Synonyms of the New Testament

passage more, Olympiodorus, a later Platonist, styles

recollection or reminiscence, which must be carefully dis-

tinguished from memory,¹ the paliggenesi of knowledge

¹ The very purpose of the passage in Olympiodorus is to bring out

the old Aristotelian and Platonic distinction between ‘memory’ (mnh

Gedachtniss) and ‘recollection’ or ‘reminiscence’ (a]na, Heb. x. 3;

Wiedererinnerung), the first being instinctive, and common to beasts

with men, the second being the reviving of faded impressions by a distinct

act of the will, the reflux, at the bidding of the mind, of knowledge

which has once ebbed (Plato, Philebus, 34 b; Legg. v. 732 b: a]na

d ] e]sti>n e]pir]r[oh> fronh: cf. Philo, Cong. Erud. Grat. 8),
62 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § XVIIII.
(Journal des Savans, 1834, p. 488): paliggenesi

gnw.

Paliggenesi, which has thus in heathen and Jewish

Greek the meaning of a recovery, a restoration, a revival,

yet never reaches, or even approaches, there the depth of

meaning which it has acquired in Christian language.

The word does not once occur in the 0. T. (but pa

gi at Job xiv. 14; cf. Josephus, Con. Apion. ii.

30), and only twice in the New (Matt. xix. 28; Tit. iii.

5); but on these two occasions (as is most remarkable),

with meanings apparently different. In our Lord's own

words there is evident reference to the new-birth of the

whole creation, the a]pokata (Acts iii. 21),

which shall be when the Son of Man hereafter comes in his

glory; while "the washing of regeneration" whereof St.

Paul speaks, has to do with that new-birth, not of the

whole travailing creation, but of the single soul, which is

now evermore finding place. Is then paliggenesi used

in two different senses, with no common bond binding the

diverse uses of it together? By no means: all laws of

language are violated by any such supposition. The fact

is, rather, that the word by our Lord is used in a wider,

by his Apostle in a narrower, meaning. They are two

circles of meaning, one comprehending more than the

other, but their centre is the same. The paliggenesi

which Scripture proclaims begins with the mikro

of single souls; but it does not end with this; it does not

cease its effectual working till it has embraced the whole

makro of the universe. The primary seat of the

paliggenesi is the soul of man; it is of this that St. Paul

speaks; but, having established its centre there, it extends

in ever-widening circles; and, first, to his body; the day

of resurrection being the day of paliggenesi for it. It

and as such proper only to man (Aristotle, De Hist. Anim. i. I. 15;

Brandis, Aristoteles, pp. 1148-53). It will at once be seen that of this

latter only Olympiodorus could say, that it is paliggenesi.

§ XVIII. SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 63

follows that those Fathers had a certain, though only a

partial, right, who at Matt. xix. 28 made paliggenesi

equivalent to a]na, and themselves continually used

the words as synonymous (Eusebius, Hist Eccl. v. I. 58;

iii. 23; Euthymius: paliggenesi

a]na; see Suicer, s. v.). Doubtless

our Lord there implies, or presupposes, the resurrection,

but he also includes much more. Beyond the day of

resurrection, or, it may be, contemporaneous with it, a

day will come when all nature shall put off its soiled work-

day garments, and clothe itself in its holy-day attire, "the

times of restitution of all things " (Acts iii. 21); of what

Plutarch, reaching out after this glorious truth, calls the

metako (De ac. in Orbe Lunae, 13); of ‘the new

heaven and the new earth’ (Rev. xxi. 1; Isai: lxv. 17; lxvi.

22; 2 Pet. iii. 13) a day by St. Paul regarded as one in

the labour-pangs of which all creation is groaning and

travailing until now (Rom. viii. 21-23).¹ Man is the pre-

sent subject of the paliggenesi, and of the wondrous

change which it implies; but in that day it will have

included within its limits that whole world of which man

is the central figure: and here is the reconciliation of the

two passages, in one of which it is contemplated as per-

taining to the single soul, in the other to the whole re-

deemed creation. These refer both to the same event, but

at different epochs and stages of its development. ‘Palin-

genesia,' as Delitzsch says concisely and well (Apologetik,

¹ Parallels from heathen writers are very often deceptive, none are

more likely to prove so than those which Seneca offers; on which see

Lightfoot in an Appendix to his Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the

Galatians, p. 268, sqq. ; and also Aubertin, Sur les Rapports supposes entre

Seneque et S. Paul. And yet, with the fullest admission of this, the

words which follow mint be acknowledged as remarkable (Ep. 102):

'Quemadmodum novem mensibus nos tenet maternus uterus, et praeparat

non sibi sed illi loco in vem videmur emitti, jam idunei spiritum trahere,

et in aperto durare, sic par hoc spatium quod ab infantia patet in senectu-

tem, in alium naturae sumimur partum, alia origo nos expectat, alius rerum

status.'

64 SYNONYMS OF THE N EW TESTAMENT. § XVIII.

p. 213), ist kurzer Ausdruck fur die Wiedergeburt oder

Verklarung de menschlichen Leiblichkeit und der ausser-

menschlichen. Gesammtnatur.' Compare Engelhardt,

Weltverklarung und Welterneuerung in the Zeitschrift fur

Luther. Theol. 871, p. 48, sqq.

]Anage, a word common enough with the Greek

Fathers (see Suicer, s. v.), nowhere occurs in the N. T.,

although the verb a]nagenna twice (I Pet. i. 3, 23). Did

we meet it there, it would constitute a closer synonym

to paliggenesi than a]nakai can do; a]nage

(=regeneratio) bringing out the active operation of Him

who is the author of the new-birth; while paliggenesi

(=renascentia) is that same new-birth itself. But not

urging this further, we have now to speak of a]nakai

(=renovatio), of the relations in which it stands to palig-

genesi, and the exact limits to the meaning of each.

And first it is worth observing that while the word

paliggenesi drawn from the realm of nature, a]nakai<-

nwsij is derives from that of art. A word peculiar to the

Greek of the N. T., it occurs there only twice—once in

connexion with paliggenesi (Tit. iii. 5), and again at

Rom. xii. 2; but we have the verb a]nakaino, which also

is exclusively a N. T. form, at 2 Cor. iv. 16; Col. iii. 10;

and the more classical a]nakaini, Heb. vi. 6, from which

the nouns, frequent in the Greek Fathers, a]nakainismo

and a]nakai¹ are more immediately drawn; we have

also a]naneo at Ephes. iv. 23; all in similar uses. More

on these words will be found in § lx. Our Collect for

Christmas day expresses excellently well the relation in

which the paliggenesi and the a]naki stand to each

other; we there pray, ‘that we being regenerate,’ in other

words, having been already made the subjects of the

paliggenesi ‘may daily be renewed by the Holy Spirit,’
¹ Thus Gregory of Nazianzus (Orat. 10): a]name

sxhmatismo