Volume 1
Encyclopædia of religion and ethics / edited by James Hastings ; with the assistance of John A. Selbie ... and other scholars.
- Date:
- 1908-1926
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Encyclopædia of religion and ethics / edited by James Hastings ; with the assistance of John A. Selbie ... and other scholars. Source: Wellcome Collection.
91/932
![Onr access to this state has been established through the incarnation and death of the Son of God, who bears away the sins of men and gives them power to become sons of God. It is not merely an open way; it is an actual leading of men into this blessed state by One who takes them in hand and conducts them into the blessedness and peace of the Divine kingdom. (2) In Eph 2'® it is clear that much more is meant than the open way to God. It is an actual and efl'ectual introduction of a personal kind which begins a state of friendship and fellowship by means of the indwelling spirit common to all believers. In the former text the Christian state as a whole is in view, as that to which Christ introduces us ; here we are shown the still higher sphere of Divine fellowship, of filial privilege and power which Christ opens up to us, and into which He conducts us. Jew and Gentile have their access to the Father through the Son by one Spirit. All outward differences which separate and divide men fall away in presence of the higher unity which is produced by the life of God medi- ated by Christ and the Spirit of Christ. (3) In Eph 3'® access is viewed as a standing condition of the life of faith, a state of exalted confidence, boldness, and freedom which faith in Christ ever sustains and renews. It secures all the possibilities of a free and joyous fellowship, and provides the power by which the energies and needs of the higher life may be sustained and filled. The filial spirit is nourished and enlarged from the fulness of the Divine life and love. The idea of access to God through Christ differs in many respects from that access which must be open to man as a spiritual being. This latter is never denied but rather taken for granted in Scripture. Compared with the former, however, it can never come into competition with it, or supply its place. In the light about God which Christianity reveals, it soon becomes clear that none but Christ can lead us to Him. The Father whom the Son reveals can never be known or approached through any save the Son. The incar- nation and mission of the Son, accepted and believed, must henceforth determine the character of our access to God. This St. Paul has very clearly perceived, and he has brought the thought to clear formal expression. It appears in various parts of the NT; in the Fourth Gospel as a general principle of Christianity (Jn 14®), in Hebrews and 1 Peter in closer relation to St. Paul. As a broad principle, we readily see that we cannot have real access to God except amid the conditions which Christianity has established, both as to the character of God and the way of acceptable service and worship. Yet it is im- portant to keep in mind that the NT ascribes our access specifically to the great sacrifice which removes the barrier of sin and establishes peace and friendship between God and men (He lO^®- 1 P 3«). A use o{ the word ‘ access,’ different fron given above, is found in some liturgical w term is employed to characterize and desc in the old Liturgies and in 1 approaching the altar the prayer _ iltar at the comm ne 'ao^ o™ commumon * noted in the margin ai id priest which imm ‘Prayer of Access ask for the necessary preparation, that the term does not stand in the in the prayers or in the rubrics vs las difficulty in discove s to he noted, howe t of the Liturgies, ei direct the order of commentators, and the special aptness of the t in probably is that the apprOL,_ e commencement, and the nea) e in the consecrated and n Deity now present in the apt enough, as it of the Supper which is already latent in the old'Liturgies seen fully developed in the Roman Missal. (See Hammond’s Liturgies Eastern and Western, Clarendon Press, 1878). Litbratuke.—J. O. F. Murray in Hastings’ DB i. 22; D. A. Mackinnon in DCO i. 12 ; the Comm., esp. B. F. Westcott on Hebrews and J. A. Robinson on Ephesians; Expos, iv. [1890] ii. 131, n. [1882] iv. 321; W. Robertson NicoU, The Church's One Foundation [1901], 43; J. G. Tasker, Spiritual Religion (Fernley Lect. 1901), pp. 102, 123 ; W. P. Du Bose, The Gospel ace. to St. Paid (1907), 143. A. F. SiMPSON. ACCIDENT (accidens, avp^e^^Kbs).—i. One of the five Predicahles {accidensprcedicabile).—Accord- ing to Mill, under accidens ‘are included all at- tributes of a thing which are neither involved in the signification of the name, nor have, so far as we know, any necessary connexion with attributes which are so involved’ {Logic, vol. i. p. 149). This, allowing for the Nominalist standpoint of Mill, is the same view as that contained in Aldrich’s de- finition, ‘ that which is predicated as contingently joined to the essence,’ as contrasted with.proprium which is predicated as necessarily joined. Some such definition or its equivalent is given by most writers on Logic, and is, according to Mansel, {Aldrich, 4th ed. p. 25), found in Albertus Magnus {de Prcedicat. Tract ii. cap. 1). The view taken by Aristotle is different. The attribute of a triangle, that its three angles are equal to two right angles, which on the ordinary view would be a proprium, is by him regarded as an accident {Metaphys. iv. 30). The distinction between property and accident in Aristotle turns on the convertibility or non-convertibility of the attribute. It is essential to the Aristotelian property {Ulov) that it should be present in certain objects and in them alone. If present in other objects, it is either identical with the genus, or it is not. If not, it is an accident. The test of an accident is that it is common to heterogeneous things. Aristotle at the same time recognizes that that which, simply considered, is an accident may become in a certain relation and at a certain time a property. He gives two definitions of ‘accident’: (1) ‘that which is neither 'definition nor property nor genus, but is in the thing ’; (2) ‘ that which is able to be in and not to be in one and the same individual ’ {Top. i. 5). Porphyry gives a third definition: ‘ that which is present and absent without destruction of the subject’ {Isagoge, v.). Aristotle recognizes two classes of ‘ accidents ’; those which are necessarily connected with the essence and deducible from it {avp^e^yKbs Kad' airb); and those which are not (cf. Ueberweg, Hist, of Philos., Eng. tr. vol. i. p. 155, and Grote’s Aie, vol. i. p. 142 note). Sanderson in his Logic (Works, vol. vi. p. 10) distinguishes separable and insepar- able accident thus : Separable—that which can be actually separated from its subject, as cold from water; Inseparable—that which cannot be sepa- rated except in the intellect, as wetness from water. Aldrich gives a similar distinction. Mansel and most logicians define the inseparable accidents of a class as those accidents which, though not connected with the essence either by way of cause or consequence, are as a matter of fact found in all the members of the class; the separable ac- cidents as those found in some members of the class and not in others. The inseparable accidents of an individual are those which can be predicated of their subject at all times; the separable only at certain times. 2. Accident, Fallacy of.—This fallacy is gener- ally considered as arising when we infer that whatever agrees with a thing considered simply in itself agrees with the same tiring when qualified](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29001225_0001_0091.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
