Synonyms of the New Testament

praeter-

mission,’ ‘Vorbeilassung,’—the pa, the

praetermassion or passing by of sins for the present, leaving

it open in the future either entirely to remit, or else

adequately to punish them, as may seem good to Him

who has the power and right to do the one or the other.

Fritzsche is not always to my mind, but here he speaks

out plainly and to the point (Ad Rom. vol. i. p. 199):

‘Convenient in hoc [a@fesij et pa] quod sive illa, sive

haec tibi obtigerit, nulla peccatorum tuorum ratio habetur;

discrepant eo, quod, hac data, facinorum tuorum poenas

nunquam pendes; illa concessa, non diutius nullas pec-

catorum tuorum poenas lues, quam ei in iis connivere pla-

cuerit, cui in delicta tua animadvertendi jus sit.' And

the classical usage both of parie and of pa bears

out this distinction. Thus Xenophon (Hipp. 7. 10)

a[marth parie: while of Herod

Josephus tells us, that being desirous to punish a certain

offence, yet for other considerations he passed it by (Antt.

xv. 3. 2): parh?ke th>n a[marti. When the Son of Sirach

(Ecclus. xxiii. 2) prays that God would not "pass by" his

sins, he assuredly does not use ou] mh> par^? as= ou] mh> a]f^?,

but only asks that he may not be without a wholesome

§ XXXIII. SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 117

chastisement following close on his transgressions. On the

other side, and in proof that pa, the following

passage from Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Antt. Rom. vii.

37), is adduced: th>n me>n o[losxerh? pan

de> ei]j xron e@labon.¹ Not pa,

however, here, but o[losxerh>j pa, is equal to a@fesij,

and no doubt the historian added that epithet, feeling that

pawould have insufficiently expressed his meaning

without it.

Having seen, then, that there is a strong prima facie

probability that St. Paul intends something different by

the pa, in the only place where he

employs this phrase, from that which he intends in the

many where he employs a@fesij, that passage itself, namely

Rom. iii. 25, may now be considered more closely. It

appears in our Version: "Whom God hath set forth to

be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare

his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past,

through the forbearance of God." I would venture to

render it thus: ‘Whom God hath set forth as a propitia-

tion, through faith in his blood, for a manifestation of

his righteousness because of the praetermission [dia> th>n

pa, not dia> th?j pare], in the forbearance of God,

of the sins done aforetime;’ and his exact meaning I

take to be this—‘There needed a signal manifestation of

the righteousness of God, on account of the long praeter-

mission or passing over of sins, in his infinite forbearance,

with no adequate expression of his wrath against them,

during all those long years which preceded the coming of

Christ; which manifestation of God's righteousness found

place, when He set forth no other and no less than his

own Son to be the propitiatory sacrifice for sin' (Heb. ix.

¹ Still more unfortunate is a passage to which Losner (Obss. e Philone,

p. 249) refers from Philo (Quod Det. Pot. Ins. 47) in proof that pa

=a@fesij. A glance at the actual words is sufficient to show that Losner,

through some inadvertence, has misunderstood its meaning altogether.

118 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § XXXIII.
15, 22). During long ages God's extreme indignation

against sin and sinners had not been pronounced; during

all the time, that is, which preceded the Incarnation. Of

course, this connivance of God, this his holding of his

peace, was only partial; for St. Paul has himself just

before declared that the wrath of God was revealed from

heaven against all unrighteousness of men (Rom. i. 18);

and has traced in a few fearful lines some ways in which

this revelation of his wrath displayed itself (i. 24-32).

Yet for all this, it was the time during which He suffered

the nations to walk in their own ways (Acts xiv. 16); they

were "the times of ignorance" which "God winked at"

(Acts xvii. 30), in other words, times of the a]noxh> tou?

qeou?, this a]noxh< being the correlative of pa, as xa

is of a@fesij: so that the finding of a]noxh< here is a strong

confirmation of that view of the word which has been just

maintained.

But this position in regard of sin could, in the very

nature of things, be only transient and provisional. With

a man, the praetermission of offences, or ‘praeterition,’ as

Hammond would render it (deducing the word, but

wrongly, from pa, ‘praetereo’), will often be identical

with the remission, the pa will be one with the a@fesij.

Man forgets; he has not power to bring the long past into

judgment, even if he would; or he has not righteous energy

enough to will it. But with an absolutely righteous God,

the pa can only be temporary, and must always find

place with a looking on to a final settlement; forbearance is

no acquittance; every sin must at last either be absolutely

forgiven, or adequately avenged; for, as the Russian proverb

tells us, ‘God has no bad debts.’ But in the meanwhile,

so long as these are still uncollected, the pa itself

might seem to call in question the absolute righteousness

of Him who was thus content to pass by and to connive.

God held his peace, and it was only too near to the evil

thought of men to think wickedly that He was such a one

§ XXXIII. SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 119

as themselves, morally indifferent to good and to evil.

That such with too many was the consequence of the

a]noxh> tou? qeou?, the Psalmist himself declares (Ps. 1. 21;

cf. Job xxii. 13; Mal. ii. 17; Ps. lxxiii. II). But now (e]n

t&? nu?n kair&?) God, by the sacrifice of his Son, had ren-

dered such a perverse misreading of his purpose in the

past dissimulation of sin for ever impossible. Bengel

‘Objectum praetermissionis [pare], peccata; tolerantiae

[a]noxh?j], peccatores, contra quos non est persecutus Deus

jus suum. Et haec et illa quamdiu fuit, non ita apparuit

justitia Dei: non enim tam vehementer visus est irasci

peccato, sed peccatorem sibi relinquere, a]melei?n, negligere,

Heb. viii. 9. At in sanguine Christi et morte propitiatoria

ostensa est Dei justitia, cum vindicta odversus peccatum

ipsum, ut esset ipse justus, et cum zelo pro peccatoris

liberatione, ut esset ipse justificans.’ Compare Hammond

(in loc.), who has seized with accuracy and precision the

true distinction between the words; and Godet, Comm.

sur l'Epitre aux Rom. iii. 25, 26, who deals admirably with

the whole passage.

He, then, that is partaker of the a@fesij, has his sins

forgiven, so that, unless he bring them back upon himself

by new and further disobedience (Matt. xviii. 32, 34

2 Pet. i. 9; ii. 20), they shall not be imputed to him, or

mentioned against him any more. The pa, differing

from this, is a benefit, but a very subordinate one; it is

the present passing by of sin, the suspension of its punish-

ment, the not shutting up of all ways of mercy against the

sinner, the giving to him of space and helps for repentance,

as it is said at Wisd. xi. 24: paror%?j a[marth


ei]j meta: cf. Rom. ii. 3-6. If such repentance follow,

then the pawill lose itself in the a@fesij, but if not,

then the punishment, suspended, but not averted, in due

time will arrive (Luke xiii. 9).

120 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § XXXIV.
§ xxxiv. mwrologi.
ALL these designate sins of the tongue, but with a differ-

ence.

Mwrologi, employed by Aristotle (Hist. Anim. i. II),

but of rare use till the later Greek, is rendered well in the

Vulgate, on the one occasion of its occurrence (Ephes. v. 4),

by ‘stultiloquium,’ a word which Plautus may have coined

(Mil. Glor. ii. 3. 25); although one which did not find more

favour and currency in the after language of Rome, than did

the ‘stultiloquy’ which Jeremy Taylor sought to introduce

among ourselves. Not merely the pa?n r[h?ma a]rgo of our

Lord (Matt. xii. 36), but in good part also the pa?j lo

saproof his Apostle (Ephes. iv. 29), will be included in

it; discourse, as everything else in the Christian, needing

to be seasoned with the salt of grace, and being in danger

of growing first insipid, and then corrupt, without it. Those

who stop short with the a]rga> r[h, as though mwrologi

reached no further, fail to exhaust the fulness of its mean-

ing. Thus Calvin too weakly: Sermones inepti ac inanes,

nulliusque frugis;' and even Jeremy Taylor (On the Good

and Evil Tongue, Serra. xxxii. pt. 2) fails to reproduce the

full force of the word. ‘That,’ he says, which is here

meant by stultiloquy or foolish speaking is the "lubricum

verbi," as St. Ambrose calls it, the "slipping with the

tongue" which prating people often suffer, whose dis-

courses betray the vanity of their spirit, and discover

"the hidden man of the heart."' In heathen writings

mwrologi may very well pass as equivalent to a]dolesxi,

‘random talk,’ and mwrologei?n to lhrei?n (Plutarch, De Garr.

4); but words obtain a new earnestness when assumed

into the ethical terminology of Christ's school. Nor, in

seeking to enter fully into the meaning of this one, ought

we to leave out of sight the greater emphasis which the

words ‘fool,’ ‘foolish,’ ‘folly,’ obtain in Scripture, than

§ XXXIV. SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 121

elsewhere they have, or can have. There is the positive

of folly as well as the negative to be taken account of,

when we are weighing the force of mwrologi: it is that

‘talk of fools,’ which is foolishness and sin together.

Ai]sxrologi, which also is of solitary use in the N. T.

(Col. iii. 8), must not be confounded with ai]sxro

(Ephes. v. 4). By it the Greek Fathers (see Suicer, Thes.

s. v.), whom most expositors follow, have understood ob-

scene discourse, ‘turpiloquium,’ ‘filthy communication’

(E. V.), such as ministers to wantonness, o@xhma pornei,

as Chrysostom explains it. Clement of Alexandria, in a

chapter of his Paedagogus, peri> ai]sxrologi (ii. 6), recog-

nizes no other meaning but this. Now, beyond a doubt,

ai]sxrologi has sometimes this sense predominantly, or

even exclusively (Xenophon, De Rep. Lac. v. 6; Aristotle,

Pol. vii. 15; Epictetus, Man. xxxiii. 16; see, too, Becker,

Charikles, 1st ed. vol. ii. p. 264). But more often it in-

dicates all foul-mouthed abusiveness of every kind, not

excluding this, one of the most obvious kinds, readiest to

hand, and most offensive, but including, as in the well-

known phrase, ai]sxrologi, other kinds as well.

Thus, too, Polybius (viii. 13. 8; 13. 3; xxxi. 10. 4):

ai]sxrologi loidori tou? basile: while the

author of a treatise which passes under Plutarch's name

(De Lib. Ed. 14), denouncing all ai]sxrologi as unbecom-

ing to youth ingenuously brought up, includes therein

every license of the ungoverned tongue employing itself

in the abuse of others, all the wicked condiments of saucy

speech (h[du th?j par]r[hsi); nor can I doubt

that St. Paul intends to forbid the same, the context and

company in which the word is used by him going far to

prove as much; seeing that all other sins Against which

he is here warning are outbreaks of a loveless spirit toward

our neighbour.

Eu]trapeli, a finely selected word of the world's use,

which, however, St. Paul uses not in the world's sense,

122 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § XXXIV.
like its synonyms, occurs only once in the N. T. (Ephes.

v. 4). Derived from eu# and tre

(eu]tra


eu@tropoi, Aristotle, Eth. Nic. iv. 8. 4; cf. Pott, Etym.

Forsch. vol. v. p. 136), that which easily turns, and in this

way adapts, itself to the shifting circumstances of the

hour, to the moods and conditions of those with whom at

the instant it may deal;¹ it had very slightly and rarely,

in classical use, that evil signification which, as used by

St. Paul and the Greek Fathers, is the only one which it

knows. That St. Paul could be himself eu]tra
in

the better sense of the word, he has given illustrious

proof (Acts xxvi. 29). Thucydides, in that panegyric of

the Athenians which he puts into the mouth of Pericles,

employs eu]trape (ii. 41) as= eu]kinh, to characterize

the ‘versatile ingenium’ of his countrymen; while Plato

(Rep. viii. 563 a) joins eu]trapeli with xarientismo, as do

also Plutarch (De Adul. et Am. 7) and Josephus (Antt. xii.

4. 3); Isocrates (Or. xv. 316) with filologi; Philo (Leg.

ad Cai. 45) with xa. For Aristotle, also, the eu]tra

or e]pide (Ethic. Nic. 7; iv. 8; compare Brandis,

Aristoteles, p. 1415) is one who keeps the happy mean

between the bwmolo, and the a@grioj, a]groi?koj, or

sklhro. He is no mere gelwtopoio or buffoon; but,

in whatever pleasantry or banter he may allow himself,

still xari or refined, always restraining himself within

the limits of becoming mirth (e]mmelw?j pai), never

ceasing to be the gentleman. Thus P. Volumnius, the

friend or acquaintance of Cicero and of Atticus, bore the

name ‘Eutrapelus,’ on the score of his festive wit and

talent of society: though certainly there is nothing par-

Chrysostom, who, like most great teachers, often turns etymology

into the materials of exhortation, does not fail to do so here. To other

reasons why the Christians should renounce eu]trapeli he adds this

(Hom. 17 in Ephes.): !Ora kai> au]to> tou@noma: eu]tra

o[ pantodapo>j o[ a@statoj, o[ eu@koloj, o[ pa po

t^? Pemeqi.

§ XXXIV. SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 123

ticularly amiable in the story which Horace (Epp. i. 18.

31-36) tells about him.

With all this there were not wanting, even in classical

usage, anticipations of that more unfavourable signification

which St. Paul should stamp upon the word, though they

appear most plainly in the adjective eu]tra

: thus, see

Isocrates, Orat. vii. 49; and Pindar, Pyth. 92; iv. 104;

where Jason, the model of a noble-hearted gentleman,

affirms that during twenty years of fellowship in toil he

has never spoken to his companions e@poj eu]tra
, ‘ver-

bum fucatum, fallax, simulatum:' Dissen on this last pas-

sage traces well the downward progress of eu]tra
:

‘Primum est de facilitate in motu, tum ad mores trans-

fertur, et indicat hominem temporibus inservientem, dici-

turque tum de sermone urbano, lepido, faceto, imprimis

cum levitatis et assentationis, simulationis notatione.'

Eu]trapeli, thus gradually sinking from a better meaning

to a worse, has a history closely resembling that of ‘ur-

banitas’ (Quintilian, vi. 3.17); which is its happiest Latin

equivalent, and that by which Erasmus has rendered it,

herein improving much on the ‘jocularitas’ of Jerome, still

more on the ‘scurrilitas’ of the Vulgate, which last is

wholly wide of the mark. That ‘urbanitas’ is the proper

word, this quotation from Cicero attests (Pro Cael. 3):

‘Contumelia, si petulantius jactatur, convicium; si face-

tius, urbanitas nominatur;' which agrees with the striking

phrase of Aristotle, that eu]trapeliis u!brij pepaideume:

‘chastened insolence’ is Sir Alexander Grant's happy

rendering (Rhet. ii. 12; cf. Plutarch, Cic. 50). Already in

Cicero's time (De Fin. ii. 31) ‘urbanitas’ was beginning

to obtain that questionable significance which, in the usage

of Tacitus (Hist. ii. 88) and Seneca (De Ira, i. 28), it far

more distinctly acquired. The history, in our own lan-

guage, of ‘facetious’ and ‘facetiousness’ would supply a

not uninstructive parallel.

But the fineness of the form in which evil might array

124 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § XXXIV.
itself could not make a Paul more tolerant of the evil it-

self; he did not count that sin, by losing all its coarse-

ness, lost half, or any part of, its malignity. So far from

this, in the finer banter of the world, its ‘persiflage,’ its

‘badinage,’ there is that which would attract many, who

would be in no danger of lending their tongue to speak,

or their ear to hear, foul-mouthed and filthy abuse; whom

scurrile buffoonery would only revolt and repel. A far

subtler sin is noted in this word than in those which went

before, as Bengel puts it well: ‘Haec subtilior quam

turpitudo aut stultiloquium; nam ingenio nititur;’ xa

a@xarij, as Chrysostom has happily called it; and Jerome:

‘De prudenti mente descendit, et consulto appetit quadam

vel urbana verba, vel rustica, vel turpia, vel faceta.’ I

should only object, in this last citation, to the ‘turpia,’

which belong rather to the other forms in which men

offend with the tongue than to this. The eu]tra

always, as Chrysostom notes, a]stei?a le: keeps ever in

mind what Cicero has said (De Oral. ii. 58): ‘Haec ri-

dentur vel maxime, quae notant et designant turpitudinem

aliquam non turpiter.' What he deals in are xa,

although, in the striking language of the Son of Sirach,

xa (Ecclus. xx. 13). Polish, refinement, know-

ledge of the world, presence of mind, wit, must all be his;

—these, it is true, enlisted in the service of sin, and not

in that of the truth. The very profligate old man in the

Miles Gloriosus of Plautus (iii. I. 42-5 2), who prides him-

self, and not without reason, on his wit, his elegance, and

refinement (‘cavillator facetus,’ ‘conviva commodus’),

is exactly the eu]tra

: and, keeping in mind that eu]-

trapeli, being only once expressly and by name forbidden

in Scripture, is forbidden to Ephesians, it is not a little

notable to find him urging that all this was to be expected

from him, being as he was an Ephesian by birth :

‘Post Ephesi sum natus; non enim in Apulis, non Animulae!'
See on this word's history, and on the changes through

§ XXXV. SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 125

which it has passed, an interesting and instructive article

by Matthew Arnold in the Cornhill Magazine, May, 1879.

While then by all these words are indicated sins of the

tongue, it is yet with this difference,—that in mwrologi

the foolishness, in ai]sxrologi the foulness, in eu]trapeli

the false refinement, of discourse not seasoned with the

salt of grace, are severally noted and condemned.
§ xxxv. latreu.
IN both these words the notion of service lies, but of

service under certain special limitations in the second, as

compared with the first. Latreu, allied to la, ‘a

hired servant,’ la, ‘hire,’ and perhaps to lei,

(so Curtius), is, properly, ‘to serve for hire,’ and therefore

not of compulsion, as does a slave, though the line of

separation between la and dou?loj is by no means

always observed. Already in classical Greek both it and

latrei are occasionally transferred from the service of

men to the service of the higher powers; as by Plato,

Apol. 23 c: h[ tou? qeou? latrei: cf. Phaedr. 244 e; and

Euripides, Troad. 450, where Cassandra is h[ ]Apo

la: and a meaning, which in Scripture is the only one,

is anticipated in part. In the Septuagint, latreu never

expresses any other service but either that of the true

God, or of the false gods of heathenism; for Deut. xxviii.

48, a seeming exception, is not such in fact; and Augus-

tine has perfect right when he says (De Civ. Dei, x. I, 2):

]Latrei secundum consuetudinem qua locuti sunt qui

nobis divina eloquia, condiderunt, aut semper, aut tam

frequenter ut paene semper, ea dicitur servitus quae pertinet

ad colendum Deum;' and again (con. Faust. xx. 21): ‘Cultus

qui graece latria dicitur, latine uno verbo dici non potest,

cum sit quaedam proprie divinitati debita servitus.'

Leitourgei?n boasts a somewhat nobler beginning; from

lei?toj (=dhmo), and e@rgon: and thus ei]j to> dhmo

126 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § XXXV.

e]rga, to serve the State in a public office or function.

Like latreu, it was occasionally transferred to the highest

ministry of all, the ministry to the gods (Diodorus Siculus,

i. 2 1). When the Christian Church was forming its ter-

minology, which it did partly by shaping new words, but

partly by elevating old ones to higher than their previous

uses, of the latter kind it more readily adopted those be-

fore employed in civil and political life, than such as had

already played their part in religious matters; and this,

even when it was seeking for the adequate expression of

religious truth. The same motives were here at work which

induced the Church more willingly to turn basilicas,—

buildings, that is, which had been used in civil life,--than

temples, into churches; namely, because they were less

haunted with the clinging associations of heathenism. Of

the fact itself we have a notable example in the words

leitourgo, leitourgi, and in the prominent

place in ecclesiastical language which they assumed. At

the same time the way for their adoption into a higher use

had been prepared by the Septuagint, in which leitourgei?n

(=trewe) is the constant word for the performing of priestly

or ministerial functions (Exod. xxviii. 39; Ezek. xl. 46);

and by Philo (De Prof. 464). Neither in the Septuagint,

however, nor yet by the Christian writers who followed,

were the words of this group so entirely alienated from

their primary uses as latrei and latreuhad been;

being still occasionally used for the ministry unto men

(2 Sam. xiii. 18; x. 5; 2 Kin. iv. 43; Rom. xv. 27;

Phil. ii. 25, 30).

From the distinction already existing between the words,

before the Church had anything to do with them, namely,

that latreu was 'to serve,' leitourgei?n, 'to serve in an

office and ministry,' are to be explained the different uses

to which they are severally turned in the N. T., as pre-

viously in the Septuagint. To serve God is the duty of all

men; latreu, therefore, and latrei, are demanded of

§ XXXV. SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 127
the whole people (Exod. iv. 23; Deut. x, 12; Josh. xxiv.

31; Matt. iv. 10; Luke i. 74; Acts vii. 7; Rom. ix. 4; Heb.

xii. 28); but to serve Him in special offices and ministries

can be the duty and privilege only of a few, who are set

apart to the same; and thus in the 0. T. the leitourgei?n

and the leitourgi are ascribed only to the priests and

Levites who were separated to minister in holy things;

they only are leitourgoi<, (Num. iv. 24; I Sam. ii. II;

Nehem. x. 39; Ezek. xliv. 27); which language, mutatis

mutandis, reappears in the New, where not merely is that

old priesthood and ministry designated by this language

(Luke i. 23; Heb. ix. 21; x. 11), but that of apostles, pro-

phets, and teachers in the Church (Acts xiii. 2; Rom. xv.

16; Phil. ii. 17), as well as that of the great High Priest

of our profession, tw?n a[gi (Heb. viii. 2). In

later ecclesiastical use it has been sometimes attempted to

push the special application of leitourgi still further, and

to limit its use to those prayers and offices which stand in

more immediate relation to the Holy Eucharist; but there

is no warrant in the best ages of the Church for any such

limitation; thus see Suicer, Thes. s. v.; Bingham, Christian

Antiqq. xiii. I. 8; Deyling, Obss. Sac. vol. i. p. 285;

Augusti, Christ. Archaol. vol. ii. p. 537; Scudamore, Notitia

Eucharistica, p. I I.

It may be urged against the distinction here drawn

that latreu and latrei are sometimes applied to official

ministries, as at Heb. ix. 1, 6. This is, of course, true;

just as where two circles have the same centre, the greater

will necessarily include the less. The notion of service is

such a centre here; in leitourgei?n this service finds a certain

limitation, in that it is service in an office: it follows that

every leitourgi will of necessity be a latrei, but not the

reverse, that every latrei will be a leitourgi. No passage

better brings out the distinction between these two words

than Ecclus. iv. 14: of oi[ latreu [i. e. t^? Sofi<%]

leitourgh. "They that serve her, shall

minister to the Holy One."

128 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § XXXVI.