ACCOMMODATION (Lat. accommodare, to make fit, from ad, to, cum, with, and modus, measure)

This article appears in Volume V01, Page 122 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: A10-ADA

ACCOMMODATION (Lat. accommodare, to make fit, from ad, to, cum, with, and modus, measure) , the process of fitting, adapting, adjusting or supplying with what is needed (e.g. housing).
In theology the

term

TERM

accommodation

ACCOMMODATION (Lat. accommodare, to make fit, from ad, to, cum, with, and modus, measure)

" is used rather loosely to describe the employment of a word, phrase, sentence or idea, in a context other than that in which it originally occurred; the actual wording of the

quotation

QUOTATION

may be modified to a greater or lesser extent. Such

accommodation

ACCOMMODATION (Lat. accommodare, to make fit, from ad, to, cum, with, and modus, measure)

, though sometimes purely literary or stylistic, generally has the definite purpose of instruction, and is frequently used both in the New Testament and in pulpit utterances in all periods as a means of producing a reasonably accurate impression of a complicated idea in the minds of those who are for various reasons unlikely to comprehend it otherwise. There are roughly three main kinds. (I) A later Biblical passage quotes from an earlier, partly as a literary device, but also with a view to demonstration. Some-times it is plain that the writer deliberately " accommodates " a

quotation

QUOTATION

(cf. John xviii. 8, 9 with xvii. 12). But New Testament quotations of Old Testament predictions are often for us accommodationsstriking or forced as the case may be while the New Testament writer, " following the exegetical methods current among the Jews of his time,

Matthew

ii. 15, 18, xxvi. 31, xxvii. 9 " (S. R. Driver in Zechariah in Century Bible, pp. 259, 271), puts them forward as arguments. To say that he is merely " describing a New Testament fact in Old Testament phraseology " may be true of the result rather than of his

design

DESIGN (Fr. desiin, drawing; Lat. designare, to mark out)

. (2) Much besidesin the Bibleparable, metaphor, &c.has, been called an " accommodation," or divine condescension to human weakness. (3) German 18th-century rational-ism (see APOLOGETICS) held that the Biblical writers made

great

GREAT

use of conscious accommodationintending moral common-places when they seemed to be enunciating Christian dogmas. Another expression for this, used, e.g., by J. S. Semler, is "

economy

ECONOMY

," which also occurs in the kindred sense of " reserve " (or of Disciplina Arcania modern

term

TERM

for the supposed early Catholic habit of reserving esoteric truths). Isaac Williams on Reserve in Religious Teaching, No. 8o of Tracts for the Times, made a

great

GREAT

sensation; see R. W. Church's comments in The

Oxford

Movement

MOVEMENT

. Strictly, accommodation (2) or (3) modifies, in form or in substance, the content of religious belief; reserve,
from prudence or cunning, withholds part. "

Economy

ECONOMY

" is used in both senses.

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