RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Acacius of Constantinople Accommodation
might be more injured than helped by a too hastyattack (I Cor. viii. 9-13). The aim must be improvement, not punishment — that one may " by all means save some." This consideration, however, is not due to conscious and obstinate sinners, in which case it would be a denial of duty for the sake of pleasing men. But this duty has its limits; it imports and enforces certain ethical requirements and certain spiritual truths; and in both cases its action must be adapted to the capacity of the receiver. The very nature of the human mind prescribes gradual progress in knowledge; and thus Christian teaching often requires reserve and silence, where strict enforcement of the command or full unfolding of the truth might give offense. Thus Christ kept back from his disciples certain things which they could not yet bear (John xvi. 12); and thus Paul does not exact the same requirements from all members of the churches under his care (I Cor. vii. 17, 26, 35 sqq.), feeding the " babes in Christ " with " milk, and not with meat " (I Cor. iii. 2). The Christian teacher can not, indeed, preach a different gospel to different hearers; but the manner of the preaching and the selection of material will vary with the stages in spiritual growth attained by the hearers. To this manner belong such things as the popular exposition of the truth, the use of comparisons and examples, and argumenta ad hominem. This kind of accommodation is not only not blameworthy, but is prescribed by the example of Christ.
The use of accommodation in matter, as distinguished from manner, is more disputable. It may be either negative, dissimulatio, when the teacher passes over in silence the existence of erroneous ideas in his scholars; or positive, simulatio, when he distinctly approves such erroneous ideas or consciously sets them forth as the truth, with the purpose in both cases of thus leading by an indirect road to the truth. Negative accommodation may be justified pedagogically by the fact that no teacher is in a position to remove all obstacles at one stroke, the gradual process being equivalent to a toleration of a certain amount of error for the time. Thus no reproach
3. Nega- can lie against Christ because in some tive Accom- particulars he allowed his disciples moda- to remain temporarily under the intion. fluence of false impressions, as long as he did this not by declared approval and with the distinct looking forward to the time when the Spirit of Truth should lead them into all truth; this covers the Jewish beliefs and practises which they were allowed to retain in his very presence. The apostles also tolerated the continued existence of numerous ancient errors in their converts, being sure that these would fall away with their gradual growth in Christian knowledge (I Cor. ix. 20 sqq.; Rom. xiv. 1 sqq.; Heb. v. 11 sqq.).
The case is quite different, however, with regard to positive accommodation in the matter of the teaching. There is no purely objective system of commandments, the same for all alike. Ethical law is subjective, varying with the individual and
his circumstances — position, calling, age, sex, and the like. One is not to be a slave to prevailing customs, but is bound to take them into account, so as not to offend others. The same thing applies to prevailing beliefs and views; a
4. Positive man has to consider that he will be Accommo- judged by his contemporaries accord-
dation. ing to the standards of the time and place; nay, that if he is to be understood by them at all, he must accommodate himself to their standpoint, and speak to a certain extent as they speak. This leads to a point which has been in the past vehemently discussed by theologians. The truth just stated was pressed by certain writers for the purpose of rendering more acceptable their doctrines in regard to revelation. It is their attitude which gave rise to the narrower meaning of the word " accommodation."
A transition to the theory that many things in the Bible are to be taken as spoken only in this accommodated sense is to be found in the treatise of Zacharia, Erkldrung der Herablassung Gottes zu den Menschen (Schwerin, 1762): it asserted that the revelations of God in the Old Testament, the establishment of the old and new covenants, the incarnation of Christ — in other words, the facts of revelation in general — were only set forth as an " accommodation " of God to men. It was seen that this struck at the very root of the Christian faith; and the question was hotly discussed how far many Biblical expressions were mere concessions to the ideas prevalent at the
5. Modern time. The controversy lasted until the Theory of rise of the modern critical school, Accommo- early in the nineteenth century, af-
dation. forded an easier way of meeting the difficulties which these theologians had thus sought to avoid. With the help of their theory, such writers as Behn, Senf, Teller, Van Hemert, and Vogel sought to bring about a harmony between their views of reason and the Scriptural expressions. Thus, for example, they got rid of the Messianic prophecies which, they said, Jesus referred to himself merely to convince the Jews that he was the Messiah, without himself believing that they were written of the Messiah; the doctrine of angels and devils was simply a use of the common conceptions; that of the atonement becomes only a condescension of the same kind to popular ideas, intended to reconcile the Jews to the loss of their sacrifices.
In more recent times this theory has been increasingly recognized as scientifically and theologically untenable. It is, of course,
6. Unten- obvious that many expressions of ableness Christ and the apostles relate to merely
of the local and temporal circumstances, Theory. and do not contain permanent rules of conduct. The apparent contradictions between revelation and the facts of physics and chemistry offer no more difficulty; Christ did not come to teach natural science; and he was obliged to adapt himself to current forms of expression in order to be understood, just as one speaks of the rising and setting of the sun, when he knows it is the motion of the earth and not that
Accommodation Acolyte