Theology beacon dictionary of theology
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- COVENANT, NEW COVENANT. PENTECOST, PROMISES (DAVIDIC). For Further Reading: Walker, "Promise," ISBE, 4:2459; Smith, "Promise,"
- MESSIAH, SON OF MAN, PROPHET (PROPHECY). For Further Reading: Clements, Abraham and David; Bright, A History of Israel
- STEWARDSHIP, COVETOUSNESS, CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM, RIGHTS, RICHES, LABOR, POVERTY. For Further Reading: Thomas, Christian Ethics and Moral Philosophy;
- HERMENEUTICS. For Further Reading: IDB, 3:896-920; Richardson, ed., A Theological Word Book of the Bible, 178-82; Sanders
- For Further Reading: Crawford, The Doctrine of the Atonement; ZPBD; ISBE; Wiley, CT, 2:229 ff, 283-86.
- REVELATION (SPECIAL), BIBLICAL AUTHORITY, BIBLICAL REALISM, TRUTH, DOCTRINE, DOGMA, FUNDAMENTALISM, FIDEISM. For Further Reading: Henry, ed., Revelation and the Bible;
- PROSELYTISM.
- MISSION (MISSIONS, MISSIOLOGY), EVANGELISM, CHRISTIANITY, EVANGELICAL, PROSELYTE.
PROMISE. Although possessing certain factors in common, a promise (Gr. epaggelma) and a covenant (Heb. berith; Gr. diatheke) possess certain essential differences. A promise is "a declaration that something will or will not be done, given by one" (Random House Dictionary). A covenant is "a compact or agreement between two [or more] parties binding them mutually to undertakings on each other's behalf" (Baker's DT, 142). The assurance of the fulfillment of a promise rests exclusively upon the veracity of the promisor, whereas the fulfillment of the terms of a covenant rests upon the fidelity of each party to the agreement. Violation of those terms by either party abrogates the provisions of the covenant. God's redemptive promises are unconditional: "For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself" (Heb. 6:13, nasb; cf. 14-20; Gal. 3:10-18; Gen. 22:15-18; Luke 1:73-79). God's covenants are many, and each is included, like a concentric circle, within the larger circle of His promises. God's great redemptive promises are three, and consist, first, of Christ the Redeemer, which appears first in Gen. 3:15 and continues progressively throughout both Testaments, including His virgin birth, death on the
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Cross, resurrection, and ascension. The Father's promise of the Gift of the Holy Spirit constitutes the second great redemptive promise to man (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4-5), which was fulfilled with the Spirit's effusion at Pentecost (2:1-4). The third is God's promise of Christ's second coming (Acts 1:11; 3:19-21; 1 Thess. 1:10; 4:13-18; Titus 2:13; see also John Fletcher, Works, 3:166-69). See COVENANT, NEW COVENANT. PENTECOST, PROMISES (DAVIDIC). For Further Reading: Walker, "Promise," ISBE, 4:2459; Smith, "Promise," Baker's DT, 422-23; Miner, "Promise," 7DB, K-Q:893-96. CHARLES W. CARTER PROMISES, DAVIDIC. The promises made by God to King David, found in 2 Samuel 7, assure David that the throne of his offspring will be established forever. The occasion for these promises was David's intention to build a house in which the Lord would dwell (the Jerusalem Temple). God refuses David's offer and instead, employing a play on words, promises to build a house (dynasty) for David. This meant that for Judah there would be but one ruling dynasty in their national history of over 400 years. (Compare this with Northern Israel's nine dynasties in approximately 200 years.) The promises are regarded as a binding covenant (see the last words of David in 2 Sam. 23:1-7; also Jer. 33:20-21) and form an important aspect in Israel's covenant history. Some scholars see a vital historical connection between the Abrahamic and Davidic promises. Promises made to Abraham (Gen. 12:1-3) of land and a great nation are seen as fulfilled in David. It is also noted that David began his reign in Hebron, the general area where Abraham had settled and where traditions surrounding the patriarch would be kept alive (see Clements, Abraham and David). This approach provides continuity in the covenantal purposes of God in the OT. Based on the promises to David, Israel developed a royal theology which said that as long as a son (descendant) of David was enthroned, they were under the special favor and protection of God. This interpretation of the Davidic promises became the basis of hope in times of national adversity (Ps. 89:20-52; Isa. 37:35), but gave rise to a false sense of unconditional security. Closely coupled with this thought was the belief that God's choice of Zion as His dwelling place on earth insured the political and spiritual security of the nation. Typical prophetic reaction to this misunderstanding is seen in Jeremiah's Temple sermon (chap. 7). With the passing of time the promises made to David were used to refer to Israel's future restoration under God, and the expectation of an ideal king took root. The following prophetic references indicate this: Amos 9:11-12; Hos. 3:5; Isa. 9:7; 16:5; Jer. 23:5-6; 33:15-16; Ezek. 34:23-24; 37:24. No human king ever fulfilled these hopes and aspirations, but the NT recognizes our Lord, the Son of David, as fulfillment of the ideal King. See MESSIAH, SON OF MAN, PROPHET (PROPHECY).
All property belongs to God. He created all things, and all things belong to Him. He alone has absolute ownership (Ps. 24:1; Isa. 66:2). Use of the land, air, water, and even of other living creatures have been freely given to man by God (Gen. 1:26-29), but the ultimate right is God's. Ownership of property by man, then, is secondary, not absolute. As a gift from God, it is to be held in trust by man and used for human need 0ob 31:16-34; Isa. 58:7-8). Man's response is not only one of gratitude and thanksgiving, but of stewardship (Matt. 20:1-16; Luke 19:11-27). Property is to be used in accordance with the will of the One who is sovereign over all. Ownership implies a duty as well as a privilege. Property rights are, therefore, to be subordinated to human need. Within the framework of the absolute ownership by God alone, biblical faith assumes the necessity of some measure of individual ownership of property. The OT injunction "You shall not steal" presupposes the right of individual ownership. The communal sharing of goods by the Jerusalem church following Pentecost (Acts 2:44-45; 5:1-15) presupposes the freedom to place or not to place property at the disposal of the community. George Thomas believes that "historical facts make it clear that the Church has usually recognized the right of property as legitimate, but has been keenly aware of the moral and social dangers of property and has imposed limitations upon it to protect the welfare of the less fortunate" (Christian Ethics and Moral Philosophy, 310). He does not believe that this justifies a person in claiming an unconditional right to acquire property and dispose of it without regard for the consequences to others (312).
424 PROPHET PROPHECY—PROPITIATION From the standpoint of the Christian ethic, absolute equality of property distribution and ownership is not demanded. Individual differences between persons cannot be ignored. What is called for is "equality of consideration" or equality of opportunity, which means "that each person should be effectively taken into account in the distribution of social benefits and that each should be helped to develop his capacities and fulfill his needs to the greatest extent possible" (Gardner, Biblical Faith and Social Ethics, 291). The apostle Paul provides some guiding principles for economic life. Christians are urged to earn their living by honest work (Eph. 4:28), not only to support themselves, but in order to have something to share with the needy. Christians are to share their possessions "with simplicity"; and to distribute to the necessity of the saints (Rom. 12:8, 13). Men of wealth are "not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment" (1 Tim. 6:17, niv). Paul personally has little concern for money (Phil. 4:11). For the apostle, possessions, including property, "are to be acquired honestly, and restitution must be made when wrongly appropriated; and riches must always be under the rule of God— otherwise, they prove to be deceitful and dangerous" (Barnett, Introducing Christian Ethics, 147). See STEWARDSHIP, COVETOUSNESS, CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM, RIGHTS, RICHES, LABOR, POVERTY. For Further Reading: Thomas, Christian Ethics and Moral Philosophy; Gardner, Biblical Faith and Social Ethics; Barnett, Introducing Christian Ethics. LeBron Fairbanks PROPHET, PROPHECY. A prophet (from Gr. prophetes, to speak for or before) is one called to discern God's purpose and action in history and to proclaim the divine word of judgment and grace. The Hebrew term in the OT is applied to a broad range of persons including Abraham, Moses, Aaron, Deborah, Samuel, Nathan, and Elijah, as well as those whose writings are labeled major and minor prophets. In the NT, Jesus, John the Baptist, and Silas are among those thus designated, and Paul sees prophecy as an essential function continuing in the life of the Church. Broadly speaking, most biblical writings are prophetic in that they convey the divinely inspired interpretation of human history. The heyday of prophecy, however, is the era of the Israelite kingdoms, particularly times of national crisis from the ninth to the mid-sixth centuries b.C. Although these crises were precipitated by the invasion of foreign powers, the classical prophets saw the deepest crisis of the people in their pervasive unfaithfulness to the covenant with Yahweh, upon whom their peace ultimately depended. Yahweh's spokesmen proclaimed that worship of the "other gods" of nature and state—evidenced by widespread social injustice, political and religious corruption—was the essence of their evil and reason for their doom. The popular tendency to narrow prophecy to apocalypticism and prediction of the future should be checked by the biblical stress upon prophetic proclamation of "the word of the Lord" to the present. Moreover, the challenge to kings, priests, and people to radical obedience and faith gets its meaning and demand from the mighty acts of God in Israel's past—preeminently the deliverance from Egyptian bondage and establishment of the Mosaic Covenant at Sinai. To be sure, this inspired "retelling" and "forth-telling" of God's purpose and action, in terse and graphic language, issues often in bold "forth-telling" of His future acts of judgment and redemption. Prophetic NT writers see in the whole pattern of OT history, as well as specific statements, God's promise of and preparation for His climactic saving revelation in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as the Christ. The spokesmen of the Lord in both Testaments are eschatological because, in the biblical story and the larger historical process, they discern telling signs of the ultimate goal and triumph of the kingdom of God. The task of theology today, as in every age, involves a twofold interpretation: to understand the prophetic literature in its own terms and times, and to expound the meaning of prophetic faith in our terms and times. Sensitive theology thus respects the distance and appreciates the profound relevance of the prophets' words for the issues of life, death, and destiny today. See HERMENEUTICS. For Further Reading: IDB, 3:896-920; Richardson, ed., A Theological Word Book of the Bible, 178-82; Sanders, Radical Voices in the Wilderness. Wilfred L. Winget PROPITIATION. The Greek word is hilasterion. To propitiate is to "appease and render favorable" or to "conciliate." Propitiation is "that which propitiates; atoning sacrifice." By this term Christ's death is viewed as appeasing divine justice and effecting reconciliation between God and man. The word in the OT was applied to the mercy seat in the holy of holies. On the lid of the mercy PROPOSITIONAL THEOLOGY 425
seat was sprinkled blood once a year by the priest. This act made an atonement for Israel's sin and was viewed as the "propitiation" for sins. Sin separates from God; man is estranged from God because of his rebellion. God is offended and man separated and guilty. To effect reconciliation the holy God must be satisfied in His justice, and man's guilt must be removed or "expiated." The original word has both the idea of propitiation and expiation, which latter term is used in translating 1 John 2:2 in the RSV. Actually, God's wrath is propitiated and man's guilt is expiated. In order for God to justly forgive men, as the Bible teaches, a sacrifice for sin is essential. "Paradoxically, the God who is propitiated also lovingly provides the propitiation" (NIDB, 807). No man is able to appease God's wrath on his own. It is only through the death of Jesus that God's anger against sin can be set aside. The God who was angry is also the God who "so loved the world, that he gave" (John 3:16). He provided the propitiation that removed the barrier to the giving of His free mercy. However, this objective provision for the reconciling of God to man was not enough; man must be reconciled to God. In that same act of atonement, God provided for the expiation of man's guilt and proclaims the forgiveness of his sins. Thus the act of propitiation is both God-ward and manward (see 2 Cor. 5:18-20). "God's righteousness which makes sin a barrier to fellowship, and God's love, which would destroy the barrier, are revealed and satisfied in one and the same means, the gift of Christ to be the Mediator between Himself and men" (HBD, 586). One must never look upon the death of Christ as an act of vengeance on God's part to enable Him to be merciful. Christ's death is God's love expressing itself in glad removal of the barrier to the showing of His mercy to guilty man. He wanted to show mercy but could not justly do so until divine justice was fully satisfied. This was done in the provision for the removal of guilt by Christ becoming the propitiation for man's sins. Now man only needs to bring his broken and contrite spirit to the "mercy seat" and there plead for forgiveness on the basis of what Christ did on the Cross. See atonement, sacrifice, expiation, satisfaction.
Propositional theology takes these revealed propositions or truths, all of which are stated as information that can be intellectually grasped, and analyses, synthesizes, and deduces implications from them. While Christ is recognized as the ultimate revelation of truth, and as the Truth, the Bible is often referred to as "inscripturated revelation," i.e., revelation in written form. The purpose of the Bible, then, is to give us intellectual or cognitive information about God and about the nature of reality. The Bible is seen as essentially a collection of propositions or declarations about God, given by God himself. A basic presupposition operating in propositional theology is confidence that Christian faith is essentially rational, resting on revealed facts and revealed propositions. Christ is the Foundation of Christian faith because He is the ultimate reason or rationality and the ultimate reality. He is the ultimate proposition. He is rationally comprehensible. While propositional theology seeks to be thoroughly orthodox and claims to be the ancient faith of the Church, it is a recent offspring of the Reformed tradition. Its principal categories and chosen issues reflect a concern to counteract the more subjective views of revelation and of theology developed by classical liberalism, Bar-thianism, and existentialism. Thus, it is a very precisely aimed theology. Classical liberalism reduced the idea of the divine revelation in Scripture to a notion of some sort of spiritual sensitivity on the part of a collection of very fallible people who were deeply immersed in their cultures as they wrote. Propositional theology wants to restore the idea that the Bible is God's very own thoughts, that human fallibility entered only at the point of reproducing God's words, and that cultural accretion in no way covers the essential point being made. Barthianism and existentialism insist that God 426 PROSELYTE—PROSELYTISM reveals only himself, not knowledge about himself, and that this self-revelation can be believed only as we are personally confronted by it and decide to act upon it as true. Such belief, then, will radically change us. For Barthianism and existentialism, then, the Bible is not a book of propositions but a book meant to invoke an encounter between God and ourselves. Our intellects, with their demand for rationality, are believed to be either too self-serving and fallen (Barthianism) or too narrow and abstract (existentialism) to be recipient of saving revelation. Propositional theology agrees that the Bible invokes divine-human encounter. But propositional theology insists that this encounter, engendered by the Holy Spirit, is dependent for its outcome upon our consent to propositions that God has stated about himself and about us and our world. These propositions are objective and true regardless of our decision concerning them or the God who gives them. Propositional theology views Barthianism and existentialism as having hung the truth and authority of Scripture on human decision in that both speak of the inspiration and authority of Scripture depending upon a response, positive or negative, by the hearer or reader. Propositional theology insists that such a procedure makes the human being the determiner of the truth and value of Scripture. Conflict between propositional theology and other theologies has generally been primarily located at the point of the meaning and content of the Bible itself. But, of course, this implicates a number of other doctrines, issues, and concerns. So, the propositionalists have usually insisted on the correctness of the decision of the older fundamentalists concerning the absolutely non-negotiable, unchanging, and essential character of Christian faith. To be Christian, one must hold to the "fundamentals": verbal inerrancy of Scripture, the deity of Jesus, the virgin birth of Jesus, substitutionary atonement, and the physical resurrection and bodily return of Christ. All of these are believed to be stated as propositions in Scripture, as propositions to be taken as literally as any scientific description. And denial of any one of them is finally seen as denial of all of them, for they are interdependent and biblical. Theology for the propositionalist, then, is not simply reflection on the Christian faith. It is analysis, synthesis, and deduction of truth itself. Theology or dogmatic statement thus has an authority for the propositionalist that it does not have for most other sorts of contemporary theologians. See REVELATION (SPECIAL), BIBLICAL AUTHORITY, BIBLICAL REALISM, TRUTH, DOCTRINE, DOGMA, FUNDAMENTALISM, FIDEISM.
The NT opens with Judaism making proselytes (Matt. 23:15; Luke 3:7-15). On the Day of Pentecost both Jews and proselytes were present in Jerusalem from every nation under heaven (Acts 2:5, 10). One of the chosen deacons was a Gentile and proselyte of Antioch (6:5). Paul and Barnabas found some "devout proselytes" at Antioch in Pisidia (13:43, 50). Paul addressed both Jews and Gentiles in the synagogue as "men of Israel, and ye that fear God" (vv. 16, 26, 43). These were Jews and religious proselytes. In Thessalonica and Athens, there were "devout Greeks" and "devout persons" in the synagogue (17:4, 17). In summary: Proselytes were (1) non-Jews living among the covenant people and adopting their life-style partially and/or wholly; (2) Israelites born and living outside Palestine; and finally, (3) Gentiles converting to Judaism and to Christianity (13:26-52; 18:7-8; Matt. 23:15). See PROSELYTISM. isaac baldeo PROSELYTISM. Proselytism is the practice of making proselytes, a practice which is highly offensive in some circles. This offensiveness is at two levels: first, the attempt to make Christian converts from adherents of other religions is objectionable; second, even more objectionable is the attempt to make converts from other branches of Christendom, as for instance, missionaries working with populations claimed by the Greek Orthodox church. Authority for seeking converts from other religions is rooted in the nature of the Christian religion itself, and in the specific command of Jesus (Matt. 28:19-20). Christianity declares the exclusiveness and solitariness of Christ as Savior (e.g., John 14:6; Acts 4:12; 1 Tim. 1:15; 2:5-6; 1 John 5:11-12; et al.). Proselytism among different branches of Christendom is more delicate and complex. It is to be deplored that some workers, both in the
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home field and on foreign fields, become flagrant "sheep stealers," sometimes without any valid doctrinal basis, at other times without an adequate doctrinal basis. Minor differences in doctrine should not be pressed into major ones in order to enlarge one's own congregation, if basic spiritual needs are being met. On the other hand evangelicals who believe that the new birth is essential for salvation will have a guilty conscience if they ignore real spiritual needs. It cannot be denied that some branches of Christendom are so nominal or doctrinally derelict that their effectiveness in leading their own people to Christ is slight if not completely nonexistent. In a real sense, therefore, these people become a needy mission field, toward which a Spirit-filled missionary or pastor cannot but feel some sense of obligation. See MISSION (MISSIONS, MISSIOLOGY), EVANGELISM, CHRISTIANITY, EVANGELICAL, PROSELYTE. Richard S. Taylor 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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