The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1535 page)

Metaphysical(s) Poets
.

Term applied by Samuel Johnson to a group of 17th-cent. Christian poets (especially J.
Donne
, G.
Herbert
, T.
Traherne
, H.
Vaughan
). He intended it as a term of dismissal, but they have come to be recognized as, collectively, one of the finest expressions of Christian poetry.

 
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Metaphysics
.

The study of the most fundamental constituents of reality. The term was given by a later editor to a series of treatises by
Aristotle
, because the topics covered came after (
meta
) the philosophy of nature (
physics
). In those treatises Aristotle dealt with topics which do not belong to any particular science, both the analysis of fundamental concepts like ‘substance’, ‘cause’, ‘form’, and ‘matter’, and theological questions, especially that of the ‘Unmoved Mover’.
The Logical Positivists dismissed metaphysical claims as meaningless, because unverifiable (A. J. Ayer,
Language, Truth and Logic
, 1936). More recently, P. F. Strawson has distinguished between ‘descriptive’ metaphysics, which is content to describe the actual structure of our thought about the world, and ‘revisionary’ metaphysics, which aims to produce a better structure (
Individuals
, 1959). The former at least remains a lively and respected branch of philosophy today.

 
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Metatron
.

Angel
mentioned in Jewish apocalyptic literature. The
kabbalists
noted that his name could be spelt (in Hebrew) either with seven letters or with six. They identified the seven-letter Metatron with the supreme emanation from the
Shekhinah
, while the six-letter Metatron was
Enoch
.

 
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Metempsychosis
.

The passing of some quintessential part or consequence of a person (e.g. soul or spirit) from one body to another through the process of death. It is frequently known as ‘rebirth’, especially in Indian religions, but in Buddhism there is no ‘self’ being reborn, only the process of caused and causal change.

 
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Methodism
.

A Christian denomination, itself made up of several parts, deriving from the preaching and ministry of John and Charles
Wesley
, and initially of George
Whitefield
. The term ‘methodist’ was in origin used derisively by opponents of the Holy Club at Oxford, but Wesley used it from 1729 to mean the methodical pursuit of biblical holiness. The rapid success of Methodism, reaching places and people that the established Church did not, soon set up a tension, since the class system seemed to be setting up a ‘parish’ within a parish, especially when those converted wanted no connection with the parish church. In any case, Wesley was compelled by the shortage of ordained preachers in America (after the war of Independence) to ordain his fellow presbyter, Thomas Coke (1747–1814), as Superintendent over ‘the brethren in America’, who became the Methodist Episcopal Church; the title of Superintendent became that of Bishop in 1787. Many divisions occurred in the 19th cent.: the Methodist Episcopal Church divided in 1844 over the issue of slavery; before that, two black Churches had been established, the
African Methodist Episcopal
(1816) and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion (1820), which now number over 4 million. Among many groups in Britain, the Wesleyan, Primitive, and United Methodists came together in the Methodist Church of Great Britain and Ireland, in 1932. In the USA, a similar process brought into being the United Methodist Church in 1968. The World Methodist Council was set up in 1951, not only to draw Methodists together, but to seek transconfessional actions and unions. Methodists number about 60 million in 100 countries.

 
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Methodius
:

see
CYRIL AND METHODIUS
.