes an extreme dichotomy between spirit (or soul) and body; but in origin it is more Eastern than Western. It underlines the incubus of animal reverence in Hinduism, since the animal might be an ancestor. The teaching was first systematically taught in the Upanishads, a collection of sacred writings in Hinduism, most of which antedated Plato. The supposed purpose of reincarnation is the gradual purification of the soul, as it passes through higher and higher forms, until it reaches Nirvana. The doctrine is thoroughly pagan and non-Christian. The Bible teaches that "it is appointed for men to die once, and after this comes judgment" (Heb. 9:27, nasb). The creation of man was unique, constituting him a unitary body-soul being which cannot be compounded with lower forms of being. This life is man's sole probation. His redemption is not by Karma but by the blood of Christ.
See NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS, DUALISM, THE-OSOPHY, FATALISM,
For Further Reading: Stilson, Leading Religions of the World; Parrinder, A Dictionary of Non-Christian Religions.
Richard S. Taylor
REJOICE. See joy
RELATIONAL THEOLOGY. This is sometimes referred to as a "theology of relationships." The category of relationship is seen as the locus of religious reality. The concept is that of persons in interaction with each other. Sin is wrong interaction; holiness is right interaction. Christian holiness therefore consists of right relationships with God, other persons, and with oneself; some would insist on the necessity of right relationship with one's environment also (the ecological dimension). Love is seen as the central note of Christianity, since love is the attitude which makes right relationships possible.
This is a dynamic approach to Christian holiness, which moves away from the Calvinistic imputed righteousness, which is a legal Tightness through an objective atonement, but which falls short of personal relationships which are truly holy. The approach also moves away from the kind of Wesleyanism which defines holiness as a subjective state of the nature, wrought by a work of grace, and which may also fall short of expressing itself in terms of relationships. Relational theology would insist that the focus of reality is not in a subjective experience but in the degree to which the experience affects the relationships.
This emphasis on the relational nature of biblical holiness is essential to the preservation of a true moral sense; i.e., that holiness must be moral to the core, and that any understanding of holiness which obscures the moral dimension is false. By "moral holiness" is meant a relationship with God in which the person is never a mere pawn, but is actively and intensely committed to Christ in loving obedience and trust. Every nerve is stretched in the quest for God's best (cf. Phil. 3:13-14, nasb). By implication, this insistence on preserving the moral nature of holiness constitutes a repudiation of any mechanical system of security, which severs sonship from fellowship, legal relationship from loving relationship, and acceptance from obedience.
Relational theology becomes aberrant when its advocates impress upon it the categories and concepts of process theology. This results in a failure to see that the effecting of right relationships, and their maintenance, can only be accomplished by real subjective changes in the nature of the relator. For the human relator is sinful by nature and by choice, and is hence incapable of right relationships with either God, man, or himself. It is his sinfulness which is the moral impediment to harmonious relationships. If the relationalist replies that disharmonious relationships do not result from sinfulness but constitute the sinfulness, it becomes necessary to remind him that deeply rooted in orthodox Wesleyanism is the doctrine of original sin, the need for a real change called regeneration, and a deeper real change called sanctification—and that these changes become not only the means by which right relationships are effected but the conditions for those relationships.
A concept of either holiness or sinfulness which is exclusively relational cannot claim Wesley for support. In his classic debate with the Unitarian John Taylor, speaking of original sin as an inbred proclivity of the nature, he exclaimed, "Believe this, and you are so far a Christian. Deny it, and you are a heathen still." To Taylor's premise that "righteousness is right action," Wesley replied, "Indeed it is not. Here ... is your fundamental mistake. It is a right state of mind; which differs from right action, as the cause does from the effect" (Works, 9:342).
Right relationships then are the goal of grace, and the touchstone of religious validity. But they
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presuppose the atonement of Christ, as the necessary moral ground for reconciliation with God; and they also presuppose real, substantive changes in the human relators.
That Jesus himself made process dependent upon state and becoming dependent upon being, instead of the other way around, is clear from such passages as: "You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles, are they? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit; but the rotten tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree produce good fruit" (Matt. 7:16-18, nasb; cf. 12:33-35). The state of goodness does not exclude process but controls it. A good tree can keep on growing and producing, but it will not thereby be becoming a good tree; the production will only express what it already is. No amount of growth or fruit bearing will turn a bad tree into a good one. Likewise, no amount of growth or time will transform a sinful heart into a pure heart. Relationships are objective states which depend upon subjective conditions.
See SANCTIFICATION, NATURE, HUMAN NATURE, SUBSTANCE (SUBSTANTIVE), NEW COVENANT. PROCESS THEOLOGY, WESLEYAN SYNTHESIS.
For Further Reading: Wood, Pentecostal Grace; Wyn-
koop, A Theology of Love; Wiley, CT, 2:440-96; Turner,
Christian Holiness, 98 ff; Purkiser, Sanctification and Its
Synonyms; Chapman, The Terminology of Holiness;
Grider, Entire Sanctification, 20-24; Wesley, Works,
9:192-465; Henry Christian Faith and Modern Theology,
92. Richard S. Taylor