The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1683 page)

Neo-Orthodoxy
.

1
A modernist faction among the
Orthodox Jewish
community. As a movement, Neo-Orthodoxy was established in the late 19th cent. under the leadership of Samson Raphael
Hirsch
. He taught the principle of
Torah
‘im derekh erez
(‘Torah [in harmony] with the way of life’) i.e. careful observance of
mitzvot
(commandments) and customs combined with a positive attitude to secular life where no conflict obtained.
2
A Protestant Christian reaction against 19th-cent. liberalism in theology. The reaction was not organized, and is particularly associated with K.
Barth
. Quintessentially, Neo-Orthodoxy rejected the liberal belief that it is possible to argue from experience to God, or, more extremely, that theology is disguised anthropology. For Neo-Orthodoxy, the word and revelation of God constitute a disjunctive act which cannot be subordinated to human judgement: this self-revelation is uniquely embodied in Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh.

 
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Neo-Paganism
.

A variety of
witchcraft
and other movements such as the
Pagan Pathfinders
that have emerged in recent times to revive and spread what is called the pagan way of being, to protect pagan sacred places and more generally Mother Earth.

 
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Neoplatonism
.

The philosophy of
Plotinus
and his followers, derived (remotely) from Plato. After Plotinus, its most outstanding proponents were
Porphyry
, Iamblichus (3rd/4th cent. CE), Eunapius of Sardis, and
Proclus
. The major aim of Neoplatonism was to provide a satisfactory account of the relationship of the One to the many. Between the One at the summit of the hierarchy of beings and the material world, it proposed a series of intermediaries. The progressively less perfect intermediaries are constituted by procession from their respective sources. Through abstractive thought, the soul can return to its source and be mystically united with it.
In this way, God is abstracted into absolute transcendence, and is protected from involvement in the material and evil; and human beings (who have in them some aspect of the divine) can return upwards to God, the ‘flight of the alone to the Alone’.
In Islam,
falsafah
(philosophy) made no particular distinction between Plato, Aristotle, and Neoplatonism, since it was concerned only with the opportunity of philosophy, not its history. The translation of what was taken to be Aristotle began in the reign of al-Ma’m
n (d. 833 (AH 218)), and through these endeavours, Greek philosophy and its texts were effectively rescued for the world, with many texts surviving only because of this Muslim interest. Neoplatonism entered Muslim thought in this way, though often attributed to Aristotle (e.g. when books iv and vi of Plotinus'
Enneads
were translated); al-Kind
and
al-Far
b
were key figures in the establishing of this way of thought, though the major figures were
ibn S
n
and
ibn Rushd
, and
ibn ‘Arab
on the mystical side.