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Neoorthodoxy
Neoplatonism
Nestorianism
Novatianism

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Neoorthodoxy

A twentieth-century theological school of thought which recognizes God's trancendence and the reality of sin, focusing on the existential and psychological aspects of the religious experience while denouncing the literalism of the Bible. God may be experienced through the Bible but the Bible is not considered to be propositionally true. In this view, the Bible, as written, isn't the Word of God. It becomes the Word of God only in so far as it transforms the individual. Experience with the divine is what makes scripture real, not biblical revelation, not reason. Neoorthodoxy is subjective and selective in its "orthodox" positions as it attempts to harmonize a twentieth-century scientific world view, to the Scriptures.

Written by: John Fritzius; Source material derived from The Compact Dictionary of Doctrinal Words by Terry L. Miethe; Dictionary.com; www.carm.org

Neoplatonism

Neoplatonism is the last development of Greek philosophy, in which the mind of antiquity, using many elements of the older systems, especially the Platonic, passed be-yond the realistic tendencies of the Stoics and Epi-cureans, dogmatically conquered skepticism, and rose to a height of mystic speculation which was influenced partially by Oriental and Christian ideas. This speculation was directed principally upon the Godhead and the relation to it of mankind and the universe, though physics, ethics, and logic were not wholly neglected. The theosophic-mystical tend-ency which is apparent in Plato is responsible for a desertion, to a certain extent, of the path of sci-entific strictness of reasoning followed by the older Greek philosophers, in the historical development the Neoplatonists follow immediately upon the Neopythagoreans and the Pythagoreanizing or eclectic Platonists; but the Neoplatonist school had much more that was original and independent than the school which preceded it, bringing the sum total of knowledge into a new philosophic system. As a definite school, it originated in Alexandria, where the mixture of nationalities made for a fusion of earlier philosophic and religious tendencies. Its founder was Ammonius Saccas (q.v.), who had been brought up a Christian and had then returned to Hellenism. He left no written remains, and it is thus difficult to determine his exact relation to his successors. Among his pupils were Plontinus, the two Origens (the Neoplatonist and the Christian), and Longinus the critic.

The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge,
Philip Schaff Vol. VIII (abridged)

Nestorianism

A theological doctrine that was declared heretical in 431 which taught that within Jesus are two distinct persons, divine and human, rather than a single divine person. This was a denial of the hypostatic union, that Jesus has two natures, Divine and human, as one person as defined by the teaching of the Scriptures and as codified by the Athanasian Creed.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (Joh 1:1, 14 ESV)

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Phi 2:5-8 ESV)

Athanasian Creed - points 29 - 37

Furthermore is it necessary to everlasting salvation than he also believe rightly the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
For the right faith is that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man.
God of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and man of the substance of His mother, born in the world.
Perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting.
Equal to the Father as touching His Godhead, and inferior to the Father as touching His manhood.
Who, although He is God and man, yet He is not two, but one Christ.
One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the manhood into God.
One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person.
For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Chris

Written by: John Fritzius; Source material derived from Dictionary.com; www.carm.org

Novatianism

The Novatianists following Novatius, or Novatian, held a strict view that refused readmission to communion of lapsi, those baptized Christians who had denied their faith or performed the formalities of a ritual sacrifice to the pagan gods, under the pressures of the persecution sanctioned by Emperor Decius, in AD 250. Novatian was a Roman priest who in AD 251 opposed the election of Pope Cornelius, following the assassination of Pope Fabian during the persecution, on the grounds that he was too lax in accepting the lapsed Christians. He let himself be made a rival pope, one of the first antipopes. He held that lapsed Christians, who had not maintained their confession of faith under persecution, may not be received again into communion with the church, and that second marriages are unlawful. He and his followers were excommunicated by a synod held at Rome in October of the same year. Novatian is said to have suffered martyrdom under the Emperor Valerian I (AD 253 - AD 260).

Novatian was the first Roman Christian who wrote to any considerable extent in Latin. Of his numerous writings only three are extant: a letter written in the name of the Roman clergy to Cyprian in AD 250; a treatise in thirty-one chapters, De Trinitate; and a letter written at the request of the Roman laity, De cibis judaicis. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911, characterized them as "well-arranged compositions, written in an elegant and vigorous style."

After his death, the Novationist sect spread rapidly. Those who allied themselves with the doctrines of Novatian were called Novatianists; their own name for themselves was the ?a?a???, the pure, reflecting their claim not to be participants in the lax practices of the Catholics by which they believed the Catholic church to have been corrupted. They went so far as to rebaptize their converts.

Novatianism. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved March 03, 2007, from Reference.com website: http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Novatianism