4. Logical Accommodation. In arguing with an opponent it is sometimes advantageous to take him on his own ground, or to argue from principles which he admits, for the purpose of shutting him up to a conclusion which he cannot refuse, if he would retain the premises. It does not follow from this that his ground is admitted to be the right one, or that assent is given to his principles ; the argument is simply one ad hominem, and may or may not be also ad veritatem. When it is not, that is, when its purpose is merely to shut the mouth of an opponent by a logical inference from his own principles, there is a case of logical ac commodation.
5. Doctrinal Accommodation. This takes place when opinions are advanced or statements made merely to gratify the prejudices or gain the favour of those to whom they are addressed, without re gard to their inherent soundness or truthfulness. If, for instance, the N. T. writers were found intro ducing some passage of the O. T. as a prediction which had found its fulfilment in some fact in the history of Jesus Christ or his church, merely for the purpose of overcoming Jewish prejudices, and leading those who venerated the O. T. to receive more readily the message of Christianity ; or if they were found not only clothing their ideas in language borrowed from the Mosaic ceremonial, but asserting a correspondence of meaning between that ceremonial and the fact or doctrines they an nounced when no such really existed, thereby warping truth for the sake of subduing prejudice ; they would furnish specimens of this species of accommodation.
In both respects, a charge to this effect has been brought against them. It has been alleged that when they say of any event they record, that in it was fulfilled such and such a statement of the O. T., or that the event occurred that such and such a state ment might be fulfilled, they did so merely in ac commodation to Jewish feeling and prejudices. A fitter place will be found elsewhere for considering the import of the formula: ira IrXnpw(913, rbrr br)07 4027 and the like. [QuoTATioNs.] At present it may suffice to observe, that it may be admitted that these formulas are occasionally used where there can have been no intention on the part of the writer to intimate that in the event to which they relate there was the fulfilment of a prediction ; as, for instance, where some gnome or moral maxim contained in the O. T. is said to be fulfilled by something recorded in the N. T., or some general statement is justified by a particular instance (comp. Matt. xiii. 35 ; John xv. 25 ; Rom. i. 17 ; Jam. ii. 23 ; 2 Pet. ii. 22, etc.) It may be admitted also, that there are cases where a passage in the O. T. is said to be fulfilled in some event recorded in the N. when all that is intended is that a similarity or parallelism exists between the two, as is the case, according to the opinion of most, at least, in Matt. ii. 17, iS. But whilst these admissions throw the onus probandi on those who, in any special in stance, maintain that there is in it an actual fulfil. ment of an ancient prediction, it would be pre. posterous from them to foreclose the question, and maintain that in no case is the N. T. passage to be understood as affirming the fulfilment in fact of an ancient prediction recorded in the Old. Because some accommodations of the kind specified are admitted, it would be folly to conclude that no thing but accommodation characterises such quota tions. If this position were laid down, it would not be easy to defend the N. T. writers, nay our Lord himself, from the charge of insincerity and duplicity.
Still more emphatically does this last observation apply in respect of the notion that our Lord and his apostles accommodated their teaching to the current notions and prejudices of the Jews of their own times. It might seem almost incredible that any one should venture to impute to them so un worthy and so improbable a course, were it not that we find the imputation broadly made, and the making of it defended by some very eminent men of the anti -supernaturalist school, especially in Germany. By them it has been asserted that our Lord and his disciples publicly taught many things which privately they repudiated, and an attempt has been made to save them from the charge of downright dishonesty which this would involve by an appeal to the usage of many ancient teachers who had an exoteric doctrine for the multitude, and an esoteric for their disciples. (Semler, Pro
p-alum. Acad. Sel. Hal. 1779 ; Corrodi, Ecytriige zur beforderung des verniiiiftigen Denkens in d. Religion, 15th part, p. z-25 ; P. Van Hemert, Ueber Accom. in N. T. Leipz. 1797, etc.) The prompt and thorough repudiation of such views even by such men as Wegscheider and Bret schneider renders it unnecessary to enlarge on the formal refutation of them. Cujus rei,' says the former, certa vestigia in libris sacris frustra gum. runtur.' (Instt. Theologicre p. 105, 6th ed.; see also Bretschneider, Hana'buch derDogmatish,I.,260 265, 2d ed.) These writers, however, contend that though our Lord and his apostles did not make use of a positive accommodation of their doctrine to the prejudices or ignorance of the Jews, they did not refrain from a negative accommodation ; by which they intend the use of reserve in the com munication of truth or refutation of error, and the allowing of men to retain opinions not authorised by truth without express or formal correction of them. They adduce as instances, John xvi. 12 ; vi. 15 ; Luke xxiv. 21; Acts, i. 6 ; I Cor. I, 2; Viii. 9, etc. By these passages, however, nothing more is proved than that in teaching men truth our Lord and his apostles did not tell them everything at once, but led them on from truth to truth as they were able to receive it or bear it. In this there is no accommodation of the material of doctrine; it is simply an accommodation of methoa to the capacity of the learner. In the same way Paul's assertion, which they have also cited, that he became all things to all men, that he might by all means save some (I Cor. ix. 22), is to be re garded as relating merely to the mode and order of his presenting Christian truth to man, not to his modifying in any respect the substance of what he taught. When he spoke to Jews, he opened and alleged out of their own Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ (Acts xvii. 2, 3). When he spoke to the Athenians on Mar's Hill, he started from the ground of natural religion, and addressed the reason and common sense of his audience ; but in either case it was the same Jesus that he preached, and the same gospel that he published. Had he done otherwise, he would have been found a false witness for God.
This Accommodation theory is often spoken of as identical with the historical principle of inter preting Scripture. It is so, however, only as the historical principle of interpretation means the treating of the statements of our Lord and his apostles as merely expressing the private opinions of the individual, or as historically traceable to the prevailing opinions of their day. This is not to be confounded with that true and sound principle of historical interpretation, which allows due weight to historical evidence in determining the meaning of words, and to the circumstances in which state ments were made as determining their primary appli cation and significancy. (Tittmann, Meletemata Sacra in 7oannrm, PreŁ (translated in the Biblical Cabinet) ; Storr, De Sennt Historic° Scriptura Sacra, in his Opusc. Acad. vol. I.; Abhandl. neb. d. Zwech des Todes 7esu, to ; Lehrb. d. Chr. Dogsnatik 0 13 (Eng. tr. by Schmucker, p. 67, Lond. 1836); Haupt's Bemerkungen fiber die Leh fart 7esu ; Heringa, Verhandeling, ten betooge, dat 7sus end zyn Apostelen zich doorgaans Met ges chikt hebben naar de Verkeerde denkbeelden van hunne tydgeenooten ; Planck's harm/Wean to Theo logical Sciences, in Biblical Cabinet, vol. vii.; Less's Letters on the P,inciple of Accommodation; David son, Hermeneutics, p. 199 ff.; Smith, J. P. First Lines of Christian Theology, p. 518 ; Seiler's Her nzeneutics by Wright, 0 264-276, pp. 418-438 ; Alexander, Connection and Harmony of the Old and New Testaments, pp. 45-48; 416, 2d. ed.).--W. L. A.