Presence
Presence
In the apostolic writings the following Greek words lie behind our English term presence, , , , (prepositions = in the presence of, and frequently rendered before); and (nouns). There is no need to dwell on such common expressions as the presence of Pilate (Act 3:13) or of the Council (5:41), or even on St. Pauls mention of his presence (or absence) in the letters to Philippi (Php 2:12), Corinth, and Thessalonica. The question of the Apostles bodily presence being insignificant (2Co 10:1-10) is discussed elsewhere (see Paul). There remain those passages which speak of the presence of the angels and of the Lamb (Rev 14:10), and the presence of God. From this source come times of refreshing (Act 3:19) for the repentant, but also of destruction for the disobedient (2Th 1:9, in reference to the Second Advent or Parousia; cf. 1Th 2:19). No man, however wise or strong, may boast in the presence of God (1Co 1:29); in that presence Christ appears on our behalf (Heb 9:24); and there before the presence of his glory we ourselves may hope to stand (Jud 1:24). There is matter for reflexion in all these statements, but it is better to leave this somewhat artificial and mechanical schedule of references in order to discuss the general idea of the presence of God as it is found in the writings of the Apostolic Age.
1. In some of the passages cited above there is unquestionably a reminiscence of the sense of sanctity with which the royal presence was invested in ancient times. The OT is full of references to this fact. We have it literally in such passages as Gen 41:46 (the presence of Pharaoh), Exo 10:11; Exodus 10 :1Sa 19:7, 2Sa 24:4, 1Ki 1:28; 1Ki 12:2, 2Ch 9:23, Neh 2:1, Est 1:10; Est 8:13. Generally speaking, these references to the kingly presence carry the suggestion of favour, graciousness, assent, or benediction. When a ruler turned his countenance towards a suppliant or courtier, it meant that his desire was granted, or that he was a persona grata in the court (cf. Est 8:15); when it was turned away, it foreboded refusal, the loss of favour, or serious disgrace (cf. 1Ki 12:2). The same association of ideas governs the usage of such phrases as the presence of the Lord (Gen 3:8, Job 1:12; Job 2:7; Job 23:15, Psa 16:11; Psa 97:5; Psa 140:13, etc.). Those hidden in the Divine presence are safe from harm (Psa 31:20; Psa 91:1); to be driven from Gods presence is to be outcast indeed (Psa 51:11); it is even to perish utterly (Psa 68:2). The minds of the NT writers were saturated with Hebrew notions, and their usage of language corresponds with this fact. Thus the presence of Pilate (Act 3:13) means his seat of authority (cf. Act 5:41); the presence of the Lord is the source of all spiritual blessing (Act 3:19), of Divine authority (Luk 1:19), and of eternal felicity (Jud 1:24); while the opposite is suggested in Rev 14:10. Gods presence, in a word, saves or damns those who are exposed to its searching radiance, according to their spiritual relation to Him.
2. It is, however, the positive suggestions of the phrase that require exposition. The presence of God (or of Christ who brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel, 2Ti 1:10) means in apostolic literature all that is implied in the revelation of His nature, and the instrumentalities of His grace. In the OT that presence was largely mediated through nature and Providence (cf. Job and the Psalms passim); in the NT this aspect has largely faded into the background, probably as a result of the Deistic attitude of later Judaism, which substituted cultus or worship (especially in the form of a mass of liturgical and ceremonial acts and processes) as the chief medium of the approach of man to God, or of God to man. God Himself became remote, His very name was avoided. Belief in a present Deity, glad faith in a God who manifests Himself in actual experience is found only in such exalted experiences as the Maccabaean struggle. Men tried to bridge the chasm by angels, especially natural guardian angels, and by such quasi-personalities, quasi-abstractions as the Wisdom, the Word, Shekinah of Glory, the Spirit of God. But all such efforts were far from successful. What differentiated the heightened spiritual consciousness of the primitive Church was its assurance that in Jesus Christ God had come near to man in a new and living way. This fact is expressed with matchless felicity in St. Johns words (we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth (2Ti 1:14), and in St. Pauls God hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2Co 4:6). The same idea is given in Heb 1:1-3, God hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in his Son, being the effulgence of his glory, and the very image of his substance. To His immediate disciples the physical person of Christ was evidently full of attractiveness and power, because of the spiritual radiance that shone from His presence; they afterwards dwelt lovingly in thought on the expression of His face, on His looks and gestures, which must have been eloquent of His inner disposition, thoughts, and purposes; and they afterwards found a deep mystical significance in these things as they brooded on His words and dealings with them. It was the Resurrection life of Jesus that provided the interpretative light in which all His earthly life was transfigured in the memory of His immediate circle of friends, and which brought home the real meaning of His dealings with them in the days of His flesh.
3. This personal objective nearness of God in the presence of Christ as mirrored in the Gospels, becomes in the Epistles a subjective nearness in the souls of believers. Christ dwells in their hearts by faith (Eph 3:17); they have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; through whom also we have had our access by faith into this grace wherein we stand; they rejoice in hope of the glory of God (a synonym for His radiant favouring presence, Rom 5:1-2), and Christ who is the image and glory of God (1Co 11:7) becomes at last in them the hope of glory, i.e. of a blessed immortality (Col 1:27). This indwelling presence of God in human hearts is not the mere inner light of which the mystics speak, but that light made opulent with all the spiritual content for which Christ stands. It is a Life within the life, a Self within the self, a Divine presence enriching and irradiating the recesses of the soul with its high benefit and power. St. Paul is perpetually conscious of this new element in his life which, when he first had it, made him a new creature, and which made all things new to him (2Co 5:17 [ = fresh, bright, glittering]). Whether he speaks of the believer being in Christ (Col 1:2), or of Christ being in him (Col 1:27), or of being together with Christ (Eph 2:5; Eph 2:12), he is referring to the same supreme experience in its various aspects. This personal fellowship of the Risen Lord around and within him becomes at last a permeative and enfolding presence in virtue of which he becomes identified with Him in inmost nearness, as when he says, I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me (Gal 2:20). The mystical sense of oneness with Christ is the highest and most distinctive experience of the Christian life. It is seen in its purity only in the very finest saints, such as Origen, Athanasius, Augustine, Abelard, Tauler, Luther, Wesley; but all true believers know it more or less in proportion to their spiritual sensitiveness, and to their faithfulness in cultivating the practice of the presence of God in their hearts. This experience has naturally found abundant expression in our hymns, e.g. in Eliza Scudders
Thou Life within my life, than self more near,
Thou veiled Presence infinitely clear,
From all illusive shows of sense I flee,
To find my centre and my rest, in Thee
(Worship Song, line 158 ff.).
4. Rich and glowing as such experiences are, they are by no means exclusively mediated through isolation. The NT, indeed, enforces and illustrates the truth that the presence of God is often most vividly apprehended when a community of disciples, whether they be few or many, meet in His name for fellowship, praise, and edification. There are collective experiences to which the recluse is a stranger, and the monk, whether he live in a cell or walk the fields instead of joining with those who assemble themselves together, shuts himself off from some of the highest possibilities. The early Christian churches, though comprising many who were but babes in Christ and were far from maturity in ethical and spiritual matters, were happy in the united exercise of their gifts and in the reality of the Divine presence which characterized their meetings for worship. In marked contrast to the OT nothing is said in the NT of church buildings, hardly anything about the conduct of worship, and there is a striking absence of regulations regarding rites and ceremonies. But the real thing is there-the presence of God, without which the most magnificent architecture, the most elaborate ritual are a vain show. We remember how St. Paul would have the Corinthian Christians worship in such a fashion that if the man in the street chanced to drop in to one of their services he should be reproved by all judged by all, so that the secrets of his heart should be made manifest, and so he will fall down on his face and worship God, declaring that God is among [or in] you indeed (1Co 14:24 f.) Such an event is indeed connected by the Apostle with prophecy, or, as we should call it, preaching, but it is not only, perhaps not mainly, the sermon that thus overwhelmingly convinces the outsider of the presence of God in a people. Nor is it the observance of the sacrament of the Lords Supper, although therein, whatever be their varying conceptions of its mode and form, disciples of Christ frequently discern the Real Presence more fully than in any other act of worship or experience of everyday life. There is the sense of prayer and of fraternal union, the atmosphere of devotion and of brotherly love. These, added to a preaching of the Word of God which is alive and powerful, piercing and exposing, cleansing and comforting, are the signs and tokens of the presence of God in a community, and are visible not only to those within but to those without the circle.
5. Finally, there is in the NT consciousness a strong and eager forelooking to a higher experience still. The experience of believers on earth, while strengthened and uplifted by a sense of the presence of the Saviour through His spirit in the heart, and by the operation of His saving grace, yet lacks the precision and definiteness of a real personal presence. It is better than the objective fellowship of Jesus with His disciples which was limited by the disabilities of the flesh, for as He was then with them, He is now in them (Joh 14:16); but it is not the perfect communion for which the soul craves in its highest moods. The Parousia or Second Coming of the Lord shaped itself to the imagination of primitive believers as a quasi-physical appearance of the Lord in glory and great power in the clouds and with a retinue of holy angels (1Th 4:17; cf. Rev 1:7 He cometh with the clouds; and every eye shall see him; also Mat 16:27 f.). In the later writings of St. Paul this cruder anticipation is spiritualized. He speaks of death as a door into the nearer presence of Christ (Php 1:23 to be with Christ; for it is very far better); he is willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be at home with the Lord (2Co 5:8); and he warns his readers that all must be made manifest before the judgement-seat of Christ to give an account of their earthly life (2Co 5:10). In St. John this process of spiritualization is carried still further. There is no mention of any spectacular or objective Parousia. The Comforter is promised as Christs representative presence with His disciples after His departure to the Father (Joh 14:16), while He remains with the Father, and makes preparation for the time when His followers will rejoin Him, that where He is there they may be also (Joh 14:1-3). It may be said that while the hope of the Second Coming of Christ in the earlier sense has never died out of the Christian Church, the normal Christian attitude throughout the ages has been rather that mirrored in St. John than that suggested in 1Th 4:16-17 or 1Co 15:51 f. Believers hold firmly that while they have fellowship with Christ in the flesh, this is but a dim foretaste of the perfect fellowship that awaits the redeemed with their Saviour in the eternal world. We know nothing of the details of the life beyond the grave; it is enough to know that there Christ reigns even more surely and triumphantly than here, and that where He is there will be blessedness and fullness of life (Joh 10:10), and a joy unspeakable and full of glory (1Pe 1:8).
To heavens high city I direct my journey,
Whose spangled suburbs entertain mine eye;
Mine eye, by contemplations great attorney,
Transcends the crystal pavement of the sky.
But what is heaven, great God, compared to Thee?
Without Thy presence, heavens no heaven to me.
Without Thy presence, earth gives no reflection;
Without Thy presence, sea affords no treasure;
Without Thy presence, airs a rank infection;
Without Thy presence, heaven itself no pleasure.
If not possessed, if not enjoyed in Thee,
Whats earth, or sea, or air, or heaven to me?
(Francis Quarles, Divine Emblems, 1635).
A. J. Grieve.
Fuente: Dictionary of the Apostolic Church
Presence
means, in canonical law, the uninterrupted personal residence of every regularly prebended ecclesiastic at the seat of his office; a duty emphatically imposed on him by the laws of the Church. It means also the personal attendance at the common choral prayer, to which the laws of the Church obligate all members of a monastic community, as well as the canons and choir-vicars of the cathedral and collegiate congregations.
Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
Presence
PRESENCE.The ordinary word in the Gospels for before (= in the presence of) is . Lk. also uses , which, with the exception of Joh 20:30, is not in the vocabulary of the other three Evangelists. He nearly always uses it of the presence of God. Other prepositions employed are , ( , and ).1. The value of a religion is the pledge it can give of the presence of God. In the heathen lands round Israel the Divine Being was localized in sacred places with the aid of idols. But the religion of Jehovah was rid of such a tendency through the work of the prophets, with the result that, when all other religions in the Roman Empire were vulgarized and eviscerated of power, Judaism remained like a Samson with locks unshorn, with a God who could keep His own secret, and with a faith still pregnant with possibility. True, the Divine presence had been manifested, according to the OT, in cloudy pillar and burning bush, had, indeed, been localized in the ark of the covenant. But steadily the conception of God had been clarified from material associations, and the way in which this was done may be gathered from Jeremiah 7. So thoroughly did the moral view of God prevail, that the Law became Gods real presence in Israel (Schultz, OT Theol. i. p. 354). The angel of Jehovah, so frequently mentioned in the OT, was simply the messenger (), so did all intermediaries dwindle in the blaze of the only God. But with this transcendence came aloofness. On the one hand, the Law became a very barrier between God and His people. Even those who followed hard after it, like Saul of Tarsus and the rich young ruler, thirsted only the more for the living God (Mar 10:17, cf. Rom 7:9-13, Gal 3:21-23). On the other hand, Greek modes of thought, already affected by Oriental dualism, represented fully in Philo, but also anticipated in Palestinian theology (cf. Schrer, ii. iii. 33), bridged the seeming gulf by theosophical and Gnostic speculations. At the very moment when Judaism had its opportunity, it failed to give that abiding pledge of the presence of God which should satisfy heart, mind, and conscience. Even the religions of Mithras and Isis, impure though the latter was, had a vogue in the Empire because they did something to meet the need which arose between the barren speculations and brutal superstitions of the age.
2. At this psychological moment came Jesus with His gospel as a challenge to the world of the presence of God. St. John himself expresses this thought no more decidedly, though much more fully, than St. Mark, even though in Mar 1:1 is a secondary reading. The common testimony of the Apostolic circle may be summed up in Heb 1:2 God hath in these last days spoken unto us in his Son. But nowhere is the thought that Jesus Christ was the presence of God set forth with such sublime effect as in the Prologue to Johns Gospel: We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth (Heb 1:14). No need was there now of an impersonal Word or impersonated Wisdom, as between God and us (Php 2:9, Col 2:8-19); or of sacrifices and ceremonies, as between us and God (Heb 9:14, Gal 2:21); for the entire gulf between God the holy and us the sinful has been bridged in Jesus Christ our Lord (2Co 5:19, Eph 2:4-7). Thus through Christ our access to the Father is immediate (Rom 5:2) by one Spirit (Eph 2:18). There were to be no more finite mediators between God and man; no temple of Jerusalem, where alone men must worship; no necessity for interposing angels to interpret between the Divine and the human. Man was himself to be brought into immediate contact with God, and was to experience the deep conviction that heaven and earth had met together (Matheson, Growth of Spirit of Christianity, i. 78). This faith that through Christ a man is always in the presence of God as a child in his fathers house was based on (1) the testimony, and (2) the teaching of Jesus.
(1) By the testimony of Jesus is meant the unconscious impress of His Personality. It is evident, to use with all respect a familiar phrase, that Jesus had a presence. The people marvelled because He spoke with authority, although an unlettered man (Mat 7:28-29, Mar 6:2). His eyes were as a flame of fire (Mar 3:5, Luk 22:61). In the awe of His presence the Temple-courts were cleared, and the tempest calmed (Mar 11:15; Mar 6:51); so that His disciples cried, What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him? (Mar 4:41). He drew the children to Him, and cast out demons, and said, If I by the finger of God cast out devils, then is the kingdom of God come upon you (Luk 11:20). These impressions upon His contemporaries simply correspond with His own self-consciousness. He gave up the workshop at Nazareth for the theatre of the world, because He knew Himself as Gods beloved Son (Luk 3:22; Luk 4:1; Luk 4:14). His first address in the synagogue is not recorded, because it was all in one word, I am here (Luk 4:21). It was enough for the disciples that they should be with Him (Mar 3:14). It was the last folly of the Galilaean cities (Mat 11:20 ff.) that they did not believe Him for the works sake; and of Jerusalem, that it knew not the day of its visitation (Mat 23:37, Luk 19:41 ff.). There was only one legacy He had to leave, and that alone worth leaving, His spiritual presence (Mat 28:20, Luk 24:49), which was the true Shekinah (Mat 18:20, cf. Ubi sedent duo qui legem traetant, Shekina cum illis est, Pirke Aboth, 3 (Schultz, ii. 67)). The difference in this respect between St. John and the Synoptists is that whereas with them the testimony of Jesus to Himself is mostly unconscious, with him it is altogether self-conscious. St. John never fails to lay stress on the autonomy of Jesus (Moffatt in Expos. vi. iii. [1901] 469), so that, even psychologically speaking, He is not of the world, though in it.
(2) Thus in Jn. the testimony of Christ is merged in His teaching. He speaks of His own presence as living water, heavenly bread, light and life to a needy world (Joh 4:14; Joh 6:48; Joh 8:12; Joh 11:25). To keep His word is to keep in the presence of God as He Himself does (Joh 14:23, Joh 15:10). And that presence is an inward abiding which nothing outward can disturb (Joh 16:22; Joh 16:33). All His words in the Synoptics similarly illustrate that
To turn aside from Him is hell,
To walk with Him is heaven.
Only with them His Person is, as it were, so transparent that they present God through Jesus rather than in Him, and we are left to draw the Christian inference that He Himself is the focus of the Fathers presence. It is the essential nearness of God that gives all significance to the Beatitudes (Mat 5:8-9), to the teaching on prayer (Mat 6:8; Mat 6:8), to the interpretation of worship (Mar 7:8, cf. Joh 4:23), to the illustrations from nature (Mat 10:29), to the exhortations against anxiety (Luk 12:30-32), towards watchfulness (Luk 12:35-36), against covetousness (Luk 12:20-21), towards compassion (Mat 10:40-42). The sphere in which all the teaching moves, which makes it simple and intimate to the heart, and transcendent in its appeal and its authority, is the presence of God the Father, the truth that
Spirit with spirit can meet, Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.
But the immanence of God reaches a further stage in the gospel of Christ. Not only does Jesus bring God close into His world, as if meant the atmosphere one breathes rather than the firmament above (cf. , Mat 6:26 etc.), but, according to Jesus, God is immanent in the human nature that makes room for Him. This is expressed in terms of (a) relationship (Mar 3:35, Mat 5:16; Mat 5:44, Joh 1:12), (b) identification (Mat 10:40; Mat 25:40), (c) indwelling (Joh 14:16-17). This last is called the doctrine of the Holy Ghost. In order to give His own outlook to all disciples, Jesus promised His other self, the Paraclete or Comforter, in whose company and through whose intercession we live on the plane of sons, not only being in the Fathers presence, but He being present in us. Although this doctrine is fully allowed for by the Synoptists (Mat 10:20, Luk 24:49), it is the special contribution of St. John. Jesus answered, If a man love me, he will keep my word: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him (Joh 14:23). From different points of view it may be said that Jesus enjoyed the presence of God, that He was that presence, and that He gave it. This threefold presence is really the basis of the doctrine of the Trinity.
3. What then are we to gather from all this but that, according to Christianity, Christ as God incarnate is the pledge that God is present, not only Creator-like in the universe, but Father-like in the believing heart and the consecrated life? That is really the meaning of His exhibition of God in human life, and the impartation of His own Spirit. And our safeguard against the errors of Pantheism and of all such systems as tend to merge the Divine in the human instead of moulding the human by the Divine, is to be found in one small but significant phrase, . The Christian consciousness must always testify with a modern thinker (W. S. Palmer, An Agnostics Progress): When I lifted up my eyes to God, I found God not only looking through my eyes but looking into them. It is among a people redeemed from their sins and consecrated to service that God will tabernacle () as an abiding presence (Shekinah, fr. abide). And when the brotherhood is perfected, there will be no need of a Temple (Rev 21:3; Rev 21:22-27). The revelation of God immanent in a redeemed humanity is the ideal towards which Christianity points (Ephesians 1-3, Col 1:9-20, cf. 2Pe 3:13, Joh 17:20-23), and to which it is slowly moving, but only by outgrowing many misconceptions and leaving them behind. See, further, Schultz, OT Theol. i. 353 f., ii. 711; artt. Ark of the Covenant, Shekinah in Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible ; Beyschlag, NT Theol. i. 95 ff.; Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 3, ch. 2; Westcott on John 14-17).
4. Christian history has been a long series of endeavours to realize the full meaning of the Divine presence. First it was caught into Jewish preconceptions, and projected into the doctrine of the Parousia. This had its effect on the inmost circle of Christian writers with the exception of St. John, and on most of the early Fathers except for the school of Alexandria. With all its inspiration of hope, it must have tended to obscure the truth that God is present through the working of His Spirit in the individual and in society, in the unfolding of truth and the employments of love.
Under the influence of Greek thought in the Gentile world, the Divine presence has been treated as a metaphysical substance, and at last identified with the elements of the Lords Supper (see Art. ii.), after consecration. This sacerdotal view was virtually accepted by the time of Cyprian, who wrote (Ep. lxiii. 17): The passion of the Lord is the sacrifice we offer. The doctrine of Transubstantiation became the keystone of the ecclesiastical edifice, and was maintained as a theory, by means of the prevalent philosophy of Realism, whose greatest exponent was Thomas Aquinas. As far as English thought is concerned, it crumbled under the dialectic of John Wyclif (Lechler, Life of Wycliffe, p. 351), and by the discovery made by simple men, during the next two centuries, of the spiritual presence mediated through the NT in their own experience.
The Docetic views of Christs Person, however, which throughout the Middle Ages invested Him with apocalyptic splendours at the cost of all human sympathies, called for still other means of allaying the hunger of the religious imagination. The remedy was found in the reverence of the image, in the substitution of the symbol for reality. Gradually that Church, which had tried to centre its affections on an absent Lord, found that its affections must be rekindled by the mediation of some earthly form. It had dismissed from its thoughts the idea of a spiritual presence; it must regain that presence through the intervention of material agencies. It must find it in the water of Baptism, in the bread and wine of Communion, in the act of ordination, in the relies of saints, in the tombs of the martyrs, in the heart of monasteries, and in the walls of consecrated cathedrals. It must see it in the figure of a visible cross, in the monuments raised to a celestial hierarchy, in the observance of festivals in memory of the sainted dead, above all in apotheosis of the Virgin Mother (Matheson, op. cit. i. 322). In the meantime, as applied to the working of the Holy Spirit, the doctrine of the presence stamped infallibility upon the Councils, and finally upon the Pope. While with J. H. Newman it signified the validity of ecclesiastical development throughout the centuries, being the germination, growth, and perfection of some living or apparent truth in the minds of men during a sufficient period (Development of Doctrine, p. 37).
But while the popular religion found the presence in the images and relies, and ecclesiastical speculations discovered it in the Conciliar assemblies and the Sacrament of the Supper, there was a parallel movement known as Mysticism, which found the real presence in the soul. To the French mystics, greatest of whom was St. Bernard of the 12th century, the presence of God was the obverse side of their own absence from the world. The Germans Eckhart and Tauler, the Dutch Thomas Kempis, and others took up the theme, and wove it into a kind of new Stoicism, by way of purification, illumination, and union. They taught (following Thomas Aquinas) that the soul can even here upon earth so receive God within itself as to enjoy in the fullest sense the vision of His being, and dwell in heaven itself (Harnack, Outlines of the Hist. of Dogma, p. 440). This practice of the presence of God (Brother Lawrence) was the religious side of the preparation for Luther and his gospel for the people. He taught that Christianity was not a matter of consent to doctrine, as with the scholastics; or a method of losing oneself in the eternal, as with the mystics; but realizing the Divine presence as found through faith in Christ in the freedom of a Christian man. Luther, commenting in his pointed way on Gal 2:16, says: Faith is, if I may use the expression, creative of Divinity, not, of course, in the substance of God, but in ourselves. And again: When we truly say that He is Christ, we mean that He was given for us, without any works of ours, has won for us the Spirit of God, and has made us children of God so that we might become lords of all things in heaven and earththat is faith (Erl. ed. 13, 251; Herrmann, Communion with God, p. 125). The primary authority of the inward witness thus established by Luther has been most fully apprehended for practical purposes by George Fox and his followers. A bright example was John Woolman (b. 1720), who, in taking his stand against prevailing customs sanctioned by the Church, records in his diary (ch. 4): The fear of the Lord so covered me at times that my way was made easier than I expected. And this independent standpoint, for the sake of humanity, has found poetical expression in Lowell, Whittier, and, in a fashion, Whitman. John Wesley, too, coming from his earlier devotion to Mysticism to his doctrine of assurance, repeated the experience of Luther, and, by means of an evangelical theology, helped men to see that humanity is the proper organ of the Divine presence. This has been the inspiration of modern reformers and philanthropists, but the full bearings of this truth have not yet been realized by the churches. A new vindication of the souls authority in matters of faith has been undertaken by A. Ritschl and his disciples-Harnack, Herrmann, and the rest. With them the Divine Man Jesus, separated from every ceremony, doctrine, or dream, vouches for the inward presence of God to the soul that believes. By their theory of value-judgments they throw the whole proof of the presence of God upon the faculties of the soul.
Literature.Harnack, Hist. of Dogma, or Outlines; Matheson, Growth of the Spirit of Christianity; Fairbairn, Christ in Mod. Theol., bk. i.; Herrmann, Communion with God; Imitation of Christ; John Woolmans Journal; J. Campbell Whittier, Poems; Stopford Brooke, Christ in Mod. Life; Watson, Inspiration of our Faith, 274; Moore, From Advent to Advent, 63, 98; D. Young, Crimson Book, 237; Phillips Brooks, Mystery of Iniquity, 277.
A. Norman Rowland.
Fuente: A Dictionary Of Christ And The Gospels
Presence
prezens: In the Old Testament nearly always the rendition of , panm, face (Gen 3:8; Exo 33:14 f; Psa 95:2; Isa 63:9, etc.); occasionally of , ayin, eye (Gen 23:11; Deu 25:9; Jer 28:1, Jer 28:11, etc.); and in 1Ki 8:22; Pro 14:7, the presence of represents the preposition , neghedh, before; compare also Aramaic , kodham, in Dan 2:27 the King James Version (the Revised Version (British and American) before). In Greek, presence has an exact equivalent in , parousa, but this word is rendered presence only in 2Co 10:10; Phi 2:12; the Revised Version (British and American); Phi 1:26 (the King James Version coming). Elsewhere parousia is rendered coming, but always with presence in the margin. Otherwise in the New Testament presence represents no particular word but is introduced where it seems to suit the context (compare e.g. Act 3:13 the King James Version and Act 3:19). See PAROUSIA.
Fuente: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
Presence
see FACE, No. 1 (also APPEARANCE, No. 2).
see COMING (Noun), No. 3.
see BEFORE, A, No. 4.
is translated “in the presence of” in Luk 1:19; Luk 13:26; Luk 14:10; Luk 15:10; Joh 20:30; Rev 14:10 (twice); in 1Co 1:29 AV, “in His presence” (RV, “before God”): see BEFORE, A, No. 9.
kata, “down,” and No. 2, “in the very presence of,” is translated “before the presence of” in Jud 1:24. See BEFORE, A, No. 10.
“over against, opposite to,” is translated “in the presence of” in Act 3:16. See BEFORE, A, No. 7.