RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Adamson Adiaphora
The change (he uses the words transferre, transmutare) of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ takes place invisibly in order to afford an opportunity for the exercise of faith; such occurrences, accordingly, can not be investigated by reason, but must be believed.
(A. Hauck.)
Bibliogeaphy: Histoire UtUraire de la France, vii. 542; Hauck, KD, vol. iii., p. 963.
ADELOPHAGI, ad"el-of'a-jai or -gi (" Not Eating in Public "): Certain people, mentioned in Prcedestinatus (i. 71), as thinking it unseemly for a Christian to eat while another looked on. They are also referred to by Augustine (Hwr., lxxi.), who copies Philastrius (Hwr., lxxvi.) and is uncertain whether their scruple included members of their own sect or applied only to others. Further statements in Prcedestinatus are to be accepted with extreme caution. G. Krtjger.
ADENEY, WALTER FREDERIC: Congregationalist; b. at Ealing (9 m. w. of London), Middlesex, Eng., Mar. 14, 1849. He received his education at New College and University College, London. He was minister of the Congregational Church at Acton, London, from 1872 to 1889, and from 1887 to the same year was lecturer in Biblical and systematic theology at New College, London. In 1889 he was appointed professor of New Testament exegesis and church history in the same institution, holding this position until 1903, as well as a lectureship on church history in Hackney College, London, after 1898. In 1903 he was chosen principal of Lancastershire College, in the University of Manchester, and two years later was appointed lecturer on the history of doctrine in the same university. As a theologian, he accepts the results of Biblical criticism which he feels to be warranted, and welcomes scientific and philosophic investigation and criticism of religion, although he seeks to adhere firmly to basal Christian truths and to harmonize them with what he holds to be other ascertained verities. His works include, in addition to numerous articles in magazines and Hastings's Dictionary of the Bible, as well as in nine volumes of the Pulpit Commentary (1881-90), The Hebrew Utopia (London, 1877); From Christ to Constantine (1886); From Constantine to Charles the Great (1888); two volumes in the Expositor's Bible (1893-94; the first on Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther; and the second on Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon); The Theology of the New Testament (1894); How to Read the Bible (1896); Women of the New Testament (1899); the section on the New Testament in the Biblical Introduction written by him in collaboration with W H. Bennett (1899); and A Century's Progress (1901). He is likewise editor of The Century Bible, to which he himself has contributed the volumes on Luke (London, 1901) and the Epistles to the Thessalonians (1902).
ADEODATUS, ad"i-6-da'tus : Bishop of Rome from Apr. 11, 672, to his death, June 16, 676. His pontificate was unimportant. The Liber pontificalis (ed. Duchesne, i. 346) ascribes to him the restoration of the basilica of St. Peter at Campo di Merlo, near La Magliana (7J m. from Rome),
and the enlargement of the monastery of St. Erasmus in Rome, where he had been a monk. The only documents of his extant (MPL, lxxxvii. 1139- 46) are concessions of privileges to the churches of St. Peter at Canterbury and St. Martin at Tours. For his participation in the Monothelite controversy, see Monothelites. He is sometimes known as Adeodatus II., because the form " Adeodatus " is used also for the name of a former pope Deusdedit (615-618).
ADIAPHORA, ad"i-af'o-ra, AND THE ADI- APHORISTIC CONTROVERSIES.
Classical Greek Usage (§1).
Christ's Usage (§ 2).
Paul's Usage (§3).
Patristic and Medieval Usage (§ 4).
Luther's Usage (§ 5).
First Adiaphoristic Controversy (§ 6).
Flacius's Restriction of Adiaphora (§ 7).
Second Controversy (§ 8).
Recent Discussion (§ 9).
In the history of Christian ethics the term " adiaphora " (pi. of Gk., adiaphoron, " indifferent ") signifies actions which God neither bids nor forbids, the performance or omission of which is accordingly left as a matter of indifference. The term was employed by the Cynics, and borrowed by the Stoics. To the latter that only was i. Clas- good or evil which was always so and sical Greek which man could control. Such mat- Usage, ters as health, riches, etc., and their opposites were classed as adiaphora, being regarded for this purpose, not as actions, but as things or conditions. Adiaphora were divided into absolute and relative; the former being such as had to do with meaningless distinctions, while the latter involved preference, as in the case of sickness versus health. The Stoics did not, however, from the adiaphoristic nature of external things deduce that of the actions connected therewith.
Jesus's ideal of righteousness as devotion of the entire person to God revealed as perfect moral character, signified, on the one side, freedom from every obligation to a statutory law, particularly precepts concerning worship. He regarded the observance of external rites as a matter of indifference so far as real personal purity was concerned, and, with his disciples observed the Jewish rites as a means to the fulfilment of his 2. Christ's mission to Israel when they did not Usage. interfere with doing good (Mark iii. 4). Yet this ideal involved such a sharpening of moral obligation that in the presence of its unqualified earnestness and comprehensive scope there was no room for the question, so important to legalistic Judaism, how much one might do or leave undone without transgressing the Law. The slightest act, like the individual word, had the highest ethical significance to the extent that it was an expression of the " abundance of the heart " (Matt. xii. 25-37).
Paul emphasizes, on the one hand, the comprehensive character of Christian ethics and, on the other, the freedom which is the Christian's; and he concludes that the observance or disregard of dicta pertaining to external things is a matter of
Adiaphora