Theology beacon dictionary of theology
For Further Reading: Biederwolf
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- An Introduction to the New Hermeneutic;
- Answers for the Now Generation
- For Further Reading: Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 205-62; Early Christian Doctrines, 223-51; Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition
- NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS.
- HUMANISM, ZOROASTRIANISM, CULTS, ISLAM, HARE KRISHNA, JUDAISM, GNOSTICISM, CHRISTIANITY, UNIFICATION CHURCH, TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION, TRINITY (THE HOLY), COMPARATIVE RELIGION.
- A Dictionary of Non-Christian Religions; Noss, Mans Religions. R. ALLAN KlLLEN NONCONFORMITY.
- WORLD (WORLDLINESS), OBEDIENCE, CONFORMITY, SURRENDER. For Further Reading: Bakers DT, 380; Qualben
- NONDIRECTIVE COUNSELING. See
- For Further Reading: Otto, The Idea of the Holy; Purkiser, ed., Exploring Our Christian Faith, 324-27; Barker, Whos Who in Church History
- FAITH, CHRISTIAN, UNBELIEF, REPENTANCE.
For Further Reading: Biederwolf, The Millennium Bible, 708-26; Smith, The Biblical Doctrine of Heaven, 223-36; Hughes, A New Heaven and a New Earth. George Eldon Ladd NEW HERMENEUTIC. The root meaning of her-meneia, from which hermeneutic is derived, is "translation" or "interpretation." It includes exegesis (what did the text mean?), interpretation (what does it now mean?), and the transition from one to the other. Linguistically, hermeneia includes language translation and clarification or articulation of the obscure or mystical (commentary), particularly by priests in reference to numinous or revelatory events. The new hermeneutic focuses specifically on the reinterpretation of the ancient text (Bible) for contemporary (20th century) proclamation by attempting to transfer the meaning of the past into present reality and by emphasizing the inter -relatedness of language, faith, history, and understanding. Three basic areas are addressed: the credibility of the Bible for the modern age; the normative nature of the past for the present; the validity of historical knowledge. The roots of the new hermeneutic are found in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, and Heidegger; its chief recent proponents are Bultmann, Fuchs, and Eb-eling. Against the fragmented results of the historico-critical method and the presupposition-al approaches of philosophical theology, the new hermeneutic questions the unchanging structure of reality, and advocates existential involvement with the text through both historical awareness of prior interpretations and openness to new expressions and forms. God's "word-event" of Scripture discloses the truth and reality of the human situation; this "essential word" (Heidegger) must be renewed in each situation as new reality is uncovered. The text is independent but also interrelates with the listener (interpreter). The more that is known, the greater is the possibility of asking the right questions of the text in an I-Thou relationship. The text is interpreted; the interpreter is in turn interpreted by the text (the hermeneutical circle). The process of "demythologization" seeks to reaffirm language as communication, rather than information; the text interprets, challenges, and affirms human existence in the decision of faith as authentic, interrelated, united, and freeing, or inauthentic, fragmented, enslaving, and corrupting. God himself is the word-event of biblical language. Man is not creative of language but responsible toward it. Language reflects what is taking place within a given culture but also expedites our authentic self-understanding. The response of faith is thus a way of life to be rearticulated further as God confronts us in the word-event of the biblical language, the ser-monic proclamation and its challenge, and the 366 NEW MORALITY—NICENE CREED hearer's response of authentic existence within the changing cultural context. See hermeneutics, biblical authority, exegesis, bible: the two testaments, kerygma, biblical theology, criticism (ot, nt), progressive revelation. For Further Reading: Achtemeiei; An Introduction to the New Hermeneutic; Robinson and Cobb, Jr., The New Hermeneutic (New Frontiers in Theology, vol. 2); Ridderbos, Studies in Scripture and Its Authority.
Theologically, the new morality refers particularly to the views of Joseph Fletcher, advocated in his Situation Ethics and elsewhere. This new kind of ethical theory advocates acting, in each life situation, according to what is the most loving thing to do at the time. Fletcher, an Episcopalian seminary professor, said his view is not antinomian because it does advocate obedience to one law—the law of love. Also, Fletcher wanted people to be informed by the stored-up Christian wisdom of the centuries as they make the decision about what is the most loving thing to do. Yet the view has many inadequacies. One is in its advocating that there is only one principle: love. For example, the most just thing might be to put a mass murderer to death. Justice and other interests, as well as love, surely, are proper bases for our actions. Another inadequacy of the view is that the individual is the one who decides what to do, instead of God (by His revealed will). Still another inadequacy is that it advocates deciding "in the situation"; and that might be a poor time to do this deciding. On the basis that there are rights and wrongs, a person can decide ahead of time what course he would follow on, say, sexual relations—before he or she is thrown into a situation when sexual desire might well prejudice the situation. Still another inadequacy is that what seems the most loving thing to do might not take into account future guilt and guilt feelings, or other future undesirable results, of doing what seems to be the most loving thing at the time. Perhaps the most serious defect in Fletcher's thesis is its assumption that man is able to know what is the most loving thing to do and able to do it. This presupposes inherent goodness and wisdom, and ignores the sinful proclivity toward selfishness and moral obtuseness which is universally observable. The underlying optimism in the so-called new morality, which in effect denies man's sinfulness and need of regenerating grace, is not supportable by either Scripture or the facts of life. See ethical relativism, ethics, christian ethics, morality. For Further Reading: Henry, Answers for the Now Generation, 89; DeWolf, Responsible Freedom, 25-39; Geisler, Ethics: Alternatives and Issues, 60-77. J. Kenneth Grider
The creed takes its name from the Council of Nicea called by the Emperor Constantine in June, a.d. 325, to settle a dispute over the teachings of Arius and his supporters, and thereby to bring about much-needed unity in the church and the empire as a whole. Constantine's goal was not realized, however, for while the council did agree on an anti-Arian statement of belief, it did not bring to an end debate in the church, which swirled on for over a century. In fact, the version of the Nicene Creed most widely accepted and used in later times did not reach its final form until the Council of Constantinople set it down in a.d. 381 after a tumultuous period in which, totally contrary to the creed, the Arian position had actually managed to become the "official" one in the church for a time and various pro- and anti-Nicene leaders had been alternately banished and reinstated. The Council of Chalcedon in a.d. 451 was still wrestling with some of the same issues, in somewhat altered form, raised by Nicea. The main issue addressed by the Nicene Creed is the full deity of the Second Person of the Trinity; this it affirms. Arius, by contrast, taught that the Son was a being created in time, qualitatively different from God the Father, by no means immutable or coeternal with God, "alien from and utterly dissimilar to the Father's essence and individual being" (Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 228). Arius believed that the Son was "God," but only in a derivative sense, yet held that He is worthy of worship. Arius' opponents, led by Alexander and Athanasius, saw this as practical polytheism and held that the Scriptures affirm that God is One, the Son being eternal, uncreated, and in essence the same as the Father. They also saw the Chris- NOMINALISM—NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 367
tian doctrine of redemption in Christ assaulted by Arius' position, for, only if the Redeemer were truly divine, they argued, could fellowship with God be reestablished by Him. Their position was adopted by the clergy at Nicea and reaffirmed at Constantinople with the essential identity of Father and Son being enshrined in the creed in the Greek phrase homoousian —i.e., Christ as the Son is of "the same essence or substance" as the Father, and thereby is himself God. This has remained the teaching of the Christian church through the centuries. See APOSTLES' CREED, ATHANASIAN CREED, CREED (CREEDS), CHRISTOLOGY, HYPOSTASIS, ARIANISM. For Further Reading: Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 205-62; Early Christian Doctrines, 223-51; Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition, 191-225; Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, 1:24-29. HAROLD E. RASER NOMINALISM. See realism and nominalism. NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. In order to be properly understood and evaluated, the non-Christian religions need to be examined in the light of some general observations.
These two facts are clearly illustrated in all of the primitive religions. They have certain moral standards corresponding to the principles stated in the Ten Commandments, though in perverted forms. And they do retain, in their folklore and religious practices, days when they commune and worship the "High God" or "Sky God." Because He is entirely kind and good, they generally worship Him only one day in the year. In contrast-they worship the other deities often in order to protect themselves from their evil powers.
A study of Aristotle's view of God illustrates this. When he developed his idea logically, he ran into serious difficulties. If God, who has existed as a personal being from eternity past, were to create a physical universe, then He would add an I-it or subject-object relationship between himself and the universe; and if He made man, an I-thou relationship between himself and man; and He would experience, for the first time, a we-you, or social relationship, as He saw Adam and Eve bring forth and nurture their first child. This would be impossible, Aristotle argued, since it would mean that God was not eternally fully developed within himself, or, as he put it, actus pu-rus. Further, we can add He would need the universe, man, woman, and child, to be equal to man. The Christian revelation alone handles this problem. God has always been actus purus. All of His personal potentialities have been fully developed within himself since eternity past. The explanation for this is in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Reason without revelation has always led to error in all man's unitarian views of God. From this we can make a further observation.
Specific non-Christian religions should be examined with these background observations in 368 NONCONFORMITY mind. They may be summarily classified, as follows. Primitive religions. Primitive religions are polytheistic, and yet they retain, in the form of myths, a worship of the true God. Greek and Roman religions. These were polytheistic and illustrated Paul's description of paganism very clearly. They included the "mystery" religions, so expressive of both spiritual darkness and spiritual hunger. Eastern mysticism. This starts off with the concept of monism, with everything existing as Being or God, and called the One, in which—as a logical consequence—no dualities, such as subject and object, good and evil, and time and space, exist. Being becomes active and creative through a polar dialectic which develops between Yang and Yin, male and female principles. The universe and man come into being through this dialectic. Eastern mysticism stresses the total difference between existence in God and physical existence, which it calls Maya or illusion. Man passes through thousands of reincarnations —as man, animal, insect, or plant—before returning to Being. The problem addressed by Eastern mysticism is that posed by inequalities due to birth and race, to health, and to personal fortune and misfortune. The law of karma, or cause and effect of man's deeds, determines man's particular existences both as to class and kind. Because of the successive cycles of existence Lord Krishna returns, from time to time, to repeat revelation. Salvation consists in attaining to reunion with Being or the All through enlightenment and meditation. At this point the soul enters Nirvana, which is timeless and spaceless and beyond good and evil (no dualities), and becomes totally impersonal. Eastern mysticism lacks a truly personal God. He materializes himself in the physical universe and comes to self-consciousness in man. Man is therefore greater than God, on the one hand, and needed by God, on the other. Eastern mysticism uses evil to make God creative, and it leaves man to struggle with this evil in his existence. It presents the most extended religion of works, on the one hand, and the most hopeless plan of salvation on the other. In its own way it builds in all of the polytheism found in the later Greek and Roman religions. It confines itself to one problem and ignores the rest. And it finally consigns man to the oblivion of Nirvana.
In the OT, which alone is accepted by the Jews, all of the manifest qualities of a fully personal, self-sufficient God appear, though in such a form that they have never been grasped without the acceptance of the NT. The blindness of the Jews to the revelation of the Triune God in the OT is paralleled by their blindness to the prophecies of the Messiah, concerning His first coming and His substitutionary atonement on the Cross, as revealed in Isaiah 53. See HUMANISM, ZOROASTRIANISM, CULTS, ISLAM, HARE KRISHNA, JUDAISM, GNOSTICISM, CHRISTIANITY, UNIFICATION CHURCH, TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION, TRINITY (THE HOLY), COMPARATIVE RELIGION.
Usually the term has social, cultural, or religious relevance. It is "a relative term which supposes some previously existing system of observances, established either by political authority or general consent, and denotes a practical secession or non-communion, on grounds conceived by the parties to require or justify it" (McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia, 7:161). "Nonconformist" with a capital N is "used generally to describe the position of those who do not conform to the doctrine and practices of an established church," more particularly to "those who left the Church of England rather than sub-
NONDIRECTIVE COUNSELING—OBEDIENCE 369
mit to the Act of Uniformity (1662)" (Douglas, NIDCC, 714). "Dissenters," "Nonconformists," "Free Churchmen" were and are terms used to describe Quakers, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and others. The intensity of the feelings and rigors of the ecclesiastical and political tensions across three centuries would be difficult to exaggerate. However, with the erosion of the dominance of established or state churches and the fluid relativism of church life in general, nonconformity has tended to become so common as to be the conformity of our day. Biblical Christians are not to conform to secular worldliness, and yet as the salt of the earth they must identify with society in order to exert their saving influence. It is reasonable to suppose that one should balance a respect for the opinions of one's social and religious groups with a commitment to one's own choice and conscience. See WORLD (WORLDLINESS), OBEDIENCE, CONFORMITY, SURRENDER. For Further Reading: Baker's DT, 380; Qualben, A His- tory of the Christian Church, 326; Taylor, A Return to Christian Culture, 62-77. john E. RlLEY NONDIRECTIVE COUNSELING. See rogerian counseling. NUMINOUS, THE. The numinous is a term for the mystery and majesty of God, who is "wholly other," beyond sensory perception, logical definition, or even the beautiful or good. He does, however, make us aware of His presence and His holiness. A study of the holiness of God so perceived attracts those who stress holiness in Christian experience. The root meaning of the holiness of God is what Rudolf Otto seeks among primitive people, reporting that they sense His power, not His purity. In The Idea of the Holy, Otto analyzes this concept: overwhelming might, yet fascination for men, even bliss in God's fellowship. These make up what Otto calls the numinous. Evangelical believers appreciate Otto's motive: to establish intuitive knowledge of God, transcending rationalistic objection. Men cannot comprehend God but they can contact Him. Some holiness theologians accept the concept of the numinous, for purity without mystery and awe could lead to ethical standards without power. God, however, is not wholly "wholly other," for He can redeem and sanctify men through Christ, and is pleased to indwell through the Holy Spirit. And while Jesus taught reverence ("Hallowed be thy name"), He also taught us to pray, "Our Father" (Matt. 6:9; Luke 11:2). See god, attributes (divine), transcendence.
Louis A. Bouck NURTURE. See discipling. o OBEDIENCE. Obedience is compliance with external commands or requirements. The authority to be obeyed may be statutory law, of God or man, or it may be an authority person such as parent, employer, policeman, or commanding officer. Obedience may be external and formal only, perhaps even grudging, or it may be willing, prompted by an inward acknowledgment of the other's rightful authority. There seems to be, therefore, two clearly defined uses of the term, one objective and practical, and the other ethical and psychological. The first refers more to conduct, and the second to belief and one's mental attitude toward the object of obedience. In the OT God revealed His plans and purposes to Israel by the use of His "word" or His "voice" through His messengers. Thus the idea of obedience is intimately connected with the Hebrew word shama, "to hear." So closely intertwined is "hearing" and "obeying" that translators are often pressed to know when to translate shama "hear" or "obey." In Hebrew religion to truly hear is to obey. Failure to obey would indicate that a person had not really heard. In Scripture the matter of hearing and obeying is often used in human relationships, as between parents and children, slaves and masters, kings and subjects, etc. But it is man's obedience to God that is of paramount importance. It is plain 370 OBEDIENCE OF CHRIST that God expected obedience from man from the very beginning. Obedience then is the supreme test of one's faith in God and one's love for God. In the OT it is the one important relationship that must not be broken. Man's relationship to God at this point is best expressed by the prophet Samuel, "To obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams" (1 Sam. 15:22). In the OT the future blessedness and prosperity of the chosen people were conditioned upon their obedience to the covenant God made with them at Sinai (Isa. 1:19; Exod. 19:5; 23:22). Unfortunately, Israel's history has been one of persistent refusal to follow God's plan and program. All the nation's troubles can be traced to her failure to obey God's commands. The NT follows the OT idea of obedience. The usual Greek term is hupakoe, "to hear." Jesus was following the OT usage when He said to the multitudes, "He that hath an ear, let him hear." He clearly meant that He not only wanted them to hear from a physical standpoint, but to respond in faith to the precepts that He had laid down, that is, obey His injunctions. In this way their hearing would become obedience. This is precisely the kind of action that the prophets of the OT had hoped to get from their hearers. Again Jesus said, "Every one who hears these words of Mine, and acts upon them, may be compared to a wise man, who built his house upon the rock" (Matt. 7:24, nasb). Thus "to hear" meant that the hearers believed and acted. The evidence that people had "heard" (obeyed) was that they repented and believed the gospel and went forth to live different lives. In the Wesleyan movement the idea of obedience is intimately bound up with the doctrine of entire sanctification or Christian holiness. For most people who seek to enter into this relationship with God the matter of genuine obedience is the sticking point. It is at the same time the most difficult and the most important prerequisite for entering into this experience. Thus wholehearted obedience lays the groundwork for real faith—in fact, it is real faith. We can now see that the terms "complete consecration," "utter abandonment," or "absolute surrender" mean nothing more or less than complete obedience to all the known will of God; and further, that there is no such thing as saving faith apart from obedience. See FAITH, CHRISTIAN, UNBELIEF, REPENTANCE. For Further Reading: Clippinger, "Obedience," ISBE; Kittel, 1:216; Knight, "Philippians," BBC; Stoger, Sacra-mentum Verbi, vol. 2. " C. paul gray 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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