the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Naturalness
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or NATURALNESS.—Few terms are more fruitful of fallacious thought than the group including ‘nature,’ ‘natural,’ ‘naturalness.’ In modern usage they are very frequent, and the range of varied meanings which they cover is wide. Thus we speak of natural instinct, natural conduct, natural religion, natural science, and the natural creation, though the single epithet has a different sense in every case. Two phrases like ‘the law of nature’ and ‘natural law’ are verbally equivalent, yet they are very different in significance, the one drawing its connotation from Roman jurisprudence, the other from modern science; the one being concerned entirely with human thought and conduct, the other mainly with inanimate phenomena or those regions of Biology which include creatures of lower organization than man. It is always needful to be on one’s guard against the fallacies which so easily arise through such changes in the meaning of a term; for they are apt to be unnoticed when the term itself is constant. But the danger becomes greater when these terms are carried back to a period in which they were in far less frequent use, and when they covered a smaller range of meaning. This was the case in the age of the NT. We have now generalized our ideas, and we speak of ‘Nature’ in the sense of the Cosmos. It is commonly with a reference more or less definite to the observed order of the Cosmos as a whole that we employ the words ‘natural,’ ‘naturalness’; although there are many instances also in which they have a narrower reference. But in antiquity it was either a particular person or thing, or else a particular class of persons or things—a kind—which was in view; and the nature of this group of instances was the standard of naturalness. So ‘life according to nature’ meant, not what was in harmony with the universe, nor even what corresponded with environment, but what fulfilled the nature of the man himself. What was ‘contrary to nature,’ on the other hand, was not what put a man into antagonism with his surroundings, but what amounted to violence done to his better self. The later Stoics, indeed, made approach to the modern use in some directions, and in turn influenced legal principles, and later movements of thought which sought a ‘return to nature,’ such as that with which the name of Rousseau is connected; but they afford no more than an exception to the general truth that in ancient times the use of the terms under consideration was particularist, while to-day it is commonly generalized or even cosmical.
An examination of the passages in the NT in which naturalness is spoken of bears out this difference fully. In James 3:7, e.g., the ‘nature of beasts’ (φύσις θηρίων) is contrasted with human nature (ἥ φύσις ἥ ἀνθρωτινη); and St. Paul opposes the teaching of nature in the case of the Gentiles to the teaching of law in the case of Jews (Romans 2:14; Romans 2:27); while in 2 Peter 1:4 we read of ‘a Divine nature’ (θεία φύεις). But all such instances which develop the idea of naturalness lie outside the Gospels, and most of them occur in the writings of St. Paul. It is not necessary, therefore, to discuss them fully here; it may suffice to refer to an instructive note by Dr. Armitage Robinson in his Com. on the Epistle to the Ephesians (on Ephesians 2:3), pp. 49–51.
The words which are rendered by ‘nature’ or the like in the Authorized and Revised Versions are φύσις, φυσικός, ὁμοιοπαθής, and ψυχικός, but the last is only translated ‘natural’ where it stands opposed to πνευματικός, and there the rendering is not satisfactory though none better is easily found. None of these words, however, occurs in the Gospels at all: and the entire absence from the Gospels of terms directly expressive of naturalness is in itself a warning against attempting to bring the facts of Jesus Christ’s life under this category without care and caution.
There is, however, profound truth in Tertullian’s saying, ‘Anima naturaliter Christiana,’ and it is no false extension of this if one speak of the naturalness of Jesus Christ as perfect, since in Him the best and highest nature of man is shown complete and unalloyed for once. Such a mode of expression would only serve to heighten the supplementary aspect of the truth which comes out in the contrast that St. Paul emphasizes between the first Adam as the ‘natural man’ (ψυχικός), and the last Adam as the ‘life-giving spirit’ (1 Corinthians 15:45). It is along this line that the explanation must be sought of what some have felt as a serious difficulty, namely, that few principles in Christ’s teaching can be instanced to which parallels of earlier date may not be adduced. Not only the writings of the OT Prophets and Psalmists, but also the religious teachers of other races, such as Gautama, Epictetus, or those collected in the Tao of China, afford numerous anticipations of the Lord’s words. It could not be otherwise if the true nature of man be realized in Him; if God purposed ‘to sum up all things in Christ’ (Ephesians 1:10); if He was ‘the true light which lighteth every man’ (John 1:9). A similar consideration enables one to understand the remarkable fact that Christ’s appeal is to men of all races. ‘One touch of nature makes the whole world kin’: apart from this, the fact, to which ever-widening experience bears witness, that in all races ‘his sheep hear his voice,’ would be most wonderful, not to say inexplicable.
It is quite in keeping with this view of the facts, that the Lord Jesus never hesitated to appeal to the natural instinct of men On questions of conscience. e.g. ‘Doth not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or his ass …? And ought not this woman to have been loosed from this bond …? (Luke 13:15 f., cf. Luke 14:5). He also employed expressions in reference to Himself which may be said implicitly to make naturalness the criterion of conduct. e.g. ‘Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness’ (πρέπον ἐστὶν ἡμῖν, Matthew 3:15); ‘Behoved it not the Christ to suffer?’ (οὐχὶ ταῦτα ἔδει παθεῖν τὸν Χριστόν, Luke 24:26). This last usage is very characteristic of the Ep. to Heb. (cf. Hebrews 2:17 ὤφειλεν … ὁμοιωθῆναι; Hebrews 2:10 ἔπρεπεν αὐτῷ), and the similar expression in Hebrews 7:26 ἡμῖν καὶ ἕπρεπεν ἀρχιερεύς, which bases on the nature God has given us the natural expectation which must be formed of Christ). See Newman Smyth, Old Faiths in New Light, 105.
E. P. Boys-Smith.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Naturalness'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/n/naturalness.html. 1906-1918.
