UNDERWOOD, HORACE GRANT: Presbyterian; b. in London July 19, 1859. He was educated at New York University (B.A., 1881) and at
New Brunswick Theological Seminary. Since 1885
he has been a
missionary in Korea under the auspices of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions,
and since 1909 has been principal of the John D.
Wells Training School and president of the Korean
Religious Tract Society (both at Seoul), as well as
chairman of the board of Bible translators at Seoul
since 1889. He has likewise been professor of homiletics, church government and discipline, etc., in the
Presbyterian theological seminary at Pyeng Yang,
Korea, and in 1907 was Deems philosophical lecturer at New York University. His theological position is conservative, and he has written
EnglishKorean anal Korean-English Dictionary
(Yokohama,
1889),
Korean Grammar
(1889),
Call of
Korea
(New
York, 1908), and
Religions of Eastern Asia
(1910).
UNGODLINESS, UNGODLY: Words used in the
English Bible versions and equivalent to the Gk.
asebeia, asebes
(cf.
asebein, " to
live ungodly ":
II Pet. ii. 6;
Jude 15),
less frequently
amartSlos,
and
yet more seldom
anomos,
which in turn are the
translations in the Septuagint for the Hebrew
rasha`.
The Hebrew word
denotes in the first place only the
impious and unrighteous in the moral sense. Every
thing, however, morally evil, according to the Old Testament conception as early as the Yahwistic
narrative of the garden of Eden, is, in the final analysis, renunciation of God and disobedience to his will.
And thus all impiety in Israel is continually represented as proceeding from ungodliness. The contrast between righteousness and
ungodliness, moreover, becomes ever more marked in Israelitic and
Jewish history until two classes of men are set op-
polite each other, of which the ungodly are de
scribed, particularly in the Psalms, from the point
of view of the upright (i.e., the strict observers of
the law), as originators of trespass and
violence
toward men; and, in relation to God, as despising
his word and rebelling against him. The word
asebeia
also occurs frequently in the Old-Testament
apocrypha, especially in the Book of Sirach; but
in the New Testament it and kindred terms are rela
tively infrequent, because here unbelief comes more
to the front religiously,as the root and form of sin.
Where they are used, they mean, for the most part,
ungodliness, in the Old-Testament sense synony
mous with sin in opposition to righteousness
(
Rom. i. 18, iv. 5, v. 6, xi. 26;
I Tim. i. 9;
Titus ii. 12;
II Pet. ii. 5-6,
iii.
?).
In a sense somewhat modified
by Christianity they refer to those who remain per
sistently impervious to the Gospel
(
I Pet. iv. 18);
or to teachers of error
(
II Tim. ii. 16;
Jude 4, 15).
On the theoretical side ungodliness issues into
Atheism (q.v.).
F. Sieffert.
Bibliography:
H. Cramer, BLUlisch-theologisch Worterbuch
der neuEeatamentlichen Grhcitat, Gotha, 1889, Eng. transl.,
3d ad., Edinburgh and New
York, 1888; H. Schultz,
AZttestamentliche Theologie, pp.
818 sqq., Göttingen, 1885,
Eng. transl., London, 1892; R. amend, AltSealamentliche
Religdonageschichte, 387 sqq., 477 sqq., Freiburg, 1893; G.
Clemen, Die christlfche Lehre von der Sande, i. 88 sqq.,
Göttingen, 1897.
