Aa

a fortiori: all the more; literally, from the stronger; specifically, on account of the stronger argument or reason.

a maximis ad minima: from the greatest to the least; viz., an order of discourse or argument; or simply, an inclusive phrase indicating “everything” or “everyone.”

a nemine: from none, from no one; a term used to describe God the Father, who is neither begotten nor spirated; the Father is a nemine, the Son and Spirit both a Patre, from the Father. See agennēsia; filioque; opera Dei personalia; Trinitas.

a parte Dei: on the part of God. In the case of a work or operation understood as performed conjointly or concurrently by God and a human being, a distinction can be made concerning what is done a parte Dei and what is done a parte hominis.

a parte hominis: on the part of man. See a parte Dei.

a posse ad esse: from potency to actuality; literally, from “to be able” to “to be.” See actus; esse; essentia; potentia.

a posteriori: from the latter or from a subsequent instance or perspective; a description of inductive reasoning that moves from effect to cause, from the specific instance to the general principle; specifically, a term applied to proofs of the existence of God that begin with the finite order and ascend toward the first cause (prima causa, q.v.), or first mover (primum movens, q.v.). See causa.

a praesenti statu: from the present state or present condition.

a priori: from the former or from a prior instance or perspective; a description of deductive reasoning that moves from cause to effect, from the general or principle to the specific; a term applied particularly to the so-called ontological proof of God’s existence developed by Anselm, which moves from the idea of God to the actual existence of God. The term can also be applied, although less precisely, to the order of the systems of theology that begin with foundational principles (principia theologiae, q.v.), Scripture and God, and then move more or less deductively through the works of God (opera Dei, q.v.) to the doctrine of the last day (dies novissimus, q.v.). The term is not applied with absolute precision to these systems since they are not purely deductive in structure but frequently pattern themselves consciously on the Apostles’ Creed.

a quo: from which; as opposed to ad quem, to or toward which. See terminus.

Ab actu ad posse valet consecutio: The conclusion or induction from the actual to the possible is valid; a logical rule or maxim indicating that one may legitimately draw a conclusion from the actual, namely, from what is to what is possible in the future. See actus.

ab aeterno: from the eternal or from eternity.

ab ante: from what is before; i.e., beforehand.

ab extra: from without; as opposed to ab intra and as distinct from ad extra (q.v.); toward the outside.

ab inconvenienti: from inconvenience; an argument appealing to the inconvenience or inconvenient consequence of accepting a particular position or view.

ab initio: from the beginning; ab initio mundi: from the beginning of the world; in a loose sense, forever. See creatio.

ab intra: from the inside; as opposed to ab extra.

ab origine: from the beginning or from the first.

abalietas: having being from another. See aseitas; aseitas/abalietas.

ablutio: a washing or cleansing; a term used as a synonym for baptismus (q.v.).

abrenuntiatio: absolute renunciation; specifically, the abrenuntiatio Satanae, or renunciation of Satan and all his works, which takes place in the traditional baptismal liturgy. Thus in Lutheran orthodoxy, one of the effects of baptism signified by the use of water is the deliverance of the infant from the power of Satan by the grace of the Spirit, together with the concomitant gift of spiritual freedom.

absolute (adv.): absolutely, simply, perfectly, completely; not relative or partial.

absolutio: absolution or acquittal, pardon; i.e., the pronouncement of the forgiveness of sins following true penitence (poenitentia, q.v.) and a genuine confession (confessio, q.v.) of sin. In general both Lutherans and Reformed follow a pattern of corporate confession and general pastoral absolution during the service of worship; Lutherans, however, maintain also a doctrine of private absolution (absolutio privata) upon personal confession of sin to a minister of the gospel. Absolutio belongs to the church and its ministers according to the power of the keys (potestas clavium), i.e., the binding and loosing of sins. Both Roman Catholics and Lutherans affirm fully the churchly power (potestas ecclesiae, q.v.) of absolution; the Reformed tend to view the absolutio as only an announcement of the forgiveness pronounced by God in Christ.

absolutus, -a, -um (adj.): absolute, simple, perfect, complete, unconditioned; with reference to things, an understanding of the thing according to its essence, as distinct from its relations to other things. In this sense, absolutus is opposed to relativus. See in se; simplicitas.

abstractum: an abstraction; i.e., not an existent thing as such, but its essence or one of its attributes considered apart from its existence; also, a non-self-existent nature inhering in another nature. See anhypostasis; communicatio idiomatum; concretum; in abstracto.

abusus: abuse; namely, improper use or practice (usus, q.v.). Thus the maxim Abusus non tollit usus: An abuse does not remove the use; i.e., wrongful or improper use does not abolish rightful and proper use. Similarly Ab abusu ad usum non valet consequentia: Consequences or conclusions concerning use cannot be drawn from abuse; or conversely, Ex abusus non arguitur ad usum: The use cannot be argued from the abuse.

acatalepsia (from the Greek ἀκαταληψία, akatalēpsia): doubt, lack of certainty, the negation of katalēpsis (κατάληψις), or comprehension; a term drawn from ancient Skeptical philosophy indicating the absence of certainty and the reduction of knowledge to probabilities. In the seventeenth century the Baconian version of methodological doubt argued that knowledge (scientia, q.v.) should begin with acatalepsia and go in search of eucatalepsia, good comprehension, or certainty. See akatalēptos.

acceptatio: acceptation; specifically, an act of grace and mercy according to which God freely accepts a partial satisfaction as fully meritorious. The idea is of particular importance to the Scotist and the Grotian theories of atonement, according to which God accepts as full payment for sin the finite satisfaction offered by Christ. In these theories Christ’s work does not have infinite value or value commensurate with the entire weight of sin, but God, who is all-powerful, can and does freely accept it as if it were full payment. Acceptatio, which abrogates the usual patterns of debt and payment, occurs under the potentia absoluta (q.v.), the absolute power of God. In the Grotian theory, the divine acceptation of Christ’s work rests primarily upon a view of God as rector (q.v.), or governor, of the universe and upon a divine exercise of rectoral justice (iustitia rectoris, q.v.) rather than of a strict remunerative justice. See iustitia remuneratoria sive distributiva; meritum Christi.

acceptilatio: acceptation, acceptilation; basically, a variation of acceptatio (q.v.) but having the connotation from Roman law of release from a debt by means of a formal declaration by debtor and creditor that, though there has been no payment, the debt is now considered paid. The term has been used incorrectly as a characterization of the Scotist and Grotian theories of atonement, although both theories presuppose a payment, and Grotius explicitly attacks the theological application of the term.

acceptio personarum: partiality toward persons, respect of persons; used with particular reference to the doctrines of predestination, the dispensation of grace, and the just punishment of sin, the phrase is based on the Vulgate text of Romans 2:11: Non est enim personarum acceptio apud Deum, “There is no partiality toward persons with God.”

accidens: accident; viz., an incidental property of a thing, specifically, a secondary form, not essential to a thing, added to it and capable of being removed from it. Thus an accident is a property conjoined to a thing that can be withdrawn from the thing without substantial alteration; or in other words, an accident is a property contingently predicated of a thing. Given, moreover, that accidents are properties that inhere in substances by addition, they do not have an independent existence.

accommodatio: accommodation; also attemperatio: adjustment or accommodation; and condescensio: condescension. The Reformers and their scholastic followers all recognized that God must in some way condescend or accommodate himself to human ways of knowing in order to reveal himself. Accordingly, they followed the assumption of the church fathers like Chrysostom and medievals like Aquinas that the Scriptures conveyed divine truths in language reflecting common human usages and sense perception as, notably, in the interpretation of such texts as Genesis 1:6 with reference to the “firmament” and Genesis 1:16 with reference to the “greater and lesser lights.” This accommodation occurs also in the use of human words and concepts for the communication of the law and the gospel, but it in no way implies the loss of truth or the lessening of scriptural authority. Thus the accommodatio or condescensio refers to the manner or mode of revelation, the gift of the wisdom of infinite God in finite form, not to the quality of the revelation or to the matter revealed. A parallel idea occurs in the orthodox Protestant distinction between theologia archetypa (q.v.) and theologia ectypa (q.v.), where the former term refers to an infinite and inaccessible divine knowledge, and the latter term to the various forms of theology resting on truths revealed or accommodated. The ancient, medieval, and early modern understanding that such accommodation did not imply a loss of truth rested in large part on an assumption of the trustworthiness of sense perceptions and the universality of common, innate, or implanted conceptions or notions (notiones communes, q.v.) concerning the most basic truths.

A shift in epistemology occurred with the rise of various forms of skepticism in the early modern era, leading also to an alteration of the concept of accommodated language. Cartesian philosophy in particular assumed the unreliability of the senses and the necessity of doubting commonly received understandings in order to discern truth, with truth understood as clear and distinct perceptions arrived at through a process of methodological doubt. Reformed resistance to Cartesian philosophy rested in part on recognition that this identification of common language and knowledge as imprecise and erroneous was destructive of biblical authority. Late in the seventeenth century, Reformed Cartesians like Christopher Wittich did conclude that the use of popular language in the text amounted to an accommodation to human error, and in the eighteenth century, with the loss of traditional philosophical epistemology, the assumption that accommodation implies not only a divine condescension but also a use of time-bound and even erroneous statements as a medium for revelation, became a standard view, as evidenced in the thought of Johann Semler. This later notion of accommodation to custom and error was also found among the Socinians and was emphasized in Spinoza’s reading of Scripture. It is therefore quite distinct from the positions of the Reformers and of the majority of Protestant scholastics, whether Lutheran or Reformed. See sensus accommodatitius.

acedia: sloth, apathy, despair. See septem peccata mortalia.

achōristōs (ἀχωρίστως): without separation. See adiairetōs kai achōristōs.

acroamaticus or, sometimes, acroaticus: having to do with discourse or public speaking, as distinct from the written word; from acroama, something that is heard, usually with pleasure. The two terms can also (rarely) imply something that is reserved for ears only, namely, something esoteric. See theologia acroamatica.

actio, sometimes also actus: action, activity. Action is the way or manner that an agent or cause accomplishes or effects something, as distinguished from passion (passio, q.v.), which is the way or manner that a subject receives the action or effect of a particular agent. In short, an action is a flow (fluxus) of effect from the agent to its terminus in a subject. Every action must have an agent (agens), a subject (subiectum, q.v., or patiens), a terminus a quo, and a terminus ad quem—thus an action has an actor, something that is acted upon, and in the subject both a quality or characteristic that can be altered (the terminus a quo) and a quality or characteristic that can be effected or brought about (the terminus ad quem). The sole exception to this structure of actio is creation, which does not require a subject on which the divine agent acts.

An action can be either immanent (immanens) or transeunt (transiens), which is to say, either bringing about its effect in the agent (in which case the agent is also the subject) or bringing about its effect in another. The latter, actio transiens, can be distinguished into four kinds, depending on the result or terminus ad quem of the action: first, an action can be generative or corruptive of a substance; second, it can indicate a change in quantity either by accretion or by diminution; third, it can indicate an alteration of quality; and fourth, it can indicate a change of place (locus, or ubi). Action can also be univocal, productive of an effect belonging to its own kind or species (q.v.), or equivocal, productive of an effect belonging to a different species—in the first instance, heat univocally produces heat; in the second, light equivocally produces heat. Action can be further distinguished as an actio perficiens or an actio corrumpens, an action that completes or accomplishes a positive effect, or an action that is destructive or damaging. See actus; motus; operatio; passio; praedicamenta.

Actio Dei neminem facit injuriam: An act of God does wrong to no one; a maxim also used in law.

actio Dei praevia: prior or preceding act of God. See causae secundae; concursus.

actio efficax: effective action or effective act; especially the power of providentia (q.v.) in its concursus (q.v.), or concurrence, with good acts of human beings; i.e., the divine providential support of the good.

actio sacramentalis: sacramental action or activity; i.e., the rite (usus, q.v.) of the sacrament as performed by all participants. Thus in the Lord’s Supper, the actio sacramentalis consists in the consecration (consecratio, q.v.), distribution (distributio, q.v.), eating (manducatio, q.v.), and drinking (bibitio). Neither the Lutherans nor the Reformed allow any continuance of the sacrament beyond the actio sacramentalis. See Nihil habet rationem sacramenti extra usum a Christo institutum.

actiones theandrikai (θεανδρικαί): theandric activities; viz., actions or works of Christ that are the common works of both natures or, more precisely, the conjoint work of the divine-human person. See apotelesma.

actualiter: literally, actually; specifically indicating something that exists in actu (q.v.), or in actuality, as distinguished from something that exists potentialiter, potentially, or in potentia (q.v.). See actus; potentia.

actus: act, actualization, actuality, or reality. According to the Aristotelian ontology at the root of scholastic language concerning being, actus, or actuality, designates that which exists or that which is actualized, as distinct from potentia (q.v.), that which can exist or has potential for existence. Actus is sometimes used as a synonym of actio (q.v.), indicating activity or action, but its primary philosophical and theological usage references the actuality, actualization, or reality of a being or thing. The scholastics use the concept of actus, or actualization, to describe that which is real, existent, perfect, complete, including a perfect or complete action or operation; thus as synonymous usages, actuality (actualitas), in act (in actu), to have act or actuality (habere actum), and actual being (ens actuale). Potentia (q.v.), by contrast, refers to the possible, to essence (as distinct from existence), to the imperfect and the incomplete, and therefore to the faculty (i.e., intellectus or voluntas, q.v.) that can perform an action or operation. Thus the intellectus, as a faculty, is in potentia (q.v.), in a condition of potency, capable of knowing; while the intellectus, in its knowing of an object, is in a condition or state of actualization, so that the knowing or understanding can be called an actus intellectus, an actualization or perfecting operation of the intellect. Finally, actus, or actuality, can be defined only in relation to potentia, or potency, with the sole exception of God, who is fully actualized, or pure actuality (actus purus, q.v.). As Aristotle argues (Metaphysics 9.6.1048a.31–b.8), not all things exist really or actually in the same sense; their actuality is defined over against a potency, so that seeing is actual in relation to the passive capacity to see. A seed is actual in relation to the matter from which it is formed, but clearly potential in relation to a tree. Thus actus is always logically prior to potentia insofar as potentia is a potency toward something, even though in some instances potency precedes actuality in time. Thus the process or motion (kinēsis; motus, q.v.) from potency to actuality describes both the continuity and change of the phenomenal world (natura, q.v.) and explains the relationship of form (forma, q.v.) to matter (materia, q.v.).

A further distinction can be made between actus absolutus (q.v.) and actus respectivus (q.v.), absolute or simple and respective or relative actuality, the former referring to a fully actualized or complete being (ens completum), such as a man, a horse, or an angel; the latter to an incomplete being (ens incompletum), such a matter lacking form. See actio; actualiter; actus decernens; actus fidei; actus purus; energeia; ens; in actu.

actus absolutus: absolute or simple actuality. See actus.

actus apprehendi: apprehension, the act or actuality of apprehending; as, e.g., the apprehensio fiducialis (q.v.), or faithful apprehension, that completes faith (fides, q.v.). See actus; actus fidei; actus fiduciae.

actus cogitandi. See substantia cogitans.

actus consolatorius: consolatory realization or actualization. See actus fidei.

actus decernens: the decreeing act or actuality; viz., the divine essence as willing or decreeing the eternal decree. See actus; actus purus; decretum.

actus depositionis: act of deposition; contrasted with actus propositionis, an act of presentation. See regnum Christi.

actus dispositivus sive praeparatorius: a dispositive or preparatory act or actuality. See actus; praeparatio ad conversionem.

actus essendi: the act or actuality or being, namely, the datum of the thing existing. See esse; essentia; substantia; suppositum.

actus fidei: the act, actualization, perfecting operation, or actualizing operation of faith; in addition to their objective, doctrinal definitions of fides (q.v.), the Protestant orthodox also consider faith as it occurs or is actualized in the believing subject. In the subject, faith can be considered either as the disposition or capacity of the subject to have faith (habitus fidei, q.v.), which in the case of saving faith (fides salvifica) is a gracious gift of God, or as the actus fidei, the act or actualizing operation of faith, in which the intellect and will appropriate the object of faith (obiectum fidei, q.v.). The actus fidei, then, can be described by the Lutheran and Reformed scholastics as an actus intellectus and an actus voluntatis, an operation of intellect and of will. Both notitia (q.v.), knowledge, and assensus (q.v.), assent to knowledge, belong to the intellect, while the apprehensio fiducialis, or faithful apprehension, of that knowledge is an act of will. Saving faith in Christ comprises, therefore, the actus credendi in intellectu, the actualization of believing in the operation of the intellect, and the actus fiduciae (q.v.), or actus fiducialis voluntatis, the actualization of faithfulness in the operation of the will. The soul may be considered as the subiectum quo (q.v.), or “subject by which,” of faith, since soul may be distinguished into the faculties of intellect and will.

The scholastic language of faith as actus (q.v.) must not be construed as a description of faith as an activity that accomplishes for the mind and the will a saving knowledge of and trust in Christ. Such a view would constitute a denial of the doctrine of justification by grace alone (see iustificatio). Instead, the language of habitus fidei (q.v.) and actus fidei, of the disposition or capacity for faith and the actuality or perfecting operation of faith, needs to be understood in the context of the scholastic language of potency (potentia, q.v.) and act, or actuality (actus). The disposition, or habitus (q.v.), is a potency for faith that can be actualized as faith. The act or actus of faith, although it may be defined as an operation, is not an activity in the sense of a deed or a work, but an operation in the sense of an actualization in which faith comes to be faith or, in other words, moves from potency to actuality.

The Reformed orthodox further distinguish the actus fidei into several parts. The first distinction is twofold: an actus directus and an actus reflexus. The actus directus fidei, or direct operation of faith, is faith receiving or, more precisely, having its object. By the actus directus fidei an individual believes the promises of the gospel. The actus reflexus fidei, the reflex or reflective operation of faith, is the inward appropriation of the object, according to which one knows that one believes. These two acts can be further distinguished, since, in particular, both notitia and assensus can be considered as actus directus. The actus directus can be distinguished into (1) an actus notitiae, or actualization of knowledge, and (2) a twofold actus assensus, or actualization of assent (assensus theoreticus and assensus practicus), consisting in an actus refugii, or actualization of refuge, and an actus receptionis et unionis, an actualization of reception and union.

By way of explanation, each of these components of the actus fidei is direct insofar as it refers to the object of faith as appropriated. This is clear in the case of the actus notitiae, according to which the obiectum fidei (q.v.), the supernaturally revealed Word of God, belongs to the intellect, and also in the case of theoretical assent, according to which the intellect agrees to the certainty of the truth of its knowledge. The assensus practicus et fiducialis, or practical and faithful assent, still belongs to the intellect, which here recognizes as certain and as the obiectum fidei not only scriptural revelation but also the revelation of grace and sufficient salvation in Christ that God has promised to believers. The actualization of refuge follows immediately as the realization that Christ himself and union with him provide faith with the means of salvation. This actus is primarily of the will but still direct. Finally, on the ground of all that has preceded, but also now as a result of the actus voluntatis, or actualization of will toward Christ, there is an actus receptionis sive adhaesionis et unionis Christi, an operation of the reception of, adhesion to, and union with Christ. The next operation of faith is the actus reflexus, in which the soul reflects upon itself and knows that it believes what it believes and that Christ died for it. Whereas the actus reflexus is primarily an actus intellectus, the final actus fidei belongs to the will. The actus consolationis et confidentiae, or actuality of consolation and confidence, is an acquiescence of the will to Christ and the knowledge of salvation in Christ. The scholastic analysis of the actus fidei is, in short, an attempt to isolate and define the elements of faith, which must all be actualized in the believer if the graciously given disposition toward faith, the habitus fidei, is to bear fruit in a full realization of fides.

actus fiduciae: the actualization of trust; actual faith resting on the faithful apprehension by the will (apprehensio fiducialis or apprehensio voluntatis) of the truth of Christ. The actus fiduciae is, in the view of many of the Reformed orthodox, of the very essence of faith, since it represents the full realization or actualization of all the other elements of the fides (q.v.), or faith, in the individual believer. Thus it can also be called the fiducial actualization of the will, actus fiducialis voluntatis, which parallels and completes the actualization of belief in the intellect, the actus credendi in intellectu. See actus fidei.

actus forensis: forensic act; i.e., the actualization of a legal state or condition, such as occurs in the justification of the sinner by God on account of faith. The sinner is not made just but is, by the will of God, declared just, legally or forensically, and is thenceforth in a condition of being justified or counted righteous. See actus iustificatorius; iustificatio.

actus iustificatorius: justificatory act or operation; viz., the formal appropriation of the divine actus forensis (q.v.) of justification in the believer; the realization or recognition that God no longer counts one as sinful but as righteous in Christ. See iustificatio.

actus mixtus: mixed or incomplete actualization; a term used with reference to a being or substance that is not fully actualized but is not merely potential. See actus; in actu; in potentia.

actus praedestinationis: the act of predestination; i.e., the divine decree understood as God’s act or action; a reference either to the decree understood as consisting in both election and reprobation or, given the alternative definition of predestination used by many medieval scholastics and some of the Reformed (e.g., Vermigli), the decree of election. See decretum; praedestinatio.

actus praeparatorius: preparatory act; viz., the fulfillment of the condition or state preparatory to a subsequent condition or state; also actus praecedaneus: preceding act or actualization. See praeparatio ad conversionem.

actus primus: primary actuality; i.e., the bare existence of a thing distinct from its operations. See actus; in actu.

actus primus / actus secundus: primary actuality / secondary actuality. See in actu.

actus purus: pure or perfect actualization or actuality; sometimes actus purissimus: most pure actuality; a term applied to God as the fully actualized being, the only being not in potency; God is, in other words, absolutely perfect and the eternally perfect fulfillment of himself. It is of the essence of God to be actus purus or purissimus insofar as God, self-existent being, is in actu (q.v.), in the state of actualization, and never in potentia (q.v.), in the state of potency, or incomplete realization. This view of God as fully actualized being lies at the heart of the scholastic exposition of the doctrine of divine immutability (immutabilitas Dei, q.v.). Immutability does not indicate inactivity or unrelatedness, but the fulfillment of being. In addition, the full actualization of divine being relates strictly to the discussion of God’s being or essence ad intro and in no way argues against the exercise of divine potentia ad extra, potency or power toward externals (see opera Dei ad extra). In other words, God in himself, considered essentially or personally, is not in potentia because the divine essence and persons are eternally perfect, and the inward life of the Godhead is eternally complete and fully realized. The generation of the Son, e.g., does not imply the ontological movement of the Second Person of the Trinity from a state of incomplete realization to a state of perfect actualization. Nonetheless, the relationships of God to the created order, to the individual objects of the divine will ad extra, can be considered in potentia insofar as all such relations depend on the free exercise of the divine will toward an order of contingent beings drawn toward perfection. See actus; ad intra; opera Dei ad intra.

actus respectivus: respective or relative actuality. See actus.

actus reus: a guilty act.

actus secundus: secondary actuality; i.e., the existence of a thing in its operations, as contrasted with the bare existence of a thing in actus primus or primary actuality. See actus; in actu.

actus simplex: simple or uncompounded actuality. See actus; simplicitas.

actus simplicissimus: most simple or utterly uncompounded actuality. See actus; simplicitas.

actus unionis: the actuality or actualization of union; specifically, of the unio personalis (q.v.), or personal union, of the two natures in Christ. Preferably, the term actus personalis, or actualization of the person, should be employed, following the majority of orthodox dogmaticians. The actus personalis refers to the actus primus, or primary actuality, of Christ’s person, which is the actuality of the two natures in the one person or, simply, the existence of the personal union as such. The orthodox note that an actus naturalis, or actuality of the nature or humanity, of Christ must logically (but not temporally) precede the actus personalis. See actus; anhypostasis; in actu; natura.

ad arbitrium: at one’s choice, at will, arbitrarily.

ad baculum: to the stick or club; a rhetorical argument that attempts to intimidate one’s opponent.

ad eundem: to the same.

ad extra: external, outward, toward the outside. See ad intra; opera Dei ad extra.

ad extremum: at last, finally; to an extreme.

ad finem: to the end. See causa finalis; finis.

ad fontes: to the sources; an assumption associated with the Renaissance and early modern humanist approach to texts in their original or source languages that emphasized direct recourse to original texts, whether biblical or traditionary, rather than to translations, later appropriations, references, or summaries.

ad hoc: to or for this; i.e., to or for this case alone, special. In rhetoric and in philosophical argumentation, ad hoc can indicate an arbitrary or dubious attempt at proof of a point.

ad hominem: to the person; a form of argument that rests on prejudice rather than on proof, designed to influence feelings rather than intellect.

ad ignorantiam: to ignorance; a rhetorical argument resting on false but not readily apparent premises, intending to convince the ignorant by deception; alternatively, an argument that rests on a claim of the ignorance of one’s opponent.

ad infinitum: to infinity, without end; usually said of a series.

ad interim: for the meantime.

ad intra: internal, inward, toward the inside. The distinction between ad intra and ad extra (q.v.) is particularly useful in discussing acts and operations of God, given, e.g., the eternal decree of God (decretum Dei) as an inward or internal act of God, one of the opera Dei ad intra (q.v.), but is enacted or executed ad extra, the ad intra act being eternal, the ad extra execution being temporal. See decretum.

ad judicium: to judgment; a rhetorical argument resting on common sense or the assumed general judgment of the audience.

ad libitum: as it pleases or as you wish.

ad misericordiam: to mercy; a rhetorical argument by appeal to the emotions of the hearers.

ad populum: to the people or populace; a rhetorical argument by appeal to the sentiments or interests of the population at large.

ad quem: to which. See causa finalis; finis; terminus.

ad rem: to the thing; i.e., regarding the matter at hand; to the purpose; often, to the point, understood as a proper object of an argument or debate, as distinct from arguments ad hominem (q.v.), ad hoc (q.v.), or ad baculum (q.v.).

ad summam: in short, in conclusion, to sum up.

ad usum fidelium: for the use of the faithful.

adaequate: adequately, equally; therefore integral or total, as distinguished from inadaequate, unequally. In a fairly standard example of the distinction, a human being understood adequate is a rational animal (animal rationale, q.v.), understood inadaequate is an animal. See distinctio.

adaequatio: adequation, a making equal or equivalent; thus the traditional definition of truth as adaequatio rei ad intellectum, the conformity or adequation of the thing to the mind. See veritas; veritas representationis; veritas sententiae.

adiairetōs kai achōristōs (ἀδιαιρέτως καὶ ἀχωρίστως): without division and without separation; a phrase from the Chalcedonian Creed referring to and defining the relationship of Christ’s divine and human natures in the unio personalis (q.v.), or personal union. Thus Christ’s two natures are united in one person without division or separation. The formula is a barrier to the Nestorian heresy, which jeopardized the personal union doctrinally by conceiving of too great a distinction between the natures. See actus unionis; atreptōs kai asynchytōs.

adiaphora (from the Greek ἀδιάφορα): things indifferent; a term deriving from Stoic philosophy, where it indicated the range of morally neutral actions, neither good nor bad. The term signaled a difference between the views of Luther and Zwingli at the outset of the Reformation. Luther had argued—over against the excessive attachment of medieval theology to such formal and external religious observance and also against the iconoclastic spirits of the early Reformation—for a distinction between the invariable, necessary truths of Christianity and indifferent matters. The Pauline teaching of 1 Corinthians 8:1–9:23; Galatians 2:3–5; 5:13–15; and Colossians 2:16–20 provides a guide to those seemingly indifferent matters that might create an obstacle or stumbling block to the gospel and to other matters, truly indifferent, that could be allowed without impeding the gospel. Accordingly, Luther was reluctant to alter the forms of Christian worship apart from the translation of liturgy into the vernacular, and he held that the presence of images in the church was indifferent and opposed iconoclasm. Zwingli, to the contrary, instituted simplified, more strictly biblical forms in worship and understood images in churches, particularly images depicting God, to be forbidden by the Decalogue. Zwingli’s view was also taken up by Calvin. The issue of adiaphora figured in two major debates of sixteenth-century Protestantism.

In the first major adiaphoristic controversy, the successors of Luther debated over the reinstitution of papal, conciliar, and episcopal jurisdiction, of the ceremony of the Mass, episcopal confirmation, confession, penance and absolution, chants and vestments, all of which were dictated (briefly) by the Leipzig Interim (1548). After Luther’s death, Melanchthon and his supporters attempted to ensure the peace of the empire and the safety of Lutherans by allowing reinstitution of Roman jurisdiction and practice as adiaphora, provided that true doctrine and the preaching of the gospel were not impeded. Opposition to Melanchthon and the admission of such practices into the church of the Reformation coalesced around Flacius Illyricus and his contention that “nothing is indifferent in matters of confession and of inducement to sin” (scandali; see scandalum). The outcome of the debate was the rejection of Melanchthon’s conciliatory position on the ground that no practice or jurisdiction implemented or exercised by an enemy of the gospel could be adiaphora.

The second adiaphoristic controversy occurred in England during the reign of Elizabeth I. Elizabeth insisted on strict conformity in clerical garb. The antivestarian, or Puritan, party admitted that, theoretically, vestments were adiaphora but argued that the association of vestments with popery made their use an obstacle to the promulgation of the gospel. The English antivestarians drew heavily upon continental Protestant sources, including the writings of Flacius, although their opposition to use of adiaphora in worship can probably be traced to the increasing impact of Reformed thought on the English Reformation. In the end, royal power ended the Elizabethan controversy on the vestarian side, assuming that things not strictly forbidden were to be permitted. The anti-adiaphoristic view as enunciated in both controversies, however, allows only those extrascriptural practices to be truly indifferent that do not impede the gospel but rather serve the glory of God and the good of the church. True adiaphora are things neither commanded nor forbidden by the Word of God and that therefore concern matters that can be decided in the church by the mutual agreement of the members. Adiaphora usually fall into the domain of practice and not the domain of doctrine or conscience. See media.

adiastasia (ἀδιαστασία): continuity, absence of separation; the term is used by the fathers in adjectival form (ἀδιάστατος, adiastatos) to indicate the inseparable relation of the Father and the Son and the continuous generation of the Son from the Father.

adidaktos (ἀδίδακτος): untaught, uninstructed; used of the Logos in a positive sense, viz., that he knows without having to be taught and knows absolutely. See autodidaktos.

adikia (ἀδικία): wrongdoing or injustice; wickedness; e.g., 2 Thessalonians 2:12.

adminicula: supports, assistants, auxiliaries; specifically, spiritual supports leading to illumination (illuminatio, q.v.).

administratio foederis gratiae: administration or dispensation of the covenant of grace. See foedus gratiae; oeconomia foederis.

administratio sacramenti: administration of the sacrament; pl., administratio sacramentorum: administration of the sacraments. See notae ecclesiae; sacramentum.

adoptio: adoption; a corollary of justification in the Reformed doctrine of the ordo salutis (q.v.), or order of salvation. The concept does not appear as a formal element in the orthodox Lutheran ordo salutis. In the Reformed ordo, adoption of the believer as a child of God occurs as the immediate corollary and result of the forensic declaration of righteousness on account of faith. Those justified by the grace of Christ are also made coheirs with him of the kingdom and, because of their union with him, are declared sons with Christ. The concept of adoptio therefore also rests on the Reformed teaching of the unio mystica (q.v.), or mystical union with Christ: graciously united with Christ, who is Son of God by nature, believers are made sons of God by grace.

adventus Christi: the advent or coming of Christ; most frequently a reference to the second visible coming of Christ at the consummation of the age (consummatio saeculi, q.v.). On the last day (dies novissimus, q.v.) Christ will return in glory and power on the clouds of heaven to redeem his elect and gather them together, both those then living and those then resurrected from the dead, for the final judgment (iudicium extremum, q.v.). Following the judgment and the final separation of the righteous from the unrighteous, the elect from the damned, Christ will return all things to the rule of God, Christ will be king forever (the munus regnum; see munus triplex; regnum Christi), and God will be all in all. The scholastics enumerate several attributes or characteristics of the adventus Christi: it will be personal (personalis), visible (visibilis), blessed (beatificus) for believers, terrible or terrifying (terribilis) for unbelievers, and glorious (gloriosus).

The Protestant orthodox can also speak of three advents of Christ: an advent in the flesh (in carne), an advent in grace (in gratia), and an advent in glory (in gloria). The adventus Christi in carne refers specifically to the incarnation, ministry, and work of Christ (see obedientia Christi; officium; satisfactio vicaria) and to the appearance, or aspect, of Christ during the state of humiliation (status humiliationis, q.v.), when his power was revealed in weakness and his divinity, as such, remained hidden from the world except in the performance of miracles and in the transfiguration (see krypsis; ktēsis; occultatio). The adventus Christi in gratia refers to the continuing presence of Christ to his church on earth between his first and his second visible coming, according to his own promise of abiding presence (Matt. 18:20; 28:20). It is an advent in gratia, since Christ and his grace are present and made available to faith in Word and sacrament. This advent is, of course, invisible. The adventus in gratia refers to Christ’s state of exaltation (status exaltationis, q.v.) and, from the perspective of Lutheran orthodoxy, to the illocal and supernatural mode of presence (praesentia, q.v.) of Christ’s human nature in the Lord’s Supper. The adventus Christi in gloria is, strictly speaking, Christ’s third coming, or second visible coming, at the consummation of the age. The Protestant orthodox, both Reformed and Lutheran, are adamant in their rejection of chiliastic beliefs in more than two visible comings of Christ, although many of the orthodox writers held to a literal millennium, whether past or future. See chiliasmus; millennium.

advocatus diaboli: devil’s advocate.

adynamia (ἀδυναμία): lack of strength, power, or ability; in this form, a term from Greek philosophy, e.g., Aristotle (Metaphysics 1019b.15–20) in the discussion of potency: adynamia is the privation of ability or capacity (see dynamis). The fathers know the forms ἀδύναμος (adynamos) and ἀδύνατος (adynatos), weak or powerless, and deny their predication of God. The Protestant scholastics draw on both usages.

aequipollens: equivalent, of equal significance.

aequitas: equity, equality, justice.

aequivocatio: equivocation. See aequivocus.

aequivocus: equivocal; literally, having two voces, or voices, that are equally correct; a particularly important issue in the predication of attributes of God, since the equivocal use of a term would make impossible the determination of any meaning. If, as the nominalist perspective in late medieval theology argued, there is no analogia (q.v.) between God and the world, then the statement that God is good stands in no relation to the statement that the church is good; the word “good” has been used equivocally, and its usage lies beyond the grasp of reason. Protestant, particularly Reformed, emphasis on the divine transcendence raised the problem of predication of attributes for the Protestant scholastics. See attributa divina; praedicatio; univocus.

aeternitas: eternity; specifically, the aeternitas Dei, or eternity of God. By this attribute, the scholastics understand the existence and continuance (duratio) of God without beginning or end and apart from all succession and change. Eternity is therefore to be understood as utter permanence of being, namely, as the kind of duration that belongs to absolute, simple, immutable being such as God alone has. Like the medieval scholastics, the Protestant scholastics accept the definition of Boethius that eternity is the simultaneous and perfect possession of endless life (aeternitas est interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio). Eternity therefore transcends not only limited time but also infinite temporal succession, namely, time itself. Eternity is a successionless duration, which implicates immutability (immutabilitas, q.v.) and the absence of motion from potency to act (see actus purus); time is a successive duration characterized and defined by mutability and by motion from potency to act. Still, considered as a divine attribute, eternity is an attribute of relation to be understood in its ad extra relationship to time, much as the divine omnipresence (omnipraesentia, q.v.) must be understood in relation to space or place.

Eternity is contrasted in scholastic theology and philosophy not only with time (tempus) but also with aevum (q.v.) or aeviternitas (q.v.). Eternity has neither a before nor an after, and it allows of no change either substantial or accidental; aeviternity has a beginning but no end and allows of accidental but not substantial change; time has both beginning and end and, as defined by mutation, admits of both accidental and substantial change. See attributa divina.

aeviternitas: aeviternity; the property of beings as involving duration standing between time and eternity. Whereas eternal being has utter permanence (see aeternitas) and temporality an utter lack of permanence, aeviternity indicates a lesser permanence such as belongs to finite and created spiritual beings, namely, angels and souls. Finite spiritual being has a beginning and no end, and it is subject to change in its incidental properties (accidentia, q.v.) but, given its simplicity, not in its substance. Since God has created finite spiritual beings, God can destroy, literally annihilate them, i.e., return them to nothing (nihil, q.v.). See anima; immortalitas; simplicitas.

aevum: aevum; the duration proper to spiritual beings, i.e., angels and souls, in contrast to the duration of temporal beings and the eternal duration of God. See aeternitas.

affectio: affection; also affectus, adfectus, adfectio; viz., a condition, property, disposition, or desire; specifically, an intrinsic disposition or a disposition toward someone or something. The affectio animi, or affection of soul, is the faculty of desire. The affectiones entis, or properties of being, are the so-called transcendental properties of being as such, namely, unity (unitas, q.v.), goodness (bonitas, q.v.), and truth (veritas, q.v.). Affectiones are to be distinguished from passiones (q.v.): whereas affections are largely positive and can be understood as fundamental, even essential, characteristics, in the older philosophical and theological vocabulary passiones are largely negative. More important, the direction of the relationality is different in affections and passions: affections are dispositions toward something—whether toward oneself or toward another—while passions are dispositions derived from something, such as suffering caused by something or someone other than one’s self. It is in this sense of the terms that God is said to have affections but not passions. See impassibilitas.

affectiones entis: affections or properties of being; thus also properties of being (proprietates entis, q.v.). See bonitas; unitas; veritas.

affectus voluntatis Dei: affections of the will of God; viz., those divine attributes that, according to the strict faculty psychology held by the Protestant scholastics, appear as dispositions or conditions of the divine will; i.e., amor, or love; benevolentia, or goodness of will; clementia, or clemency; gratia, or grace; ira, or wrath; longanimitas, or long-suffering; misericordia, or mercy; odium, or hate; and patientia, or patience. See amor; attributa divina; benevolentia; clementia; etc.

afflatus: a breathing on someone or something; hence, inspiration. See authoritas Scripturae; inspiratio; theopneustos.

agenda: things to be done; i.e., the acts or works of the Christian life that spring from faith as it becomes active in love. Thus agenda correspond with the Christian virtue of love (caritas, q.v.). See credenda; quadriga; speranda.

agennēsia (ἀγεννησία): innascibility (innascibilitas, q.v.), or unbegottenness; the incommunicable property, or character hypostaticus (q.v.), of the Father that distinguishes his modus subsistendi (q.v.), or mode of subsistence, within the divine essence from that of the Son and the Spirit. Whereas both Son and Spirit are from another, either by begetting or by procession, the Father is a nemine (q.v.), from none, having nothing by communication.

agere sequitur esse: operation follows existence (or essence); sometimes also, more expansively, modus operandi sequitur modum essendi; an axiom of traditional metaphysics and physics, indicating the basic truth that a thing must exist in order to engage in its proper operations or activities and also, by extension, indicating that the being of a thing determines how it operates or acts. The essence (essentia, q.v.) of a thing is the foundation, or principium (q.v.), of its operations. The point is true both ontologically and logically. See ens; esse.

aiōn (αἰών): eon, aeon, age, era; in Latin, saeculum. See consummatio saeculi.

aisthētikon (αἰσθητικόν): the spiritual faculty of soul; specifically, the intellect in its role of distinguishing between good and evil, truth and untruth.

akatalēpsia (ἀκαταληψία): See acatalepsia.

akatalēptos (ἀκατάληπτος): something that cannot be contained or fathomed; used by the fathers as a term for denoting the immeasurability and incomprehensibility of God, God’s utter transcendence, and the absolute mystery of the Son’s generation and the Spirit’s procession.

alicubitas: being somewhere; as opposed to omnipraesentia (q.v.), which indicates being everywhere. Alicubitas is an attribute of angels, or as they are frequently called by the Protestant scholastics, pneumata leitourgika (q.v.). Since they are spirits, angels do not have local presence, yet they are finite and not omnipresent; they are limited in operation and can therefore be said to be in a place, in a “somewhere,” or ubi, in a definitive (definitivus, q.v.) manner. See ubietas.

alimonia: nourishment; also alimonium; a term sometimes applied to the Lord’s Supper.

aliquis/aliquid: anyone (masc.) / anything (neuter).

Aliud est distinctio, aliud separatio: Distinction is one thing, separation another.

Aliud est facere, aliud perficere: It is one thing to make, another to perfect.

alius, -a, -ud (adj. and pronoun): one, another; used by the scholastics to distinguish between another person (alius) and another thing (aliud), particularly with reference to intratrinitarian distinctions. Thus the Father and the Son are distinct as alius from alius, as one person from another person, not as aliud from aliud, as one thing, or res, from another thing, since a distinction between aliud and aliud or res and res would deny the oneness of God and point toward tritheism. The natures in Christ, however, are distinct as aliud et aliud, one thing and another thing, not as alius et alius, one person and another person, since Christ is one person and two natures, or precisely, two natures in one person. The scholastics sometimes use Greek in making the distinction: ἄλλος καὶ ἄλλος (allos kai allos) for alius et alius, and ἄλλο καὶ ἄλλο (allo kai allo) for aliud et aliud.

allegoria: allegory; in general, a figure of speech or figurative use of language, especially of a narrative according to which the sense of the narrative is not a bare literal meaning but an intended metaphor; specifically, one of the three forms of spiritual meaning belonging to the medieval fourfold exegesis, or quadriga (q.v.), corresponding with the Christian virtue of faith (fides, q.v.) and therefore specifically related to things to be believed, or credenda. It is a mistake to identify the entire quadriga of medieval exegesis in general as “allegorical exegesis,” given that allegory was only one of the three spiritual meanings of the text. It is also a mistake to assume that the Reformers and the Protestant orthodox entirely rejected allegorical models in favor of a strictly literal sense of the text. Inasmuch as allegory was intended to move from the literal or grammatical reading of the text to its doctrinal sense, the Reformers and the Protestant orthodox continued to allow allegory in a carefully controlled movement from exegesis to doctrine, as illustrated by the Pauline argument concerning Sarah and Hagar as an allegory of the two covenants (Gal. 4:24). They insisted, further, on a distinction between a doctrinal or allegorical sense resting on the text of Scripture and extrascriptural allegories. Thus allegoria is an exegesis of the Psalter that found there christological and trinitarian meanings and even references to such doctrines as the pactum salutis (q.v.), an interpretive pattern that is essentially a development of the allegorical identification of credenda beyond the strictly literal sense of a particular text, but supported by the clear sense of other passages in Scripture or conclusions that can be drawn from them. Such allegorical readings often follow an interpretive pattern of promise and fulfillment, reading a promise passage in terms of its fulfillment. The orthodox polemics against allegory typically cited Origen as an example of abuse of the form. See theologia symbolica non est argumentativa.

allo kai allo (ἄλλο καὶ ἄλλο): one thing and another thing; as opposed to allos kai allos (ἄλλος καὶ ἄλλος), one person and another person. See alius/aliud.

alloeosis (from the Greek ἀλλοίωσις, alloiōsis): interchange or exchange; viz., a rhetorical figure that permits reference to one thing or nature in terms of, or by means of, another thing or nature. The idea is important to Zwingli’s understanding of Christology and of the Lord’s Supper, and it identifies the crucial divergence between his theology and that of Luther (the concept is not of particular importance to Reformed theology after Zwingli). Thus, according to Zwingli, one nature of Christ, or its attributes, can be used in speaking of the other nature. The statement that Christ is at the right hand of God refers properly to Christ’s divinity, but by alloeosis, to his humanity. A similar transfer, or interchange, of meaning occurs in the Lord’s Supper, where, according to Zwingli, the bread signifies Christ’s body and the wine signifies Christ’s blood.

allotrioepiskopia (ἀλλοτριοεπισκοπία): a usurpation of or interference in the business or authority of another.

alogoi (ἄλογοι): literally, mindless or reasonless ones; i.e., irrational creatures.

amanuenses: secretaries, scribes; a term applied to the human authors of inspired Scripture who, in writing, acted as the scribes or secretaries of the Spirit. Early modern English sources often refer to amanuenses as “penmen.”

ameristos (ἀμέριστος): incapable of being divided; hence, inseparable; used by the fathers with reference to the Godhead, specifically with reference to the inseparability of the persons of the Trinity.

amesōs (ἀμέσως): immediate; without mediation.

ametamelētos (ἀμεταμέλητος): irrevocable, not to be taken away; used by the Protestant scholastics with reference to Romans 11:29, where the gifts (χαρίσματα, charismata) and the call (κλῆσις, klēsis) of God are identified as irrevocable; hence also a term applied to the decree, or decretum (q.v.), upon which both gifts and calling are founded. This latter usage is typical of the Reformed, not of the Lutherans.

amicitia Dei: the friendship of God; or sometimes amicitia cum Deo, friendship with God; a description of the relationship between God and human beings in covenant, beginning with the relationship between God and Adam in the covenant of works (foedus operum, q.v.), ruptured in the fall and restored in the covenant of grace (foedus gratiae, q.v.). A term important to the Reformed federal theology of the seventeenth century, especially to Cocceius. See amor; amor Dei; foedus amicitiae; oeconomia foederis.

amor: love; particularly personal love, love for another person, as for a father, mother, or child; as distinguished from dilectio (q.v.) and caritas (q.v.). Amor can indicate either pure or impure love: e.g., amor amicitiae, the pure love of friendship; amor concupiscentiae, the impure love that seeks to possess a finite object for enjoyment, i.e., as an end in itself. See amor Dei; uti.

amor Dei: the love of God; i.e., both the love of creatures for God and the divine attribute of love. Considered in the former sense, amor Dei is twofold, either immediatus or mediatus, immediate or mediate. The amor Dei immediatus is that love according to which God is loved in and for himself and is the sole object of the love; whereas the amor Dei mediatus is that love according to which God is loved in and through the proximate objects of the created order insofar as they ultimately refer to God himself. The distinction between immediate and mediate love thus draws directly on the Augustinian distinction between enjoyment (frui, q.v.) and use (uti).

Considered as a divine attribute, the amor Dei can be defined as the propensity of the divine essence or nature for the good, both in the sense of God’s inward, intrinsic, benevolentia, or willing of the good, and in the sense of God’s external, extrinsic, beneficentia, or kindness, toward his creatures. The amor Dei, then, is directed inwardly and intrinsically toward God himself as the summum bonum (q.v.), or highest good, and, among the persons of the Trinity, toward one another. Externally, or extrinsically, the amor Dei is directed toward all things, but according to a threefold distinction. The amor Dei universalis encompasses all things and is manifest in the creation itself, in the conservation and governance of the world; the amor Dei communis is directed toward all human beings, both elect and reprobate, and is manifest in the blessings, or benefits (beneficia), of God; and the amor Dei proprius, or specialis, is directed toward the elect or believers only and is manifest in the gift of salvation. The amor Dei universalis is frequently called by the scholastics complacentia, or general good pleasure; the amor Dei communis is understood to be benevolentia in the strict sense of goodwill toward human beings; and amor Dei specialis is termed amicitia, i.e., friendship or sympathy toward believers. In the discussion of the divine attributes, the amor Dei is considered both as an ultimate essential characteristic of God determinative of the other attributes and as one of the affections of the divine will. In the former sense, resting on the scriptural predication “God is love” (1 John 4:8), the scholastics can subsume the grace (gratia, q.v.), mercy (misericordia, q.v.), long-suffering (longanimitas, q.v.), patience (patientia, q.v.), and clemency or mildness (clementia, q.v.) of God under the amor Dei. In the latter sense, the amor Dei, together with these related attributes, is viewed as an aspect of the divine willing and is juxtaposed with the wrath (ira) and hate (odium) of God against sin.

anagennēsis (ἀναγέννησις): regeneration. See regeneratio.

anagogia: anagoge; in rhetoric, a figure of speech or figurative language that embodies a mystical or spiritual sense. See quadriga; sensus anagogicus.

anakephalaiōsis (ἀνακεφαλαίωσις): recapitulation. See recapitulatio.

anaktizein (ἀνακτίζειν): to create anew.

analogata: analogates; i.e., two things or attributes that stand in an analogical relationship to each other, one being the principal or primary analogate, the other(s) being the secondary analogate(s). See analogia.

analogia (ἀναλογία): analogy; the relation of likeness between two things, or analogates; a relation that obtains only when the two things are neither totally alike nor totally unlike but share one or more attributes or have similar attributes. There are also a set of distinctions that can be made between different kinds of analogy, viz., analogia attributionis or analogia proportionis: analogy of attribution or analogy of proportion; and analogia proportionalitatis: analogy of proportionality. The former analogy indicates the application of the same term to different subjects, namely, secondary analogates, because of their relationship to the primary analogate—specifically in instances of predication in which the term is intrinsic to or formally present only in the primary analogate. The term belongs intrinsically to the primary analogate and is present in the secondary analogate only in terms of a proportion to the term often described by cause and effect. The analogy of attribution can be classified as a simple analogy. Thus “health” or “healthiness” can be predicated analogically of a person, of medicine, and of the person’s complexion; but healthiness is intrinsic to the person only, predicated by reason of causation to the medicine, and by reason of the effect of the medicine to one’s complexion.

The latter, the analogy of proportionality, indicates the application of a term that is intrinsic to or formally present in both the primary and the secondary analogate. It stands to each analogate in the same proportion, yielding a proportionality between the two analogates. It represents a proportion of proportions and can be characterized as a compound analogy that requires four terms, as in a mathematical proportion where two is to four as four is to eight.

The issue of analogy arises for the Protestant scholastics in their exegesis of difficult texts of Scripture (analogia fidei, analogia Scripturae, q.v.) and in their discussion of the divine attributes (attributa divina, q.v.).

analogia entis: the analogy of being; specifically, the assumption of an analogia (q.v.), or likeness, between finite and infinite being, which lies at the basis of the a posteriori (q.v.) proofs for the existence of God and at the heart of the discussion of attributa divina (q.v.). The analogia entis is associated with the Thomist, as distinct from Scotist and nominalist, school in medieval and subsequent theology and philosophy, and it is found among the Protestant scholastics most notably in discussion of the divine attributes. There is less overt recourse to the analogia entis in their proofs of God’s existence, since the proofs play a primarily apologetic role in the Protestant scholastic systems and are often presented in both rhetorical and demonstrative forms. Beyond this, the Protestant scholastic statement of fundamental principles (principia theologiae, q.v.) was sensitive to the problem of reason and revelation as argued by the more epistemologically critical medieval scholastics and recognized the inability of theology to rest its arguments on a principle of analogy between Creator and creature; instead, it tends to argue for the use of ideas and terms on the basis of scriptural revelation. Rather than argue explicitly an analogia entis, then, the Reformed orthodox refer to the relationship between attributes of the finite order and parallel attributes in God as an analogy of proportionality (analogia proportionalitatis) and often pose this more or less Thomistic view against a Scotistic understanding of the univocity of being. This approach coheres with the Protestant scholastic view of the use of philosophy. See analogia; univocatio; usus philosophiae.

analogia fidei: the analogy of faith; the use of a general sense of the meaning of Scripture, resting on Romans 12:6 and constructed from the clear or unambiguous loci (q.v. locus), as the basis for interpreting unclear or ambiguous texts. As distinct from the more basic analogia Scripturae (q.v.), the analogia fidei presupposes a sense of the theological meaning of Scripture. Sometimes the analogia fidei is understood as a use of a regula fidei, viz., a creedal form, typically the Apostles’ Creed, as a basis for interpretation.

analogia Scripturae: analogy of Scripture; the interpretation of unclear, difficult, or ambiguous passages of Scripture by comparison with a collation, or gathering, of clear and unambiguous passages or “places” (loci) that refer to the same teaching or event. See analogia fidei; collatio locorum.

anamartēsia (ἀναμαρτησία): sinlessness; also anamartētos (ἀναμάρτητος): without sin; terms applied to Christ in his unfallen human nature and perfect obedience. Since Christ’s sinlessness, or impeccabilitas (q.v.), is inherent and not due to regeneration and sanctification, it is anamartēsia inhaesiva. The Protestant orthodox, both Lutheran and Reformed, insist that Christ was not only sinless but also incapable of sinning because of the unio personalis (q.v.), or personal union, of the human nature of Christ with the Word. The temptation of Christ by Satan was nonetheless real, but it was also necessarily predestined to fail. Any other view renders the permanence of the incarnation and the efficacy of Christ’s saving work merely possible, contingent upon the success or failure of a finite nature, rather than grounded on the eternal consilium Dei (q.v.), or counsel of God. Nor does the concept of a sinlessness or impeccability of Christ stand in the way of the fullness of Christ’s humanity or of Christ’s likeness to sinful humanity; in the status humiliationis (q.v.), or state of humiliation, Christ was subject to the common infirmities (infirmitates communes, q.v.) of the flesh, such as weariness, physical pain, hunger and thirst, sensitivity to heat and cold, plus spiritual infirmities, anxiety, anger, and grief. The orthodox also refer to these infirmities as infirmitates naturales insofar as they belong to the natural state of human beings as they now exist in their fallen condition. The orthodox deny, however, that Christ suffered any infirmitates personales, or personal infirmities, such as are caused by personal excesses, congenital defects inherited from parents, sexual promiscuity, or by the divine anger against sin.

anapologētos (ἀναπολόγητος): without excuse; from Romans 1:20, a term applied to fallen humanity: despite its bondage under sin, it remains responsible for its sinful acts because it knows the law of God inwardly and because it sins freely and unconstrainedly against the inward law. See libertas a coactione; libertas naturae; liberum arbitrium; peccatum originale.

anarchos (ἄναρχος): without beginning, without prior first principle; a term applied to the Father in the Trinity with reference to his character hypostaticus sive personalis (q.v.); similar in meaning to agennēsia (q.v.).

anathema (ἀνάθεμα): anathema or curse; specifically, an ecclesiastical curse derived from Galatians 1:9, invariably accompanied by excommunication, frequently leveled against a heretic in condemnation of the heretical doctrine.

ancilla theologiae: handmaid of theology; usually applied to philosophy, which ought to serve rather than rule or dictate to theology, the queen of the sciences. See consequentia; usus philosophiae.

angeloi (ἄγγελοι): angels; the official name, or nomen officii (q.v.), given to ministering spirits; e.g., Luke 2:9. See diabolus; pneumata leitourgika.

angelus Domini: the angel of the Lord; a term like angelus increatus (q.v.), or increate angel, applied to the Second Person of the Trinity, the Word, as the subject of the theophanies of the Old Testament, e.g., Exodus 3:2–6, where the “angel of the Lord” is closely identified with God himself.

angelus increatus: uncreated or increate angel. See angelus Domini.

anhypostasis (ἀνυπόστασις): impersonality, or (more precisely) non-self-subsistence; a term applied to the human nature of Christ insofar as it has no subsistence or person in and of itself but rather subsists in the person of the Word for the sake of the incarnation. See enhypostasis; persona.

anima: soul; the spiritual, or nonphysical, part of the human being (homo, q.v.); the forma corporis (q.v.), or form of the body, which provides the pattern and direction of human life and is therefore called the entelecheia (q.v.), or entelechy, of the body, following Aristotle. Inasmuch as it is spiritual, the soul is a noncomposite or simple substance, albeit an incomplete substance that naturally exists in unity with the body. Furthermore, the soul, as form, is present in the entire body and not confined to one or another place. Although identified by its highest characteristic, rationality, the human soul also comprises animal and vegetative principles. Plato distinguished three powers of soul: νοῦς (nous), or intellect; θυμός (thymos), or affections; and ἐπιθυμετικόν (epithymetikon), the source of appetites or passions. Aristotle later identified five powers of the soul: διανοετικόν (dianoetikon), the reason; ὀρετικόν (oretikon), the appetite; θρεπτικόν (threptikon), the vegetative faculty; αἰσθετικόν (aisthetikon), the faculty of sense perception; and κινετικόν (kinetikon), the faculty of movement or locomotion.

The scholastics typically draw on the five Aristotelian faculties, distinguishing between the higher rational soul and the lower sensitive and vegetative soul. Furthermore, they define rational soul as tripartite, namely, consisting in the intellect, the will, and the affections, adding as lower faculties the sensitive and the vegetative. Accordingly, it may be distinguished into two primary facultates animae (q.v.), the intellectus (q.v.) and the voluntas (q.v.); plus the affectiones, or affections, that subserve the will; the soul, therefore, thinks, wills, and feels. It gathers, remembers, and interprets the data perceived by the senses and uses its knowledge when making choices. The soul is the entire spiritual part of the human being and can be called spirit (spiritus, q.v.). As a spirit, moreover, it cannot be divided, augmented, or diminished and is not liable to dissolution, although it is mutable in its knowing and willing. The scholastics conclude from these characteristics of the soul that, although created and therefore contingent, it is immortal. This tripartite distinction was not followed by the Cartesians, who reduced the soul to thought as strictly distinct and separated from materiality or extension. In Descartes’s own view, the soul is located in the pineal gland and there influences the animal, or animating, spirits to govern bodily motions.

The majority of the orthodox also conclude, from the relation of the soul to the body, that the soul is a spiritus incompletus (q.v.) and that, despite the immortality of soul and mortality of body, embodiment is the proper and natural condition of soul, and the resurrection of the body is necessary for the soul’s enjoyment of eternal life. Together body and soul are one single and complete substance (substantia, q.v.), with the soul being the substantial (forma substantialis, q.v.), the animal, or vital, principle, and as such is the originator of all activity, including bodily activity. The separation of body and soul in death must therefore be viewed as a punishment resulting from the fall. Whereas mortality and natural corruptibility belong to the body as created good, death, the painful sundering of body and soul, is the wage of sin. Hypothetically, had humanity not fallen, there would have been a passage from mortality and corruptibility to immortality and incorruptibility without any separation of body and soul. Advocates of this argument point to the translations from mortal to immortal existence of Enoch and Elijah and to the transformation of all those believers remaining alive at the final advent of the Lord (1 Cor. 15:52; 1 Thess. 4:17) as exceptions to the rule of death.

On the subject of the origin of individual souls, the Lutherans and the Reformed manifest some disagreement. On the ground that the soul is substantia indivisibilis, or impartibilis, i.e., indivisible or nonimpartable substance, the Reformed usually argue that souls cannot come into existence ex traduce, by transmission, from parents to children, and therefore must be created individually and daily by God. Lutherans tend to argue for the opposite, i.e., that souls are generated per traducem, through transmission, or transfer, in the act of conception. Orthodox Lutherans argue this point on the basis of the cessation of divine creative work on the seventh day; from the production of Eve entire, both body and soul, from Adam; and from the generation of Adam’s son in his image and likeness, which implies body and soul. In addition, the “creationist” view favored by the Reformed makes God indirectly liable for the sin of infants and fails to take note that the soul is the entelechy, or forma corporis. Thus their view seems to imply that the human generation does not account for the form of the child, and therefore it does not account for the child! The creationists counter with the example of Christ, who had no human father from whom he could receive a soul and whose sinlessness could not be accounted for if he had received his soul from a human parent. In addition, the creation of Adam and other biblical references to body and soul seem to indicate their distinction and probably distinct and separate origins (Eccles. 12:7; Heb. 12:9). Finally, the soul is immaterial and the body is material: neither can be derived from the other, either material from immaterial or immaterial from material. This latter point, although it certainly favors the creationist view, also has a problematic tendency toward dualism and ignores the philosophical assumption of the unity of form and matter, body and soul. Neither the Lutheran nor the Reformed orthodox view this doctrinal point as capable of definitive formulation insofar as it cannot be proved directly from Scripture. Nevertheless, creationism is the exception among Lutherans, who tend to weigh the objections to creationism more heavily than those to traducianism. The opposite tends to be true of the Reformed. See immortalitas; status animarum a corpore separatarum.

anima mundi: soul of the world; a Platonizing term used by various writers of the early modern era to indicate an animating principle of the universe.

anima naturaliter Christiana: the soul by nature Christian; a phrase of Tertullian (d. ca. AD 220) that indicates the natural inclination of the rational soul toward the truth of God as known to Christianity. This phrase is not characteristic of the Protestant orthodox, who held the total inability of fallen humanity to turn toward God or to know the fullness of divine truth apart from saving revelation. The phrase does, however, find approval among the Remonstrants, who, following Simon Episcopius and Limborch, held the identity of the natural law (lex naturalis, q.v.) with the law of Christ (lex Christi, q.v.) and who argued for the ability of the human reason in its purely natural condition (status purorum naturalium, q.v.) to know divine truth and the ability of the human will to do what is in it (facere quod in se est, q.v.) and thereby approach God’s offer of grace.

anima rationalis separata: the separated rational soul; i.e., the soul separated from the body. See spiritus incompletus; status animarum a corpore separatarum.

animal rationale: a rational animal; a standard definition of the human being, as a member of the genus (q.v.) animal, having the differentia of rationality, by which it is distinguished from other members of the genus.

animal risibile: an animal able to laugh; one of the definitions of the human being. See animal rationale.

annihilatio: annihilation; specifically, the final destruction of the world by fire. See interitus mundi; renovatio.

anoētos (ἀνόητος): without mind, without intellect; hence, foolish; e.g., Romans 1:14.

anomia (ἀνομία): lawlessness, lack of obedience or conformity to the law; e.g., Romans 4:7; a term that both Lutheran and Reformed orthodox commonly use to denote sin. See peccatum.

anomoios (ἀνόμοιος): unlike; a term used by extreme Arians of the mid-fourth century, the so-called Anomoeans, to argue that the essence of the Father is utterly unlike that of the Son. This view was so repugnant to the majority of Christians that it served to press the large homoiousian party (see homoios; homoiousios) toward alliance with the Nicene, or Athanasian, theology and toward advocacy of homoousios (q.v.), the key term that identified the Nicene position.

ante legem: before the law; the first term in a periodization of the economy of salvation (oeconomia salutis, q.v.): ante legem, sub lege, sub gratia—before the law, under the law, under grace—often attributed to Prosper of Aquitaine, a fifth-century Augustinian (cf. his De vocatione omnium gentium, PL 51:706).

ante omnia: before all things.

ante rem: before the thing. See universalia.

antepraedicamenta: antepredicaments; i.e., the logical categories representing conditions prerequisite to proper predication (praedicatio, q.v.). The scholastics enumerate four antepraedicamenta: (1) the distinction between univocity, analogy, equivocity, and denomination. Univocity indicates the identical application of a common name, or term, to two things; i.e., the essence, or quidditas (q.v.), of the things, as signified by the name, or term, is identical. Analogy indicates a certain resemblance between two essentially different things, as signified by the use of a common name, or term, with reference to both; i.e., analogy indicates similarity or proportional resemblance. Equivocity indicates the use of a common name, or term, with reference to two essentially different and dissimilar things: equivocals have one name, or term, in common, but no real resemblance. Denomination indicates an accidental or incidental relationship as a result of which the name of one thing is used to describe another. (2) The second of the antepraedicamenta is the distinction between complex or compound things and incomplex or simple things. A complex thing is a combination of several individual essences, or quiddities; an incomplex thing (or term) is or signifies a single essence or quiddity. (3) The third of the antepraedicamenta is the distinction between substance and accidents, or incidental properties, and between singulars and universals. The issue addressed by this distinction is whether a given predicate exists in a thing or is merely predicated of a thing: e.g., a universal of substance, like “man,” can be predicated of an individual—Socrates is a man—but is not in the individual; yet a universal accident like whiteness can be both predicated of an individual thing—paper is white—and said to be in the thing. (4) The fourth of the antepraedicamenta is the distinction of genera and species from their differentiae, or bases of differentiation: e.g., the genus “living being” is differentiated from the genus “mineral” by the differentia life, whereas the subordinate or subalternate genera “animal” and “plant” are known to be subalternate to the genus “living being” because they have in common the essential differentia, life, by which the genus “living being” is identified.

The importance of the antepraedicamenta to scholastic theology is most obvious in the discussions of the problem of the predication of divine attributes. Before discussing the attributes, scholastic systems almost invariably set down the presuppositions governing predication, viz., whether it is to be univocal, analogical, or denominative; that God is simple or incomplex; whether the attributes are in God or merely predicated of God (and therefore only rationally distinct); and the fact that there is no genus “God.” Thus the attribute of simplicitas comes to the fore as a governing category of predication—i.e., as something more than one attribute among others—because it belongs logically to the antepraedicamenta.

anthrōpinon organon (ἀνθρώπινον ὄργανον): an instrument in human form; i.e., the human nature of Christ considered as enhypostasis (q.v.) and as the means by which the Second Person of the Trinity performs his incarnate work.

anthrōpomorphos (ἀνθρωπόμορφος): anthropomorphic; having a human form; denied of God as leading either to trinitarian error or to a materialistic view of the divine being; also applied to figurative language in Scripture, which seems to predicate human attributes of God. See anthrōpopatheia.

anthrōpopatheia (ἀνθρωποπάθεια): anthropopathy; having human feelings, affections, and passions; a term only figuratively applied to God, specifically, to the incarnation of the Son and his exinanitio (q.v.) and status humiliationis (q.v.). But, in general, it is reserved either for the pagan gods as a proper predication or for the explanation of the language of Scripture—i.e., anthropopathic language—when it figuratively predicates feelings, affections, and passions of God.

anthrōpos theophoros (ἄνθρωπος θεόφορος): a God-bearing man. See homo Deifer.

antichristus (from the Greek ἀντίχριστος, antichristos): antichrist. Scriptural use of the word is confined to the Johannine Epistles (1 John 2:18, 22; 4:3; 2 John 7), where a distinction is made between (1) the many antichrists now in the world, who work to deceive the godly and who do not confess Christ, and (2) the antichrist who is to come who will deny Christ and, in so doing, deny both the Father and the Son.

John also speaks (1 John 4:3) of the “spirit . . . of the antichrist,” which “even now . . . is in the world.” Following the fathers, the medieval doctors, and the Reformers, the Protestant orthodox identify the final antichrist of the Johannine passages with the “man of sin” or “son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God,” foretold by Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2:3–4. The orthodox can therefore distinguish between (1) the antichrist considered generally (generaliter), as indicated by the plural use of the word in 1 John and by the “spirit of antichrist” now in the world, and (2) the antichrist considered specially (specialiter et kat’ exochēn), as indicated by singular usage.

The former term indicates all heretics and vicious opponents of the doctrine of Christ; the latter, the great adversary of Christ who will appear in the last days. Of the latter, the antichristus properly so called, the orthodox note several characteristics. (1) He arises from within the church and sets himself against the church and its doctrine, since his sin is described as apostasia (q.v.), or falling away. (2) He will sit in templo Dei, in the temple of God, which is to say, in the church. (3) He will rule as the head of the church. (4) From his seat in templo Dei and his position as caput ecclesiae, he will exalt himself above the true God and identify himself as God. (5) He will cause a great defection from the truth so that many will join him in his apostasy. (6) He will exhibit great power and cause many “lying wonders,” founded upon the power of Satan, in a rule that will endure until the end of time.

On the basis of these characteristics, the orthodox generally identify the antichrist as the papacy, the pontifex Romanus. Some attempted to argue for a distinction between an antichristus orientalis and an antichristus occidentalis, an Eastern antichrist and a Western one, the former title belonging to Muhammad, the latter to the papacy; but the difficulty in viewing Islam, or any form of paganism, as an apostasy, strictly so-called, led the orthodox to identify Rome alone as antichrist. They also reject the identification of antichrist with the imperium Romanum, the Roman Empire, on the ground that the antichrist is not a secular power or a result of pagan history. Finally, they also reject the identification of any single pope as antichrist on the ground that antichrist’s rule and power extend farther and endure longer than the rule and power of any one man. Thus antichrist is the institution of the papacy, which has arisen within the church and which assumes religious supremacy over all Christians, seats itself in the temple of God, and builds its power on lies, wonders, and apostasy. See adventus Christi; chiliasmus; dies novissimus.

antidosis onomatōn (ἀντίδοσις ὀνομάτων): mutual interchange of names. See communicatio idiomatum.

antilegomena (ἀντιλεγόμενα): things [specifically books] spoken against; thus religious books that belong to the canon of Scripture but have been doubted or spoken against in the church and have therefore been accorded a lesser or deuterocanonical status. In the history of the New Testament canon, James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude have been considered antilegomena; in contrast to homologoumena, books universally agreed upon; and spuria, false works. The distinction among homologoumena, antilegomena, and spuria derives from Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History 3.3.25), and it continued to be used into the early sixteenth century. It tends to disappear from theological usage with the full stabilization of the New Testament canon in the confessional writings of the mid-sixteenth century.

antilytron (ἀντίλυτρον): ransom; e.g., 1 Timothy 2:6. See lytron.

antipodes (ἀντίποδες): literally, those whose feet are opposite; namely, people living on the opposite side of the globe of the earth, specifically, in the Southern Hemisphere; hence, the opposite end of the earth.

anypeuthynos (ἀνυπεύθυνος): not accountable or responsible.

apatheia (ἀπάθεια): absence or lack of passions; a term used in Stoic philosophy as a descriptor of the divine essence. See immutabilitas; impassibilitas.

apeitheia (ἀπείθεια): disobedience; viz., a form of sin; e.g., Romans 11:32, describing the fallen condition of all human beings.

apex logicus: a point or subtlety of logic; thus, a general term referencing any basic point of logic to be used in argument or debate. The term appears in arguments for a supralapsarian doctrine of the divine decrees, but it was hardly confined to this debate, nor was it the deciding factor in the arguments. See ordo intentionis / ordo executionis; supra lapsum.

aphesis (ἄφεσις): pardon, forgiveness; especially the forgiveness of sins understood as a cancellation of guilt, e.g., Hebrews 9:22; 10:18; as distinguished from paresis (πάρεσις), a passing over or remission—in the case of sin, letting it go unpunished without absolute cancellation of guilt, as in Romans 3:25. In the federal theology of Cocceius, paresis was the term applied to the remission of sins in the Old Testament, prior to the temporal fulfillment of Christ’s sponsio, whereas aphesis was the term applied to the full pardon offered to sinners by Christ upon the temporal fulfillment of his sponsio. The distinction is related to Cocceius’s understanding of Christ’s sponsio in the eternal pactum salutis, or covenant of redemption, as a fideiussio (q.v.), or conditional surety, taking effect only when paid rather than, as Voetius and other opponents of Cocceius held, as an expromissio, or absolute surety, taking effect immediately upon agreement. See pactum salutis; sponsio.

aphormē (ἀφορμή): occasion, opportunity; e.g., Romans 7:8, 11.

aphtharsia (ἀφθαρσία): incorruptibility, immortality; e.g., 2 Timothy 1:10, with reference to the postresurrection state of humanity. See immortalitas.

apocalypsis (from the Greek ἀποκάλυψις, apokalypsis): apocalypse, revelation, disclosure; specifically, the revelation of the last things that has been reserved by God for the consummation of the age (consummatio saeculi, q.v.); e.g., 1 Peter 1:7, 13; 4:13. See dies novissimus.

apographa (ἀπόγραφα): copies of an original; specifically, the scribal copies of the original autographa (q.v.) of Scripture. The Protestant scholastics distinguish between the absolute infallibility of the original copies of the biblical books and the textual imperfection of the apographa. Their exegetical method intended, by means of mastery of languages and the comparative study of extant texts, to overcome errors caused by the transmission of the text over centuries and to approach the text and meaning of the original autographa critically. They assumed, of course, that the apographa were essentially correct; they had high praise, in particular, for the work of the Masoretes in faithfully preserving and transmitting the Hebrew Old Testament text. In addition, the Protestant orthodox held, as a matter of doctrinal conviction stated in the locus de Scriptura Sacra of their theological systems, the providential preservation of the text throughout history. See authoritas Scripturae; variae lectiones.

apokatastasis (ἀποκατάστασις): restoration; specifically, the apokatastasis pantōn (ἀποκατάστασις πάντων), or restoration of all things (e.g., Acts 3:21). In its context in Acts, the phrase indicates only the fulfillment or establishment of the Old Testament prophecies, but it came to mean, largely through the soteriological speculations of Origen, a doctrine of universal redemption. The Protestant scholastics, following the tradition (traditio, q.v.) in general and the Reformers in particular, view such doctrine as false and unscriptural. See damnatio; reprobatio.

apolytrōsis (ἀπολύτρωσις): redemption; specifically, the freeing of a captive by payment of ransom; e.g., Romans 3:24.

apostasia (ἀποστασία): apostasy; a willful falling away from, or rebellion against, Christian truth. Apostasy is the rejection of Christ by one who has been a Christian, the ultimate or final apostasy being the so-called unforgivable sin, the peccatum in Spiritum Sanctum (q.v.), the sin against the Holy Spirit; apostasy is also one of the characteristic evidences of the antichrist (antichristus, q.v.).

aposynagōgos (ἀποσυνάγωγος): excommunicated; e.g., John 16:2.

apotelesma (ἀποτέλεσμα): a conclusion or completion of a work; accomplishment. The term was used by the fathers with reference to the hypostatic union (see unio personalis) and the cooperation of the two natures. It figures importantly in the Lutheran doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum (q.v.) and generally in both the Lutheran and Reformed doctrines of Christ’s work, which is viewed as brought to completion through the cooperation of the natures: in the case of the Reformed, by special gifts of divine grace; in the case of the Lutherans, by a communication of attributes.

apotelesma theandrikon (ἀποτέλεσμα θεανδρικόν): theandric operations; i.e., the common work of the divine and human natures in the God-man. See communicatio idiomatum; communicatio operationum.

appetitus: appetite, desire; specifically, the appetitive faculty or capacity of a being, which seeks out or inclines toward a good. In all spiritual beings, including God, the exercise of will implies appetite. By extension, the propensities of inanimate objects, and even of matter, can be described as appetite. Thus even primary matter (materia prima, q.v.) can be said to have an appetite for form. Scholastic theology and philosophy focus in particular upon the appetites of finite spiritual beings, which by nature seek out their own good. Since the fall has caused a deprivation and distortion of desire, a distinction must be made between appetitus rectus, right desire, and appetitus perversus or inordinatus, perverse or inordinate desire. It is characteristic of the desire of sinful beings that it misidentifies the good, particularly ultimate good, and perversely, or inordinately, desires finite things as ends in themselves (see frui). Thus appetitus perversus and appetitus inordinatus (q.v.) are synonyms for sin (peccatum, q.v.).

Appetite can be distinguished further into natural appetite (appetitus naturalis), rational or voluntary appetite (appetitus rationalis sive voluntarius), and animal or sensual or sensitive appetite (appetitus animalis sive sensualis; appetitus sensitivus). Natural appetite is simply the nature of any existent thing to be what it is and to perform its proper acts or operations; e.g., human beings have a natural appetite for breathing! The rational or voluntary appetite, also called appetitus intellectualis, intellectual appetite, is the will (voluntas, q.v.). Whereas it is the intellect (intellectus, q.v.) that perceives and knows objects, it is the will that chooses. Since choice belongs to the will, the will must be exercised in the choice of even purely intellectual objects—thus appetitus intellectualis. In addition, since the will and the intellect are not really distinct, but only formally or rationally distinct (see distinctio), the appetitive function of will is also rational (rationalis). Thus the will desires the goodness, truth, and justice known by the intellect. Thomistic philosophy places intellect higher than will and therefore argues for the cognitive control of rational and voluntary appetite. By way of contrast, the Scotist view places will above intellect and argues, in some sense, for the voluntaristic control even of objects and cognition. The debate continued among the Protestant orthodox, with the majority holding the natural priority of intellect over will but arguing that, because of the sinful disorder of human beings following the fall, intellect subserves will and is controlled by desire or appetite in its perception of the good. The problem of sin is particularly clear in the case of the animal, or sensual, appetite, i.e., the propensity of animal, or carnal, beings for the concrete objects of sense. Still, appetite, considered as an aspect of the faculty psychology, is neutral in its connotation, neither good nor bad except in its exercise.

The appetitus animalis sive sensualis or appetitus sensitivus is thus emotion or passion (affectus, passio), and it may be described in terms of the six concupiscible (concupiscibilis, q.v.) passions: love and hate, joy and sadness, desire and aversion; and of the five irascible (irascibilis, q.v.) passions: courage and fear, hope, despair, and anger. This appetite, because of its relation to the body, is usually described as being situated “below” the will in the hierarchy of human faculties. In order for the will to be free, it must be capable of rejecting rationally the irrational desires thrust upon it by sense. The Protestant orthodox can describe sin as a disorder of sense that sets the animal or sensual appetite above the will and intellect and thereby places carnal propensities in control of spiritual. See voluntas.

appetitus inordinatus: inordinate appetite or desire. See appetitus; appetitus perversus.

appetitus perversus: a perverse or wrong desire; terms synonymous with sin (peccatum, q.v.). The former can indicate an undue desire for otherwise good things, whereas the latter indicates a desire that is, in itself, wrong. See appetitus; septem peccata mortalia.

appetitus rationalis: rational appetite, reasonable desire; i.e., the will in act (actus, q.v.) or volition itself. See voluntas.

appetitus sensitivus: sensitive or sensible appetite; viz., the appetite that relates to the senses as such, as distinct from the appetitus rationalis (q.v.).

applicatio salutis: application of salvation; viz., the application to the believer of the saving effects of Christ’s work, accomplished through the vocatio (q.v.), or call, of the gospel and the receiving of Christ by fides (q.v.). See impetratio; satisfactio vicaria; universalismus hypotheticus.

applicatio salutis a Christo acquisitae: application of the salvation acquired by Christ; a term used synonymously with the more common term ordo salutis (q.v.). The distinction between the salus, or salvation itself, and its applicatio or between its acquisitio and applicatio is significant in view of the all-sufficiency of the former and the limited efficiency of the latter. See applicatio salutis.

apprehensio fiducialis: faithful apprehension. See fides.

apprehensio simplex: simple or basic apprehension; i.e., the mere apprehension by the mind of a datum received by the senses, as distinct from the evaluation of the datum by the intellect.

arbitrium: choice, decision, judgment. See liberum arbitrium.

arbitrium liberatum: a liberated choice, adjudication, judgment, or decision; viz., the human capacity for judgment or choice as liberated by grace for the good, distinguished from arbitrium servum, bound choice, the capacity for choice as enslaved to sin. The arbitrium servum corresponds with the Augustinian term non posse non peccare (q.v.), not able not to sin; arbitrium liberatum corresponds with posse non peccare, able not to sin. See liberum arbitrium.

Arbor bona, sed obedientia melior: The tree was/is good, but obedience was/is better; a maxim referring to the understanding of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (arbor scientiae boni et mali, q.v.). Although in a sense good in itself, the tree was primarily a sign and seal of the better or higher good of the obedience owed to God by human beings. Given this sense of the tree as a sign, the Reformed theologians consistently identified it as a sacrament of the prelapsarian covenant. See foedus operum; sacramentum.

arbor scientiae boni et mali: tree of the knowledge of good and evil; traditionally understood as one of the sacraments in the garden of Eden. See arbor vitae; foedus operum; malum; sacramentum.

arbor vitae: tree of life; one of the symbols or sacraments in the garden of Eden. Identification of the trees in the garden as sacraments belongs to a long tradition of biblical interpretation, beginning in the patristic period, continuing through the Middle Ages, and accepted by the Reformers and their successors. With the rise of a covenantal emphasis among the Reformed, the sacraments in Eden were understood as covenant signs belonging specifically to the covenant of works, or foedus operum (q.v.). Also identified, as in the Vulgate and most medieval sources, as the lignum vitae. See arbor scientiae boni et mali; sacramentum.

arcanum: a secret; pl., arcana: secrets.

archē (ἀρχή): beginning, origin, first principle; hence, ordering principle or rule, particularly given the patristic development of Greek philosophical language, often with reference to New Testament usage (e.g., John 1:1; Col. 1:18). The term is sometimes applied to God as the Creator and orderer of all things, inasmuch as God is the fons omnium bonorum (q.v.), the source of all good; and sometimes also to God the Father, insofar as the First Person of the Trinity is the fons totius divinitatis (q.v.), the source or ground of the whole Godhead. See principium; Trinitas.

archetypos (ἀρχέτυπος): archetype; pattern in an ultimate sense. See exemplar; forma; forma exemplaris; idea; theologia archetypa.

argumenta naturae: arguments from nature; a reference to the a posteriori (q.v.) proofs of the existence of God.

argumentum: argument. In scholarly writings, an argumentum placed at the beginning of the work is a summary or synopsis of the subject matter. In a disputation, the argumentum would reference the course of reasoning or series of reasons presented in favor of a thesis; in rhetoric or logic, an argumentum is a reason by which the hearer or reader can be persuaded. In the latter case, there are arguments a particulari ad universale, from the particular instance to the universal case; ad absurdum, a reduction to absurdity; ad hominem, to or often against the person, indicating a problem with one’s opponent in practice or in principle; ad ignorantiam (q.v.), arguing the ignorance of one’s opponent concerning the facts or circumstances of the case in question; ad verecundiam, to modesty or shame, appealing to decency; and ad baculum (q.v.), of the staff or club, namely, an argument by force.

armilla aurea: a golden chain; also catena aurea: a golden chain; terms used among the Reformed orthodox as references to and descriptions of Romans 8:30, “Whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.” In other words, the armilla or catena aurea is the unbreakable chain of God’s electing grace as it issues forth in the order of salvation (ordo salutis, q.v.). The identification of the passage as a chain, moreover, arises from the traditional understanding of the passage as a sorites (q.v.), viz., a logical and/or rhetorical argument that leads to its conclusion by way of a linked grouping of subarguments, namely, an expanded pattern of argument based on the syllogism.

ars: art, technique; namely, the virtue or disposition to produce something rightly or properly. With intelligentia (q.v.), scientia (q.v.), sapientia (q.v.), and prudentia (q.v.), ars is one of the natural virtues. See virtus.

articuli antecedentes/constituentes/consequentes: antecedent/constituent/consequent articles; a distinction in doctrines devised by the Lutheran scholastic Calixtus for the sake of promoting church unity. He proposed three categories of doctrine: (1) Articuli antecedentes, or antecedent articles, are those known to human reason independent of divine revelation, e.g., the doctrines of the existence of God, of providence, and of the immortality of the soul. (2) The articuli constituentes, or constituent articles, are the fundamental truths of the Christian revelation that are distinctive to it and doctrinally necessary and normative, e.g., the doctrines of sin, of grace, and of redemption, including concepts like those of original sin, of salvation by grace alone, and of the two natures of Christ. (3) Articuli consequentes, or consequent articles, are the doctrines derived by way of logical elaboration from the constituent articles or fundamentals, such as the doctrine of the communication of proper qualities, or communicatio idiomatum (q.v.), in the person of Christ and the doctrine of Christ’s sacramental presence. Calixtus assumed that agreement among Christians would arise rationally upon the articuli antecedentes, and would arise dogmatically on the subjects presented in the articuli constituentes on the basis of the consensus quinquesaecularis, the consensus of the first five centuries of the church, but would not be needed in the articuli consequentes, which were matters capable of argument and difference. Debate between Christians could be reduced to the articuli consequentes, and reunion of Christendom might become possible. The orthodox Lutherans condemned Calixtus’s views and argued that all doctrine given by revelation is in some sense fundamental and that Christian reunion cannot rest upon a willingness to overlook differences in doctrine. See articuli fundamentales; articuli fundamentales secundarii.

articuli fidei: articles of faith; the body of individual doctrines of the Christian faith; that which is believed, as distinguished from the precepts of love (praecepta caritatis, q.v.), which are to be obeyed.

articuli fundamentales: fundamental articles (of faith or doctrine); a doctrinal concept originated among the early Lutheran scholastics and later adopted by the Reformed, according to which the basic doctrines necessary to the Christian faith are distinguished from secondary or logically derivative doctrines. Thus articuli fundamentales are those doctrines without which Christianity cannot exist and the integrity of which is necessary to the preservation of the faith. This category of fundamental articles includes only articles given by revelation, viz., the doctrine of sin and its consequences; the doctrine of the person and work of Christ; the doctrine of the resurrection; and the doctrine of the scriptural Word as the ground of faith. These articuli fundamentales are sometimes called, by the Lutheran scholastics, articuli fundamentales primarii, primary fundamental articles, in order to distinguish them from certain highly important derivative articles, like baptism and the Lord’s Supper, which treat of the mediation of grace and concerning which the Lutherans had major differences with the Reformed. These latter doctrines the Lutherans refer to as articuli fundamentales secundarii (q.v.). See articuli fidei; fundamentum fidei.

articuli fundamentales secundarii: secondary fundamental articles; a distinction in fundamental articles made by the Lutheran orthodox, who recognized that some of the articuli fundamentales, such as those concerned with baptism and the Lord’s Supper, might be lacking in a person’s faith, or at least lacking in correct definition, and that person still be saved by faith in the promises of the gospel, since forgiveness of sins rests on faith in Christ, as witnessed in the Word, and not on acceptance of the doctrines of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. A similar generalization can be made in relation to the secondary fundamental article concerning the communicatio idiomatum (q.v.). The Lutheran scholastics argued, through use of the distinction, that the Reformed were Christian and participated in the promise of salvation in Christ because of their acceptance of the primary fundamental doctrines of the person and work of Christ, but that their doctrinal system was endangered, even their faith in the primary fundamentals, by error in the secondary fundamentals. The distinction was also useful in refuting the Calixtine thesis that Christians need agree only on “constituent” doctrines (constituentia) in order to unite and might disagree slightly on “consequent,” or derivative, doctrines (consequentia, q.v.). The Lutheran orthodox argued that consequentia were not articuli non-fundamentales (q.v.) but articuli fundamentales secundarii and therefore still a major barrier to union. See articuli antecedentes/constituentes/consequentes.

articuli non-fundamentales: nonfundamental articles; articles the denial of which does not endanger salvation since they are not fundamental to the maintenance of Christian truth and are not concerned with the basic objects of faith. Here the Lutheran scholastics include such doctrines as the identity of antichrist and the nature of angels. Such doctrines, nonetheless, are scriptural and therefore, if rightly stated, edifying.

articuli puri/mixti: pure/mixed articles; articles of doctrine distinguished as to their derivation from the disciplines of theology and philosophy—those deriving from one discipline alone are “pure,” and those deriving from both are “mixed.” The existence of mixed articles, e.g., the existence and idea of God, demands that theology answer the question of its relation to philosophy. See usus philosophiae.

articulum omnium fundamentalissimum: the most fundamental article of all; a term applied by Lutheran scholastics to the doctrine of justification, also called the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae (q.v.).

articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae: literally, the article of the standing and falling of the church; i.e., the article of Christian doctrine necessary to the life and perpetuation of the church; a phrase often attributed to Luther probably on the basis of his statement in the Smalkald Articles (2.1) that justification is the article constitutive of all Christian truth against the pope, the devil, and the world. The phrase has been much used, especially by Lutheran theologians, to describe the doctrine of justification.

asarkos (ἄσαρκος): without the flesh. See ensarkos; Logos asarkos.

asebeia (ἀσέβεια): impiety, ungodliness; viz., a specific form or variety of sin; e.g., 2 Timothy 2:16. See peccatum; religio.

aseitas: aseity, self-existence; a term derived from the language of self-existence used with reference to God by the scholastics: God is said to exist from himself (esse a se). The term can be used synonymously with autotheos (q.v.). The Reformed orthodox—in their polemical rejection of tritheism, Arianism, Socinianism, the heresy of Valentine Gentilis, and the allied subordinationism of Arminian theology—define the consubstantiality of the Son and the Spirit with the Father as the essential aseitas of each of the three persons. In this definition, they distinguish between aseitas personalis and aseitas essentialis: the former term, personal aseity, involves a trinitarian error; and the latter term, essential aseity, interprets homoousios (q.v.) correctly. Thus, insofar as the deitas (q.v.), or divinity, of the Son and Spirit is communicated, which is to say, insofar as they are persons in relation to the Father, they are not a se, but a Patre, from the Father. Aseitas, therefore, does not indicate an autoprosōpon, a person of itself. Nevertheless the deitas that the Son and Spirit have fully and completely is not a derived deity or divinity. In order to be truly God, the Son and Spirit, considered according to their divinity or according to the divine essence that is theirs, must be autotheos and have the attribute of aseitas. The Reformed doctrine, then, acknowledges the aseitas of the divine essence as such in each of the persons and, consequently, the aseitas of the Son and the Spirit considered essentialiter. The doctrinal alternative, as found in Socinianism and Arminianism, is the essential subordination of the Son and Spirit on grounds of generation and procession.

Note that aseity is to be distinguished from simplicity: to be self-existent or from one’s self should imply simplicity, given that a self-existent being, namely, one not originated from previously existing things, would not be composite; but simplicity does not imply aseity, inasmuch as simple or noncomposite entities, such as angels and souls, are created. See simplicitas.

aseitas/abalietas: having being from one’s self / having being from another. Aseitas is, literally, a-se-itas, from-self-ness, indicating self-existence; abalietas is ab-ali-etas, from-another-ness, indicating having one’s existence from another. Thus aseitas est esse a se; abalietas est esse ab alio. The distinction between aseitas and abalietas identifies the difference between uncreated and all created being. See alius/aliud; aseitas.

assensus: assent, spiritual acknowledgment, or agreement; a necessary component of fides (q.v.). Used without modification, a simple assent to a truth by the intellect. More precisely, there are three degrees of assent: firmitas, certitudo (q.v.), and evidentia. Assent with firmitas, or firmness, is full assent without hesitation to something accepted purely on authority. Assent with certitudo, or certainty, is full assent founded firmly upon a solid ground of accepted testimony. Assent to evidentia, or evidence, rests not on testimony but on proof drawn either from sense experience or from reason. The Protestant scholastics will argue that the assensus theoreticus of faith is assent with firmitas and certitudo only. Evidentia, by way of contrast, belongs to science (scientia, q.v.) properly so called—and faith is not scientia.

assensus historicus: historical assent; viz., assent to the historical veracity of an account. Such assent correlates with fides historica, or historical faith, and, like notitia historica (q.v.), or historical knowledge, does not belong to the essence of faith and is not saving. See assensus; fides.

assumptio carnis: the assumption of the flesh; viz., incarnation as described in John 1:14. See incarnatio.

athanasia (ἀθανασία): immortality; e.g., 1 Corinthians 15:53. See immortalitas.

athetēsis (ἀθέτησις): a setting aside or annulment; e.g., Hebrews 7:18; 9:26.

atreptōs kai asynchytōs (ἀτρέπτως καὶ ἀσυγχύτως): without change and without confusion; a phrase from the Chalcedonian definition referring to and defining the relationship of Christ’s divine and human natures in the unio personalis (q.v.). Thus the natures are united without change or confusion in the person of Christ. The phrase was designed to exclude the Eutychian heresy that had threatened the doctrine of the person of Christ by merging the divine and human natures, i.e., by arguing a communication of divine attributes to the human nature in such a way as to divinize Christ’s humanity and, in effect, argue for only one nature in the incarnate Word, and that a divine nature. Eutychianism is thus a confusio naturarum (q.v.), a confusion of natures. See adiairetōs kai achōristōs; communicatio idiomatum.

attemperatio. See accommodatio.

attributa divina: divine attributes; viz., the conceptions or designations of the divine essence employed by the finite intellect in its declaration in answering the question What is God? (Quid sit Deus?). Since the intellect can conceive of things only by the enumeration of their attributes and cannot conceive of a single designation suitable to the infinite and simple essence of God, it designates the divine essence in terms of a series of perfectiones or proprietates, which it attributes to or predicates of God—thus, attributes. The scholastics recognize that they must immediately qualify the way in which attributes or properties are predicated of God. (1) The attributa are not accidentia inhering in and separable from the divine substance but are attributa essentialia; i.e., the divine attributes are the essence of God himself. (2) Since God is not a composite being, the attributa are not parts of God but, in their identity with the divine essence, are also identical with each other. (3) Since there is nothing prior to God and since the divine essentia and divine existence (esse, q.v.) are inseparable, the attributes are identical also with the existence of God, so that, e.g., in God being and being holy are identical. (4) The attributes are, nevertheless, truly and properly predicated of God. Thus the attributes are not distinct from one another or from the divine essence realiter, really, as one thing is distinct from another; nor are they distinct merely rationaliter, rationally, in the reasoning of the finite subject only (ratio ratiocinans, q.v.). In denominating the attributes, the human mind rests its conclusions on the exercise of divine power in the world and on the explicit revelation of God, so that the attributes are predicated of God and distinguished from one another on the basis of a reasoning founded in the reality of the thing under consideration, viz., God (ratio ratiocinata, cum fundamento in re). This distinctio rationis ratiocinatae, or distinction of ratiocinative reason (see distinctio), also called a distinctio virtualis, is taught by nearly all the Lutheran and Reformed scholastics. It is, incidentally, the solution to the problem of predication proposed by Thomas Aquinas and Henry of Ghent. The Scotist concept of a distinctio formalis, or formal distinction, is occasionally used by the Reformed orthodox to explain the distinction of attributes in the divine work, ad extra.

After propounding these general definitions of attributa divina, the orthodox Protestants recognize the need for proper classification of attributes. (NB: All attributes listed in this section are defined individually elsewhere in the dictionary.) On this issue, the Lutherans and the Reformed differ sharply. Reformed scholastics manifest a distinct preference for division of the attributes into incommunicabilia and communicabilia, incommunicable and communicable attributes: the former category contains attributes that find no analogy in the finite order and cannot be conceived as in any way transferable to creatures (Finitum non capax infiniti, q.v.); the latter category contains attributes mirrored in the creature, specifically, in the human being. The incommunicabilia are aeternitas, aseitas, immensitas, immutabilitas, independentia, infinitas, necessitas, omnipraesentia, omnisufficientia, perfectio, primitas, simplicitas, and unitas; the attributa communicabilia are beatitudo, fidelitas, gloria, immortalitas, lux, magnitudo, maiestas, potentia or omnipotentia, sanctitas, sapientia or omnisapientia, scientia or omniscientia, spiritualitas and its corollary invisibilitas, vita, and voluntas; plus the so-called affectus voluntatis Dei, affections of the divine will, amor, benevolentia, clementia, gratia, ira, longanimitas, misericordia, odium, patientia; and also the virtutes Dei, divine virtues, bonitas, felicitas, iustitia, and veracitas. The obvious defect in the classification is that some of the attributa incommunicabilia do have analogies in the created order, such as perfectio and independentia or simplicitas, albeit not in an absolute sense, while none of the attributa communicabilia are found in creatures in the perfection in which they occur in God—human scientia does fall short of omniscientia! Under the impact of Cartesianism, some of the Reformed adopted a classification that distinguished proprietates essentiales, essential properties (viz., aseitas, infinitas, perfectio, primitas, simplicitas, spiritualitas, and unitas), as governing categories from attributes of intellect (intellectus, q.v.) and attributes of will (voluntas, q.v.). The Lutherans not only perceived the defect of the classification of attributes into incommunicabilia and communicabilia, but also were bound to reject it totally on christological grounds. According to the Lutheran view of the communicatio idiomatum (q.v.), all the divine attributes were communicable, at least in the instance of the divine-human person of Christ. Lutheran orthodoxy therefore favored two alternative patterns that produced similar arrangements of attributes. First, division into attributa positiva and attributa negativa, corresponding to the two ways of denominating divine attributes, viz., by the via eminentiae (q.v.), the raising of creaturely attributes to their infinite perfection, and the via negativa (q.v.), the negation of creaturely imperfection. Thus attributa negativa are aeternitas, immensitas, immutabilitas, infinitas, simplicitas, unitas, and their corollaries; while attributa positiva are bonitas, iustitia, potentia, sanctitas, sapientia, scientia, veracitas, and vita. Second, this division can also be inferred from the consideration of the attributes as either immanentia or operativa, the former category referring to the inward life of the Godhead that does not relate directly to the opera Dei ad extra (q.v.), and the latter category referring specifically to those attributes that are manifest in the opera ad extra and that describe the relationship of God to the finite order. See antepraedicamenta; via causalitatis.

attributa ecclesiae: attributes of the church; viz., the attributes named in the Constantinopolitan Creed, una, sancta, catholica, and apostolica. The Protestant scholastics agree that the church, considered in se, in itself, is one in an internal unity of faith; is holy in the person of its head, Christ, the caput ecclesiae, and holy also in its doctrine, laws, and sacraments; is catholic, or universal, in place or extent, in all time, and in all the faithful everywhere, as opposed to spatially and temporally limited heterodoxy; and is apostolic in its foundation and its doctrines. See ecclesia; notae ecclesiae.

attributum: attribute, property, characteristic, proper quality; synonyms: proprietas, qualitas. Since the sum of the attributes of any material or spiritual thing, in their interrelation, is the form or, more strictly speaking, the essence of the thing, the attributes identify what the thing is and are inseparable from its substance (substantia, q.v.) insofar as any ens must have both esse (q.v.) and essentia (q.v.), or both substance and form (forma, q.v.).

attritio: imperfect contrition, attrition; i.e., in medieval scholastic and Roman Catholic theology, a sorrow for and detestation of sin arising, not out of the proper ground of contrition, filial fear (timor filialis, q.v.), but rather out of a servile fear (timor servilis) of God and his punishment. As such, attritio is not sufficient for forgiveness. Nonetheless, the medieval scholastics can argue that attrition is a gift of God insofar as it prepares the soul for true contrition. The Reformers deny any value to attritio, particularly in relation to the structure of the Catholic sacrament of penance (poenitentia, q.v.) as a preparation for the contrition (contritio, q.v.), confession (confessio, q.v.), and satisfaction (satisfactio, q.v.) of the penitential system.

auctor: author.

auctor primarius Scripturae sacrae: primary author of sacred Scripture, viz., God. The term recognizes that the human writers of Scripture are authors only in a secondary sense, insofar as the mandatum scribendi (q.v.) comes from God.

auctoritas. See authoritas.

aülos (ἄϋλος): immaterial or spiritual. See spiritus.

aurea mediocritas: the golden mean.

autexousion (αὐτεξούσιον): free will; also autexousiotēs (αὐτεξουσιότης): free will; and adjectivally, autexousios (αὐτεξούσιος): having free will.

authentia historica: historical authenticity or authority; also authentia historiae: authenticity of history. See authoritas Scripturae; historicus.

authentia normae seu praecepti: preceptive or normative authenticity or authority. See authoritas Scripturae.

authoritas: authority, originality, genuineness; the power, dignity, or influence of a work that derives from its author, or auctor.

authoritas divina duplex: twofold divine authority; a distinction between (1) the authoritas rerum, or authority of the things of Scripture, the substantia doctrinae (substance of doctrine); and (2) the authoritas verborum, or authority of the words of Scripture, arising from the accidens scriptionis, the accident of the writing. The authority of the substantia, or res, is a formal, inward authority that belongs both to the text of Scripture in the original languages and to the accurate translations of Scripture. The authoritas verborum is an external and accidental authority that belongs only to the text in the original languages and is a property or accident lost in translation. Thus the infallibilitas of the originals is both quoad verbum and quoad res, whereas the infallibilitas of the translations is only quoad res.

authoritas Scripturae: the authority of Scripture; viz., the power or genuineness of Scripture that rests on its inspiration (see inspiratio; theopneustos) and therefore on the absolute authority of God, the primary author of Scripture. The authoritas of Scripture can therefore be defined in terms of its authentia, or authenticity. This authentia is distinguished by the Protestant scholastics as twofold. Scripture is authoritative and authentic (1) as the principium cognoscendi et obiectum formale fidei ac theologiae revelatae, the foundation of knowing and formal object of faith and of revealed theology; and (2) as the canon or norm, resting on inspiration, for all discernment of truth and falsehood in matters of faith and morals (in rebus fidei ac morum). The first category, the authority of Scripture as principium cognoscendi (see principia theologiae), argues for the certitude (certitudo, q.v.) and infallibility (infallibilitas) of Scripture in view of its divine origin. The arguments on which this category of authoritas rests are distinguished by the scholastics into internal, intrinsic proofs and external, extrinsic proofs. The former, which argue for an authentia intrinseca, or intrinsic authenticity, include the material simplicity, dignity, and gravity of the text, together with formal attributes of perfect holiness (sanctitas perfecta), truth of statement without admixture of error (veritas assertionum sine admixtis erroribus), and the sufficiency of the scriptural revelation for salvation (sufficientia ad salutem). The latter proofs, which indicate the authentia extrinseca, or extrinsic authenticity, point to the antiquity of the Scriptures and their doctrines, the obvious gift of profound knowledge to the human writers of Scripture to which they themselves would have had no natural access, the many miracles attending the production and preservation of the text, and the divine purpose or mission to which the Scriptures testify and to the furtherance of which they contribute. In addition to those extrinsic testimonies drawn from the circumstances of the text itself, the orthodox point to the further extrinsic testimony of the church to Scripture through the holiness and constancy of the martyrs and the conservation and propagation of the Word in history. Some of the Protestant scholastics also distinguish a separate category of authentia historiae, or authenticity of history, according to which Scripture is argued to be historically true in its record of words, deeds, events, and doctrines. Generally, however, this historical authoritas is subsumed under the attribute of truth belonging to the category of authentia intrinseca.

The second major division of scriptural authority, also resting on the divine inspiration of the text, is the authoritas canonica sive normativa, the canonical or normative authority, or authentia normae sive praecepti, the authenticity of norm or of precept. This authority, or authenticity, of Scripture refers primarily to the actual use in the church of the text as the rule of faith and morals and to the character of Scripture as axiopistos (q.v.), trustworthy, or autopistos (q.v.), trustworthy in itself (in se). The authoritas canonica or normativa, therefore, is such that it requires assent to the doctrines and demands of Scripture and the use of events and actions in Scripture as moral examples for imitation. Nor is this an authority or authenticity that is subject either to argument or to proof; it rests on the res, or things, given in the text, from their very substance, apart from any collateral or external testimony to them. Whereas the authentia historiae and the general veritas Scripturae refer to all matters and events given in Scripture—including the words, actions, and teachings of Satan and the godless, insofar as they are reported and stated accurately—the authentia normae sive praecepti pertains only to the words, actions, and teachings of God and the godly as presented for edification. Thus Satan’s promises to Christ in the temptation (Matt. 4:1–11) have the authentia historiae, but obviously not the authentia normae sive praecepti or the authoritas canonica sive normativa.

autocheiria (αὐτοχειρία): murder done with one’s own hand; from autocheiros (αὐτόχειρος): with one’s own hand.

autodidaktos (αὐτοδίδακτος): self-taught, or self-instructed; a term applied to Christ in his human nature, insofar as he was wise apart from human teaching because of the indwelling Logos and through the grace or gratiae habituales bestowed on him by the Holy Spirit.

autographa (αὐτόγραφα): autographs, originals; specifically, the original autograph copies of the books of the Bible as they came from the hands of the inspired authors. The autographa are distinguished from apographa (q.v.; ἀπόγραφα), or copies. The Protestant scholastics do not press the point made by their nineteenth-century followers that the infallibility of Scripture and the freedom of Scripture from error reside absolutely in the autographa and only in a derivative sense in the apographa; rather, the scholastics argue positively that the apographa preserve intact, with minimal scribal corruptions, the true words of the prophets and the apostles and that the God-breathed (theopneustos, q.v.) character of Scripture is manifest in the apographa, as well as in the autographa. The issue primarily addressed by the seventeenth-century orthodox in their discussion of the autographa is the continuity of the extant copies in Hebrew and in Greek with the originals, both quoad res, with respect to the thing or subject of the text, and quoad verba, with respect to the words of the text. As to the continuity between the original language autographa and any, even the best translations, only continuity quoad res was recognized. Thus, e.g., the Vulgate, the Geneva Bible, and the Statenvertaling (Dutch version) might all be argued to stand in continuity with the inspired originals of the biblical books, but only quoad res, to the extent that they taught the same substance as the Hebrew and Greek texts; the surviving texts in Hebrew and Greek, namely, the apographa, could be viewed as in continuity both quoad verba and quoad res. Thus the original languages are characterized by primary and original authenticity, the translations by secondary and derivative authenticity. In the nineteenth century the issue addressed was primarily the integrity and infallibility (or inerrancy) of the autographa as distinct from and prior to the apographa, or scribal copies. The autographa/apographa distinction as used by the orthodox, however, was not as much concerned with the issue of biblical reliability as it was with the foundational character of the texts as found in the original languages. See apographa; authoritas divina duplex; Scriptura Sacra.

autopistos (αὐτόπιστος): trustworthy in and of itself; specifically, a term used by the Protestant scholastics to denote the self-authenticating character of scriptural authority. Autopistos is often paired with axiopistos (q.v.; ἀξιόπιστος), meaning simply “trustworthy.” If Scripture is trustworthy in and of itself (in se and per se), no external authority, whether church or tradition, need be invoked in order to ratify Scripture as the norm of faith and practice. The use of autopistos as an attribute of Scripture figured importantly in the Protestant orthodox debate with Rome and with the Roman Catholic concept of the church’s magisterium (q.v.). See Scriptura Sacra; traditio.

autoritas. See authoritas.

autotheos (αὐτοθεός): of himself God; i.e., God by nature; a term applied to each of the persons of the Trinity, in particular to the Son and the Spirit, in order to identify them as divine by nature rather than by grace. The term is specifically applied to the Son to distinguish him from “sons” by creation and “sons” by adoption. See aseitas.

autozōos (αὐτόζωος): having life in and of one’s self. See vita Dei.

auxilium sine quo non: assistance without which not; i.e., an assistance without which a desired result cannot occur, as distinguished from an auxilium quo, an assistance by which, i.e., an assistance that, in a positive sense, inevitably brings about a result. The former term can be used to describe resistible grace (gratia resistibilis, q.v.); the latter, irresistible grace (gratia irresistibilis, q.v.). These terms are important in describing the grace present to Adam and Eve prior to the fall as a necessary but resistible assistance, auxilium sine quo non, i.e., an assistance unlike the grace of election, which, according to the Reformed, is an irresistible auxilium quo. See donum concreatum; donum superadditum.

avaritia: greed, avarice. See septem peccata mortalia.

axiomata: axioms, rules, established principles.

axiopistos (ἀξιόπιστος): trustworthy, worthy of faith; an attribute of Scripture frequently paired with autopistos (q.v.). See Scriptura Sacra.