Theology beacon dictionary of theology
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- Dictionary of Philosophy;
- Bakers DT
- DISPENSATION OF THE SPIRIT (cont.)
- BAPTISM WITH THE SPIRIT, RECEIVING THE SPIRIT, PENTECOST, FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT. For Further Reading: Wood, Pentecostal Grace; Thomas
- The Holy Spirit, 35-51; Carter, The Person and Ministry of the Holy Spirit, 221-59; GMS, 484-91, 619-23. LAURENCE W. WOOD
- DISPENSATION, CHURCH, RAPTURE, TRIBULATION. MILLENNIUM, ISRAEL, DISPENSATION OF THE SPIRIT. For Further Reading: Ladd, The Blessed Hope; Bass
- History of New Testament Times;
- For Further Reading: Berkhof, Systematic Theology; Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion; Arminius, The Works of Arminius; Pope
- Perspectives on Evangelical Theology, Kantzer and Gundry, eds.
- Mar-ais, ISBE
- Bakers DT;
DISCRIMINATION. This is a derivative of the Latin term discriminare, "to separate," and is related to the Greek krisis (verb, krino; noun, krisis; adj., kritikos), from which we get such words as critical. In both Latin and Greek, it originally meant "to separate, to sunder." Discriminare means to have the rational power to distinguish between objects, real or logical. Also, it has the sense of distinguishing between moral right and wrong. In Aristotelianism, there is a function of internal senses by which men and higher animals distinguish the good from the bad in their sensory experiences. Since the simple krinein means to "sunder," di-akrinein is a stronger form of the same word (Latin, discerno). The NT emphasis is on making a distinction between persons (Acts 15:9; 11:12; 1 Cor. 4:7). It is used in the sense of judging between two in 1 Cor. 6:5. Matt. 16:3 uses this word to mean "assess." In its noun form (diakrisis), it has several meanings: "separation," "distinction," "strife," "appraisal," and "exposition." Most often it means "differentiation" in the NT. At 1 Cor. 12:10, it is the differentiation of the prophets, while Heb. 5:14 is the differentiation between good and evil. To discern or differentiate between the spirits of the prophets is a gift of the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:10). Discernment or discrimination is an ability which the Holy Spirit gives to certain Christians so that they may discern between those speaking by the Spirit of God and those who speak by false spirits. Discrimination is a term which has fallen into disrepute because of the negative connotations it has acquired. It has come to mean acting against someone on the basis of prejudice or bias. Originally its meaning was just the opposite: the ability to judge correctly. The ability to discriminate between good and evil is necessary to any kind of Christian ethic. One must be able to think and act discriminately if he is to have sound moral judgments. To think "critically" (krinein), to make judgments, and to discriminate is a sign of moral, emotional, and intellectual maturity. Without such ability one is like a ship without a rudder. Therefore, when used in the right sense, discrimination is positive rather than negative. See discernment, judge (judgment). For Further Reading: ZPBD; Bourke, Dictionary of Philosophy; Kittel, 3:921-54; Arndt, Gingrich. Jerry W. McCant DISPENSATION. The term is derived from the Latin dispenso (to weigh out, to administer as a steward) which translates the Greek oikonomia, rule of the house. In Luke 16:2 ff oikonomia means the office of household management. It is rendered "stewardship" in KJV and NASB, and "management" in NIV. Paul's usage of the term has two chief meanings: first, the apostolic ministry to which he has been entrusted (1 Cor. 9:17); and second, the "plan of salvation" which God has undertaken to administer in the fullness of time (Eph. 1:10; cf. 3:9). Sometimes it is unclear which of these meanings is primary; the two are closely entertwined in the Prison Epistles (cf. Col. 1:25; Eph. 3:2). Theological usage follows the second of Paul's meanings, in which dispensation refers to God's redemptive purpose and His method of executing it, e.g., "the Mosaic dispensation" (the old covenant) and "the Christian dispensation" (the new covenant). Sometimes these are improperly contrasted as the "dispensation of law" and the "dispensation of grace." However, God's purpose is from beginning to end one of grace. But this one gracious purpose has been revealed in, and administered through, two dispensations, the old and the new. In Roman Catholic theology, dispensation refers to the official relaxation of canon law in particular and unusual instances. In modern times, some evangelicals have claimed to find many dispensations in the Bible and have developed this into a hermeneutical principle. The Wesleyan-Arminian tradition generally rejects this hermeneutic. See dispensationalism, covenant theology, pentecost. For Further Reading: Kittel, 5:151 ff; Baker's DT,
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days, a period of time extending from Pentecost until the second coming of Christ. Simultaneous with this dispensation of the Spirit is thus the establishment of the coming kingdom of God. This Kingdom began with the reign of the exalted Christ through the outpouring of the Spirit in the hearts of believers and will be consummated at the second coming of the exalted Lord at the final end. Luke related the coming kingdom of God with the Pentecostal gift of the Spirit (Acts 1:3). This Kingdom had its preparation in the Promised Land motif. God entered into covenant with Abraham, promising to give His descendants the land of Canaan where they might worship Him with their whole heart. Hence Canaan was the sanctuary of Yahweh, His abode on earth (Exod. 15:17). Living in Canaan was conditioned upon an exclusive worship of God, i.e., a perfect love for God expressing itself in personal obedience and Temple observance. Failure to keep this command of perfect love resulted in captivity. From the beginning Moses had made it clear that the only basis for remaining in the Promised Land (Deut. 6:1-2) was a perfect love and exclusive worship of Yahweh (vv. 4-5). Because they failed to love Yahweh perfectly, they yielded to idolatry, and Yahweh "scattered them among the nations" (Ezek. 36:19, rsv). This punishment of exile from the Promised Land and the ensuing captivity was not the last word for Israel. Out of an act of sheer grace Yahweh freely chose to restore and renew the ancient promise which had been made with Abraham. This hope of a new covenant and a restored kingdom became the theme of the prophets of the Exile. It is significant that Ezekiel equates the restoration of the Promised Land with the promised gift of the Spirit: "And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land" (37:14, rsv). What this restoration of the kingdom in the Promised Land further suggested was the sanctification of Israel and the perfecting of their love for Yahweh (Deut. 30:5-6,16; Ezek. 37:28). Even before Israel had originally possessed the Promised Land, Moses had forseen that Israel would be removed because the people would fail to love God perfectly (Deut. 29:25 ff). He also saw that Israel would be regathered to the Promised Land where they would remain forever because "the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul" (30:6). Likewise the prophets interpreted their captivity as a punishment for failure to love God perfectly, but they also perceived the inability of Israel to measure up to Yahweh's requirement within the context of the ancient covenant. Yehezkel Kaufmann has shown in this regard that the prophets had come to see that "experience teaches that mankind as now constituted cannot keep God's covenant, hence a new mankind must be created whose heart God has refashioned" (The Religion of Israel, 426). Kaufmann has shown that the essence of this new covenant is a perfect love for God who "will purify them with pure waters, plant in them his spirit, and give them a 'heart of flesh' so that they will obey him forever" (475). Luke's writings in particular show that the Pentecostal event fulfills this eschatological hope of the kingdom restored in the Promised Land. However, he shows that Jesus' understanding of the restored kingdom was radically different from the popular notion. The true Kingdom which was brought about by the Pentecostal event means that the exalted Christ reigns in the life of believers through the indwelling Spirit. In this respect, it is of symbolic significance that "the promise of the Father" which brought about the inauguration of this spiritual Kingdom occurred in Jerusalem, the capital city of the Promised Land (Acts 1:3-4). Jesus' commission to His followers had stipulated that their proclamation should begin at Jerusalem and then extend to the ends of the earth (Luke 24:47). The power with which they were to conquer the world for the sake of God's kingdom was the power derived from "the promise of my Father" (v. 49; Acts 1:8). This is why the disciples were to wait in Jerusalem until the Pentecostal gift of the Holy Spirit had come to dwell within them. Only then could it be truly said that the Kingdom had come and the Temple fully restored to its former glory. For the Church as the Body of Christ is the temple of the Holy Spirit and the earthly center of the kingdom of Christ whose Spirit infills believers. The primary meaning of the dispensation of the Spirit is that the righteousness of the Kingdom has become a reality. This means that the disciples and all believers may experience the personal, sanctifying grace through the infilling of the Holy Spirit (Luke 3:16; Acts 15:8-9). This means they are empowered to conquer the world because the Kingdom has been established in their hearts. Wesley's equation of the imagery of the promised rest of Canaan land with perfect love is appropriate. His hymns often allude to the imagery of Canaan land as descriptive of 168 DISPENSATIONALISM—DISPERSION Christian perfection. The following two verses cited in his Plain Account of Christian Perfection link the language of Pentecost, perfect love, and the Promised Land: Choose from the world, if now I stand, Adorn'd with righteousness divine; If, brought into the promised land, I justly call the Savior mine; Thy sanctifying Spirit pour, To quench my thirst, and wash me clean; Now, Savior, let the gracious shower Descend, and make me pure from sin. Oh that 1 now, from sin released, Thy word might to the utmost prove, Enter into Thy promised rest, The Canaan of Thy perfect love. There is a historical distinction between the sending of the Son and the sending of the Spirit, but it can also be implied that there is in the life of the believer an experiential distinction between receiving the Son and receiving the fullness of the Pentecostal Spirit (cf. Gal. 4:4-7). Jesus' disciples were genuinely converted (Luke 10:20) before their subsequent experience with the Pentecostal Spirit. To be sure, the Spirit was with them before Pentecost, but He did not dwell in them (John 14:17). Hence in their case their experience of the Son and the Spirit were historically distinct. It is also significant that Jesus said that only those who were already believers could receive the Spirit (ibid.). Yet there is a sense in which one could be "born of the Spirit" even before Pentecost (3:5), though after Pentecost one could receive the gift of the indwelling Spirit in His fullness (14:15-20; cf. Acts 2:4). If one accepts at face value the accounts in Acts 8:14-17 and 19:1-7, the Samaritans and the Ephesians illustrate the possibility that one may have faith in Christ without having received the fullness of the Pentecostal Spirit. See BAPTISM WITH THE SPIRIT, RECEIVING THE SPIRIT, PENTECOST, FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT. For Further Reading: Wood, Pentecostal Grace; Thomas, The Holy Spirit of God, 185-89; Steele, The Gospel of the Comforter; Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, 155; Hoffman, The Holy Spirit, 35-51; Carter, The Person and Ministry of the Holy Spirit, 221-59; GMS, 484-91, 619-23. LAURENCE W. WOOD DISPENSATIONALISM. This is a term referring to a type of interpretation of the Scripture which for all practical purposes originated early in the 19th century among a group of people who are known as Plymouth Brethren. Their most dominant leader and most original thinker was John Nelson Darby, whose teaching was marked by antagonism toward the organized church. The tenets of Darby and his peers have been popularized and proliferated through the notes of the Scofield Bible, edited by Cyrus Ingerson Scofield (1843-1921). The distinguishing feature of dispensational teaching is the idea that the Bible portrays seven dispensations, a dispensation being incorrectly defined as a span of time marked by a different method of divine dealing with man, and all except the last ending in failure. The present dispensation is the Church age, which will culminate in judgment. This related to Darby's original disparagement of the organized church. Dispensationalism's most popular ideas relate to its eschatological teachings. Building upon a Calvinistic view of covenant as unconditional, it is deeply interested in national Israel and in particular in her relation to the land of Palestine, which dispensationalists insist will be possessed in the end time for the establishment of an earthly, Jewish kingdom in fulfillment of God's promise to David. The kingdom of heaven they say refers to the earthly, nationalistic rule which Jesus offered to the Jews but which they rejected. Thus God's program for Israel had to be postponed until later, and as an interim arrangement the Church age was ushered in. A further implication of this is the dispensationalist teaching of a secret Rapture of the Church to remove the Church from the earth so God can resume His original plan of establishing a Jewish earthly kingdom. See DISPENSATION, CHURCH, RAPTURE, TRIBULATION. MILLENNIUM, ISRAEL, DISPENSATION OF THE SPIRIT.
DIVINATION—DIVINE DECREES 169
Dispersion was a widespread phenomenon of the first century b.c. and the first century a.d. In the Roman Empire the Jewish religion was considered a religio licita (permitted religion), and thus the Jews lived in comparative peace. Contact was maintained with the homeland. The Temple tax was faithfully paid, and advice on ethical matters was sought from the Palestinian rabbis. The Torah was diligently studied in the synagogues, and its exhortations were assiduously followed in daily life. However, Diaspora Judaism faced some opposition from the general populace because of its exclusiveness, evidenced in its denunciation of the Gentile idolatry and in its insistence on living strictly by the OT laws. When Christianity's missionary thrust was felt in the known world, Judaism's missionary interest, such as it was, diminished and virtually disappeared. All in all, the Jews of the Dispersion kept their identity religiously and culturally but not without significant intrusion by the cultures in which it existed. In recent centuries, the Jews of the Reformed tradition have been much less exclusive and have moved freely into other ethnic groups even to the extent of marriage. The Holocaust on the continent of Europe during the Second World War era and the return of thousands of Jews to Israel have brought this term dispersion into prominence again in our time. See judaism, israel. For Further Reading: Pfeiffer, History of New Testament Times; Tenney, New Testament Times. Willard H. Taylor DIVINATION. See sorcery. DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. See attributes, divine. DIVINE DECREES. By this term is meant God's will and purpose for His creation, especially in relation to the salvation of mankind. Strictly speaking, there is but one divine decree that comprehends all God's purposes, what Paul calls "the counsel of his will" (Eph. 1:11). The Greek term translated "counsel" is boule, meaning "intention," "purpose," "resolve," and it embraces the totality of God's will, as the whole verse says: "According to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to the counsel of his will" (rsv, emphasis added). Christian theology does speak of the divine "decrees," but this is merely the language of accommodation, human understanding being unable to fully grasp the purposes of God. Christian thought is historically divided into two schools, Calvinism and Arminianism. Calvinism, named after the teaching of the Genevan reformer John Calvin (1509-64), has built its entire system on an understanding of the divine decrees as absolute, eternal, and immutable, and as including, in advance, the final destiny of every descendant of Adam. This has resulted in the famous "Five Points" of Calvinism: (1) Unconditional election; (2) Limited atonement; (3) Natural inability, sometimes termed, after Augustine, "Total depravity" (i.e., man is so totally corrupt and dead in sin that, apart from grace, which is given only to the elect, he cannot will or do any spiritual good); (4) Irresistible grace; (5) Final perseverance, or "eternal security." Arminianism, named after the Dutch theologian James Arminius (1560-1609), reacted strongly against what it saw as the unscriptural assumptions of Calvinism's Five Points. Historic Arminianism was modified in certain respects by the warm evangelicalism of John Wesley's teaching. What follows is a Wesleyan-Arminian understanding of the divine decrees. All God's knowledge is immediate, simultaneous, and complete. To speak, therefore, of foreordained decrees is a misnomer, for, as John Wesley argued: "There is no foreknowledge, no more than afterknowledge, with God, but all things are known to Him as present from eternity to eternity" (Explanatory Notes upon the NT on 1 Pet. 1:2). Man was created free, and his subsequent fall was divinely permitted but not ordained. All God's purposes for man flow from His holiness and love, consequently He sent His Son that whoever believes in Him should be saved (John 3:16; 1 John 4:14). God's saving purpose extends to all men; He "desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:4, rsv). Christ's sacrificial death is potentially efficacious for all men (Rom. 5:6-8; 1 Tim. 2:6; 1 John 2:2); it cancels the guilt of Adam's transgression (Rom. 5:18) and actively saves all who, through grace, consciously repent and believe on Christ. It also atones for all who die in infancy and for those who are mentally retarded. Salvation is wholly dependent on grace, for man is naturally dead in trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1) until, through the gracious be-stowment of prevenient grace, he is awakened by the Spirit to the sense of sin, his need of redemption, and thus enabled to cooperate with the Spirit in coming to Christ. Wesleyan-Arminian-ism further asserts that the "counsel of his will" makes provision for the believer in Christ to progress in holiness and righteousness and thus persevere through grace. 170 DIVINE ESSENCE—DIVINE IMAGE See calvinism, arminianism, predestination, foreknowledge, contingent elect (election), divine sovereignty. For Further Reading: Berkhof, Systematic Theology; Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion; Arminius, The Works of Arminius; Pope, A Compendium of Christian Theology; Watson, Theological Institutes; Dayton, "A Wesleyan Note on Election," Perspectives on Evangelical Theology, Kantzer and Gundry, eds., 95-104; GMS, 424-38. Herbert McGonigle DIVINE ESSENCE. See attributes, divine. DIVINE HEALING. See heal, healing. DIVINE IMAGE. The Scriptures inform us of the fact that man was created in the image of God (imago Dei), as a rational moral being (Gen. 1:26-27). Man's personality, linking him to what is above, separating him from what is beneath, constitutes him a being apart—a rational, self-conscious, self-determining creature, intended by his Creator for fellowship with Himself. . . . Knowledge, righteousness and holiness may fitly be considered elements in the character of man as originally designed by God. Likeness to God therefore is maris privilege above all created beings (J. I. Mar-ais, ISBE, 1:146). Man is a being that gathers up the meaning of all animal life as he rises into the dignity of personality. And rise he can, and must, to the realms of existence in peculiarity as an isolated individual with power of self-decision. As a self-directed being, man makes moral distinctions, senses moral obligation, and seeks some justifiable moral settlement. He is an animal, not only with a reason (cf. Aristotle's definition of man: "A rational, featherless biped"), but a conscience. And "conscience is that somewhat or someone within us that pronounces as to the Tightness or the wrongness of our choice of motives" (Carlyle stated it thus, and Bresee and Wiley both championed the statement). Man does make choice of motives. The motive does not seize the man, but man seizes the motive. He is free to choose and use his motives. "Personal freedom ... is the power to use uncoerced any motive given in self-consciousness" (Curtis, Christian Faith, 45). Man feels responsibly free. So the taproot of maris moral concern is his intuitive sense of belonging to a supernatural Overlord. Man feels himself under authority and knows his supreme moral action is obedience. Hence, only one motive is capable of organizing man into a whole person, and that one motive is holy love. Thus man seeks a master motive that he may be knit up into one coherent whole. Moral fear must be changed into moral love, and the moral law must become a personal friend to man. It is in the perfect love of the perfect God that man discovers the flower and perfection of true religion. Here his manhood rests in God, and the human person has deliberately chosen his everlasting home, where his heart rejoices in the supreme joy of self-consciously choosing to live forever in God. This is the religion of love, consummated by absolute personal unification with God. "For God created man to be immortal and made him to be an image of His own eternity" (Wisdom of Solomon, 2:23). Theologians usually make a distinction between the natural and the essential image of God in man (his personality, his original constitution, that which makes him man), and the moral or incidental image (that original holiness and moral likeness to God which must remain dependent upon the use which man makes of the powers with which he was endowed at creation). And theologians usually argue that the first cannot be, and has not been, lost in the fall of man into sin; but that the second, or incidental, image and likeness to God was lost. The deepest fact of the essential image is man's likeness to God as a finite spirit. Man's cognitive powers (for knowledge) belong there also. And since man is spirit, an eternal existence of some character and state belongs there too—not the deathlessness of the body, but the nonextinction of man's being. Thus the soul may continue its existence forever, either in a state of sin and rebellion against reality, or in a state of love and commitment to that which is righteous and good. What man lost in the Fall through the misuse of his God-given freedom was the original holiness and moral character, the blessed quality of his personality, which he enjoyed before "he made his wife, the serpent, and his own belly, his false trinity, under the fatal tree" (John Fletcher). Here was the wicked, wilful, self-surrender of man to enslavement by sin (Genesis 3). Thus to create a free moral agent cost God both a heartbreak and a cross. "The prophecy of the Serpent is the great deception" (Nicolai Hartmann). For sin does not open man's eyes, and to this day man lacks true knowledge of good and evil, and is plagued by a false sense of values. The ruin was great, but the remedy is adequate (Gen. 3:15). And since man did not lose the natural image, and since the "free gift of God" passed back upon all men (Rom. 5:15-16, 18), mankind still retains its possibility for redemption, which fact gives value to the life even of the unregenerate. Man's lost spontaneity for holiness DIVINE PRESENCE—DIVISION 171
and God's gift of the Holy Spirit may be restored to him in regeneration and sanctification. Man was created internally harmonious with the possibilities of sinless development, which only his free act has annulled. It is only by God's enabling grace that any man returns in repentance to its renewment. Man's depravation comes by reason of his deprivation of the positive, personal, indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, but God's free grace goes deeper than the stain of sin has gone. Man in likeness of God is still the promise of redemption through the One Man who never lost that image, for He only can baptize us with the Holy Spirit. See Anthropology, human nature, redemption, sanctification. For Further Reading: Carl F. H. Henry, "Man," Baker's DT; Wiley, CT, 2:7-50. ROSS E. PRICE Directory: sites -> default -> files -> publications publications -> Table of Content forward introduction publications -> Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center for Wireless Technologies Georgia Institute of Technology publications -> Housing Counseling Research in Chicago publications -> Communicating with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Audiences publications -> New Brunswick Info Sheet on First Nations Child Welfare publications -> Paap’s Electronic Newsletter 14 November 2008 Volume 11 Number 22 towards ‘smart’ subsidies in agriculture: lessons from recent experience in malawi publications -> Information support of pedagogical process for the children experiencing difficulties with acquisition of preschool educational programs publications -> Asus’ ZenFone ar has Google’s augmentted and virtual reality baked in — but not combined publications -> School Readiness and Early Grade Success Consultation Memo Atlanta, ga Download 6.66 Mb. Share with your friends:
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