Synonyms of the New Testament

n tw?n stoixei
panto>j a]nakai.

§ XVIIII. SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 65

may continually know the a]nakai.

In this Collect, uttering, as do so many, profound theolo-

gical truth in forms at once the simplest and the most ac-

curate, the new-birth is contemplated s already past, as

having found place once for all, while the 'renewal' or

'renovation' is daily proceeding—being as it is that

gradual restoration of the Divine image, which is ever

going forward in him who, through the new-birth, has

come under the transforming¹ powers of the world to

come. It is called ‘the renewal of the Holy Ghost,’ inas-

much as He is the efficient cause, by whom alone this

putting on of the new man, and putting off the old, is

brought about.

These two then are bound by closest ties to one another;

the second the following up, the consequence, the consum-

mation of the first. The paliggenesiis that free act of

God's mercy and Power, whereby He causes the sinner to

pass out of the kingdom of darkness into that of light,

out of death into life; it is the a@nwqen gennhqh?nai, of John

iii. 3; the gennhqh?nai e]k qeou? of I John v. 4; the qeogenesi

of Dionysius the Areopagite and other Greek theologians;

the gennhqh?nai e]k spora?j a]fqaof I Pet. i. 23; in

it that glorious word begins to be fulfilled, i]dou> kaina>

poiw? ta> pa (Rev. xxi. 5). In it,—not in the prepara-

tions for it, but in the act itself,—the subject of it is

passive, even as the child has nothing to do with its own

birth. With the a]nakai, it is otherwise. This is the

gradual conforming of the man more an more to that

new spiritual world into which he has been introduced,

and in which he now lives and moves; the restoration of

the Divine images; and in all this, so far from being

¹ Metamorfou?sqe t^? a]nakainw (Rom. x 2). The striking

words of Seneca (Ep. 6): Intelligo me emendari non tantum, sed trans-

figurari; are far too big to express any benefits which he could have

indeed gotten from his books and schools of philosophy; they reach out

after blessings to be obtained, not in the schools of men, but only in the

Church of the living God.

66 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § XIX.

passive, he must be a fellow-worker with God. That was

‘regeneratio,’ this is ‘renovatio;’ which two must not be

separated, but as little may be confounded, as Gerhard

(Locc. Theoll. xxi. 7. 113) has well declared: ‘Renovatio,

licet a regeneratione proprie et specialiter accepta di-

stinguatur, individuo tamen et perpetuo nexu cum ea est

conjuncta.' What infinite perplexities, conflicts, scan-

dals, obscurations of God's truth on this side and on that,

have arisen now from the confusing, and now from the

separating, of these two!
§ xix. ai]sxu.
THERE was a time when ai]dwoccupied that whole domain

of meaning afterwards divided between it and ai]sxu.

It had then the same duplicity of meaning which is latent

in the Latin ‘pudor,’ in our own ‘shame;’ and indeed

retained a certain duplicity of meaning till the last

(Euripides, Hippol. 387-389). Thus Homer, who does

not know ai]sxu), sometimes, as at Il. v. 787, uses ai]dw,

where ai]sxu would, in later Greek, have certainly been

employed; but elsewhere in that sense which, at a later

period, it vindicated as exclusively its own (Il. xiii. 122;

cf. Hesiod, 0p. 202). And even Thucydides, in a difficult

and doubtful passage where both words occur (i. 84), is by

many considered to have employed them as equipollent

and convertible (Donaldson, Cratylus, 3rd ed. p. 545). So

too in a passage of Sophocles, where they occur close to-

gether, ai]dw lined with fo, and ai]sxu with de (Ajax,

1049, 1052), it is very difficult, if not impossible, to draw

any distinction between them. Generally, however, in the

Attic period of the language, they were not accounted syn-

onymous. Ammonius formally distinguishes them in a

philological, as the Stoics (see Plutarch, De Vit. Pud. 2)

in an ethical interest; and almost every passage in

which either occurs attests a real difference existing

between them.

§ XIX. SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 67
This distinction has not always been seized with a

perfect success. Thus it has been sometimes said that

ai]dw is the shame, or sense of honour, which hinders one

from doing an unworthy act; ai]sxu, is the disgrace, out-

ward or inward, which follows on having done it (Luke

xiv. 9). This distinction, while it has its truth, yet is

not exhaustive; and, if we were thereupon to assume that

ai]sxu was is only retrospective, the conscious result

of things unworthily done, it would be an erroneous one:¹

seeing that ai]sxucontinually expresses that feeling

which leads to shun what is unworthy out of a prospective

anticipation of dishonour. Thus in the Definitions ascribed

to Plato (4161) it is fo prosdoki<% a]doci: Aristotle

including also, the future in his comprehensive defini-

tion (Rhet. ii. 6): e@stw dh> ai]sxu
taraxh>

peri> ta> ei]j a]doci

h} gegono: cf. Ethic. Nic. iv. 9. I. In this

sense, as ‘fuga dedecoris,’ it is used Ecclus. iv. 21; by

Plato (Gorg. 492 a); and by Xenophcn (Anab. iii. I. 10):

fobou to>n o[do>n kai> a@kontej o@mwj oi[ polloi> di ] ai]sxu

kai> a]llh Ku: Xenophon imply-

ing here that while he and others, for more reasons than

one, were disinclined to go forward with Cyrus to assail

his brother's throne, they yet were now ashamed to draw

back.

This much of truth the distinction drawn above pos-

sesses, that ai]dw(=’verecundia,’ which is defined by Cicero,

Rep. vi. 4: ‘quidam vituperationis non injustae timor'²)
¹ There is the same onesidedness, though exactly on the other side, in

Cicero's definition of ‘pudor,’ which he males merely prospective:

‘Pudor, metus rerum turpium, et ingenua qundam timiditas, dedecus

fugiens, laudemque consectans;’ but Ovid writes,

‘Irruit, et nostrum vulgat clamore pudorem.'

² In the Latin of the silver age, ‘verecundia’ had acquired a sense of

false shame; thus Quintilian, xii. 5, 2: ‘Verecundia est timor quidam

reducens animum ab eis quae facienda sunt.' It is the duswpi, on the

mischiefs of which Plutarch has written such a graceful little essay.

68 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § XIX.

is the nobler word, and implies the nobler motive: in it is

involved an innate moral repugnance to the doing of the

dishonorable act, which moral repugnance scarcely or not

at all exists in the ai]sxu. Let the man who is restrained

by it alone be insured against the outward disgrace which

he fears his act will entail, and he will refrain from it

no longer. It is only, as Aristotle teaches, peri> a]doci

fantasi: or as South, 'The grief a man conceives from

his own imperfections considered with relation to the world

taking notice of them; and in one word may be defined,

grief upon the sense of disesteem;' thus at Jer. 26 we

have ai]sxu
. Neither does the defini-

tion of ‘shame’ which Locke gives (Of Human Under-

standing, ii. 20) rise higher than this. Its seat, therefore,

as Aristotle proceeds to show, is not properly in the moral

sense of him that entertains it, in his consciousness of a

right which has been, or would be, violated by his act,

but only in his apprehension of other persons who are, or

who might be, privy to its violation. Let this apprehension

be removed, and the ai]sxu ceases; while ai]dw finds its

motive in itself, implies reverence for the good as good

(see Aristophanes, Nubes, 994), and not merely as that to

which honour and reputation are attached; on which

matter see some admirable remarks in Gladstone's Studies

on Homer, vol. ii. p. 431; and again in his Primer on

Homer, p. 112. Thus it is often connected with eu]la

(Heb. xii. 28; if indeed this reading may stand); the

reverence before God, before his majesty, his holiness,

which will induce a carefulness not to offend, the German

‘Scheu.' (Plutarch, Caes. 14; Praec. Conj. 47; Philo, Leg.

ad Cai. 44) ; often also with de, (Plato, Euthyd. 126 c);

with eu]kosmi (Xenophon, Cyrop. I. 33); with eu]taci

and kosmio, (Plutarch, Caes. 4); with semno (Praec.

Conj. 26). To sum up all, we may say that ai]dw would

always restrain a good man from an unworthy act, while

ai]sxu would sometimes restrain a bad one.

xx. SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 69

]Entroph<, occuring only twice in the N. T. (1 Cor. vi.

5; xv. 34), is elsewhere found in connection now with

ai]sxu, and now with ai]dw, with the first, Ps. xxxiv. 26,

cf. Ps. lxix. 3; Ezek. xxxv. 32; with the second in Jam-

blichus (quoted by Rost and Palm). It too must be

rendered ‘shame,’ but has something in it which neither

ai]dw nor ai]sxuhas. Nearly related to e]ntre


pomai, it convey, least a hint of that change of con-

duct, that return of a man upon himself, which a wholesome

shame brings with it in him who is its subject. This

speaks out in such phrases as paidei (Job xx. 3);

and assuredly it is only to such shame that St. Paul seeks

to bring his Corinthian converts in the two passages re-

ferred to already; cf. Tit. ii. 8; and 2 Thess. iii. 14, i!na

e]ntrap^?, which Grotius paraphrases rightly, ‘ut pudore

tactus ad mentem meliorem redeat.’ Pott (Etym. Forsch.

vol. v. p. 135) traces well the successive meanings of

the words: 'e]ntre

, umnwenden, umkdren, umdrelien.

Uebertr. einen in sich kehren, zu sich bringen, machen,

dass er in sich geht . . . e]ntroph< das Umkehren; 2. das in

sick Gehn. Beschamung, Scham, Scheu, Rucksicht, Ach-

tong, wie ai]dw.'
§ xx. ai]dw.
THESE two are named together by St. Paul (I Tim. ii. 9

cf. Plato, Phaedrus 253 d) as constituting the truest adorn-

ment of a Christian woman; swfrosu occurs only on

two other occasions (Acts xxvi. 25: 1 Tim ii. 15). If the

distinction which has been drawn in § 19 be correct, then

that which Xenophon (Cyrop. viii. 31) puts into the

mouth of Cyrus cannot stand: di^ ai]dw? kai> swfrosu

t^?de, w[j tou>j me>n ai]doume e]n t&? faner&? ai]sxra>

feuj de> sw ta> e]n t&? a]fanei?. It is

faulty on both sides; on the one hand ai]dw does not

merely shun open and manifest baseness, however ai]-

sxu may do this; on the other a mere accident of sw-

70 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § xx.

fronsu is urged as constituting its essence. The etymology

of swfronsu, as swn fro (Aristotle, Ethic.

Nic. vi. 5), or swthri(Plato, Crat. 411 e;

cf. Philo, De Fort. 3), must not be taken as seriously in-

tended; Chrysostom has given it rightly: swfronsu

le tou? swj fre. Set over against

a]kolasi (Thucydides, iii. 37; Aristotle, Rhet. 9; Philo,

Mund. Opif 16 b), and a]krasi (Xenophon, Mem. iv. 5),

the mean between a]swti and feidwli (Philo, De Praem.

et Poen. 918 b), it is properly the condition of an entire

command over the passions and desires, so that they re-

ceive no further allowance than that which the law and

right reason admit and approve (e]pikra,

4 Macc. 1.31; cf. Tit. ii. 12); cf. Plato (Symp. 196 c)

ei#nai ga>r o[mologei?tai swfrosu kratei?n h[donw?n kai> e]piqu-

miw?n: his Charmides being dedicated throughout to the

investigation of the exact force of the word. Aristotle

(Rhet. 9): a]reth> di ] h{n pro>j ta>j h[dona>j tou? sw

e@xousin, w[j o[ no: Plutarch (De Curios. 14; De

Virt. Mon. 2 and Gryll. 6): braxun e]piqumiw?n

kai> tan ta>j e]peisa peritta>j, kair&?

de> kai> metrioj a]nagkai: Philo (De Im-

mut. Dei, 311 e): me e]kkexume feidw-

li: cf. Diogenes Laertius, iii. 57.

91; and Clement of Alexandria, Strom. ii. i8. In Jeremy

Taylor's words (The House of Feasting): ‘It is reason's

girdle, and passion's bridle. . . . it is r[w, as

Pythagoras calls it; krhpi>j a]reth?j, so Socrates; ko

a]gaqw?n pa; so Plato; a]sfa,

so Iamblichus.' We find it often joined to kosmio

(Aristophanes, Plut. 563, 564); to eu]taci (2 Macc. iv. 37);

to karteri (Philo, De Agric. 22); a[gnei (Clement of

Rome, I Cor § 58). No single Latin word exactly repre-

sents it; Cicero, as he himself avows (Tusc. iii. 8; cf. v. 14),

rendering it now by ‘temperantia,’ now by ‘moderatio,’

now by ‘modestia;’ and giving this account of it: ‘ejus

§ XX. SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 71
enim videtur esse proprium motus animi appetentes regere

et sedare, semperque adversantem libidi, moderatam in

omni re sere are constantiam.' Swfrosu was a virtue

which assumed more, marked prominence in heathen ethics

than it does in Christian (dw, as Euri-

pides, Med. 632, has called it); not because more value

was attached to it there than with us; but partly because

there it was one of a much smaller company of virtues,

each of which therefore would singly attract more atten-

tion; but also in part because for as many as are "led by

the Spirit," this condition of self-command is taken up

and transformed into a condition yet higher still, in which

a man does not order and command himself, which, so

far as it reaches, is well, but, which is better still, is

ordered and commanded by God.

At I Tim. ii. 9 we shall best distinguish between ai]dw

and swfrosu, and the distinction will be capable of

further application, if we affirm of ai]dw that it is that

‘shamefastness,’¹ or pudency, which shrinks from over-

passing the limits of womanly reserve and modesty, as

well as from the dishonour which would justly attach
¹ It is a pity that ‘shamefast’ (Ecclus. xli. 16) and ‘shamefastness’

by which our Translators rendered swfrosu here, should have been

corrupted in modern use to ‘shamefaced,' and ‘shamefacedness.’ The

words are properly of the same formation as ‘steadfast,’ ‘steadfastness,’

‘soothfast,’ ‘soothfastness,’ and those good old English words, now lost to

us, ‘rootfast,’ and ‘rootfastness:’ to which add ‘masterfast,’ engaged to

a master; ‘footfast,’ captive; ‘bedfast,’ ‘bedridden;’ ‘handfast,’ affianced;

‘weatherfast,' ‘weatherbound.’ As by ‘rootfast’ our fathers understood

that which was firm and fast by its root, so by ‘shamefast’ that which

was established and made fast by (an honorable) shame. To change

this into ‘shamefaced’ is to allow all the meaning and force of the word

to run to the surface, to leave us ethically a far poorer word. It is inex-

cusable that all modern reprints of the Authorized Version should have

given in to this corruption. So long as the spelling does not affect the life

of a word, this may very well fall in with modern use: we do not want

‘sonne’ or 'marveile,’ when everybody now spells ‘son’ and ‘marvel.’

But where this life is assailed by later alterations, corruptions in fact of the

spelling, and the word in fact changed into another, there the edition of

1611 should be exactly adhered to, and considered authoritative and

exemplary for all that followed.

72 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § XXI.
thereto; of swfronsu that it is that habitual inner self-

government, with its constant rein on all the passions and

desires, which would hinder the temptation to this from

arising, or at all events from arising in such strength

as should overbear the checks and barriers which ai]dw

opposed to it

§ xxi. su.
THESE words differ, and the difference between them is

not theologically unimportant. We best represent this

difference in English, when we render su, ‘to drag,’

e[lkeu, ‘to draw.’ In su, as in our ‘drag,’ there lies

always the notion of force, as when Plutarch (De Lib. Ed.

8) speaks of the headlong course of a river, pa

kai> pa: and it will follow, that where per-

sons, and no merely things, are in question, su will

involve the notion of violence (Acts viii. 3; xiv. 19; xvii. 6;

cf. katasu, Luke xii. 58). But in e[lku this notion

of force or violence does not of necessity lie. It may be

there (Acts x 19; xxi. 30; Jam. ii. 6; cf. Homer, Il. xi.

258; xxiv. 52, 417; Aristophanes, Equit. 710; Euripides,

Troad.70: Ai]a>j ei$lke Kasa); but not of necessity

(thus Plato, Rep. vi. 494 e: e]a>n e!lkhtai pro>j filosofi:

cf. vii. 538 d) any more than in our ‘draw,’ which we use

of a mental and moral attraction, or in the Latin ‘traho’

(‘trahit sua ouemque voluptas’).

Only by keeping in mind the difference which thus

exists between these, can we vindicate from erroneous

interpretation two doctrinally important passages in the

Gospel of St. John. The first is xii. 32: "I, if I be lifted

up from the earth, will draw all men [pa] unto

Me." But how does a crucified, and thus an exalted,

Saviour draw all men unto Him? Not by force, for the will

is incapable of force, but by the divine attractions of his

love. Again (vi. 44): "No man can come to Me, except

the Father which hath sent Me draw him" (e[lku).

§ XXI. SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 73

Now as many as feel bound to deny any such ‘gratia

irresistibilis’ as turns man into a machine, and by which,

willing or unwilling, he is dragged to God, must at once

allow, must indeed) assert, that this e[lku can mean no

more than the potent allurements, the allective force of

love, the attracting of men by the Father to the Son;

compare Jer. xxxi. 3. "With loving-kindness have I drawn

thee" (ei!lkusa< se), and Cant. i. 3, 4. Did we find su

on either of these occasions (not that this would be

possible), the assertors of a ‘gratia irresistibilis’¹ might

then urge the declarations of our Lord as leaving no

room for any other meaning but theirs; but not as they

now stand.

In agreement with all this, in e[lku is predominantly

the sense of a drawing to a certain point in su merely

of dragging after one; thus Lucian (De Merc. Cond. 3),

likening a man to a fish already hooker and dragged

through the water, describes him as suro pro>j

a]na. Not seldom there will lie in su the

notion of this dragging being upon the ground, inasmuch

as that will trail upon the ground (cf. su, and

Isai. iii. 16), which is forcibly dragged alone with no will

of its own; a dead body, for example (Philo, In Flac. 21.

We may compare John xxi. 6, 11 with ver. 8 of the same

chapter, in confirmation of what has just been affirmed.

At ver. 6 and 11 e[lku is used; for there a drawing of

¹ The excellent words of Augustine on this last passage, himself some-

times adduced as an upholder of this, may be here quoted (In Ev. Joh.

Tract. xxxi. 4): ‘Nemo venit ad me, nisi quem Pater adtraxerit. Noli

to cogitare invitum trahi; trahitur animus et amore. Nec timere debe-

mus ne ab hominibus qui verba perpendunt, et a rebus maxime divinis

intelligendis longe remoti saunt, in hoc Scripturarum sanctarum evan-

gelico verbo forsitan reprehendamur, et dicatur nobis, Quomodo voluntate

credo, si trahor? Ego dilco: Parum est voluntate, etiam voluptate tra-

heris. Porro si poetae dicere licuit, Trahit sua quemque voluptas; non

necessitas, sed voluptas; non obligatio, sed delectatio; quanto fortius

nos dicere debemus, trahi hominem ad Christum, qui delectatur veritate,

delectatur beatitudine, delectatur justitia, delectatur sempiterna vita,

quod totum Christus est?'

74 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § XXII.

the net to a certain point is intended; by the disciples to

themselves in the ship, by Peter to himself upon the shore.

But at ver. 8 e[lku gives place to su: for nothing is

there intended but the dragging of the net, which had

been fastened to the ship, after it through the water.

Our Version as maintained the distinction; so too the

German of De Wette, by aid of ‘ziehen’ (=e[lku) and

‘nachschlepp’ (=su); but neither the Vulgate, nor

Beza, both employing ‘traho’ throughout.