The work for which Christ’s Gospel came into the world was no less than to put down the mighty from their seat, and to exalt the humble and meek. It was then only in accordance with this its mission that it should dethrone the heathen virtue μεγαλοψυχία, and set up the despised Christian grace ταπεινοφροσύνη in its room, stripping that of the honour it had unjustly assumed, delivering this from the dishonour which as unjustly had clung to it hitherto; and in this direction advancing so far that a Christian writer has called this last not merely a grace, but the casket or treasure house in which all other graces are contained (γαζοφυλάκιον ἀρετῶν, Basil, Const. Mon. 16). And indeed not the grace only, but the very word ταπεινοφροσύνη is itself a fruit of the Gospel; no Greek writer employed it before the Christian aera, nor, apart from the influence of Christian writers, after. In the Septuagint ταπεινόφρων occurs once (
Still those exceptional cases are more numerous than some will allow. Thus Plato in a very memorable passage (Legg. iv. 716 a) links ταπεινός with κεκοσμημένος, as in Demosthenes we have λόγοι μέτριοι καὶ ταπεινοί: while Xenophon more than once sets the ταπεινός over against the ὑπερήφανος (Ages. ii. 11; cf. aeschyhs, Prom. Vinct. 328;
But it may be objected, how does this account of Christian ταπεινοφροσύνη, as springing out of and resting on the sense of unworthiness, agree with the fact that the sinless Lord laid claim to this grace, and said, “I am meek and lowly in heart” (ταπεινὸς τῇ καρδίᾳ,
The Gospel of Christ did not rehabilitate πραότης so entirely as it had done ταπεινοφροσύνη, but this, because the word did not need rehabilitation to the same extent. Πραότης did not require to be transformed from a bad sense to a good, but only to be lifted up from a lower level of good to a higher. This indeed it did need; for no one can read Aristotle’s portraiture of the πρᾶος and of πραότης (Ethic. Nic. iv. 5), mentally comparing the heathen virtue with the Christian grace, and not feel that Revelation has given to these words a depth, a richness, a fulness of significance which they were very far from possessing before. The great moralist of Greece set πραότης as the μεσότης περὶ ὀργῆς, between the two extremes, ὀργιλότης and ἀοργησία, with, however, so much leaning to the latter that it might very easily run into this defect; and he finds it worthy of praise, more because by it a man retains his own equanimity and composure (the word is associated by Plutarch with μετριοπάθεια, De Frat. Am. 18; with ἀχολία, Cons. ad Uxor. 2; with ἀνεξικακία, De Cap. ex In. Util. 9; with μεγαλοπάθεια, De Ser. Num. Vind. 5; with εὐπείθεια, Comp. Num. et Lyc. 3; with εὐκολία, De Virt. et Vit. 1), than for any nobler reason. Neither does Plutarch’s own graceful little essay, Περὶ ἀοργησίας, rise anywhere to a loftier pitch than this, though we might have looked for something higher from him. Πραότης is opposed by Plato to ἀγριότης (Symp. 197 d); by Aristotle to χαλεπότης (Hist. Anim. ix. 1; cf. Plato, Rep. vi. 472 f); by Plutarch or some other under his name, to ἀποτομία (De Lib. Ed. 18); all indications of a somewhat superficial meaning by them attached to the word.
Those modern expositors who will not allow for the new forces at work in sacred Greek, who would fain restrict, for instance, the πραότης of the N. T. to that sense which the word, as employed by the best classical writers, would have borne, deprive themselves and as many as accept their interpretation of much of the deeper teaching in Scripture:1 on which subject, and with reference to this very word, there are some excellent observations by F. Spanheim, Dubia Evangelica, vol. iii. p. 398; by Rambach, Inst. Herm. Sac. p. 169;2 cf. also, passim, the lecture or little treatise by Zezschwitz, Profangräcität und Biblischer Sprachgeist, from which I have already given (p. 1) an interesting extract; and the article, Hellenistisches Idiom, by Reuss in Herzog’s Real-Encyclopädie. The Scriptural πραότης is not in a man’s outward behaviour only; nor yet in his relations to his fellow-men; as little in his mere natural disposition. Rather is it an inwrought grace of the soul; and the exercises of it are first and chiefly towards God (
This meekness, however, being first of all a meekness before God, is also such in the face of men, even of evil men, out of a sense that these, with the insults and injuries which they may inflict, are remitted and employed by Him for the chastening and purifying of his elect. This was the root of David’s πραότης, when Shimei cursed and flung stones at him—the consideration, namely, that the Lord had bidden him (
Πραότης, then, or meekness, if more than mere gentleness of manner, if indeed the Christian grace of meekness of spirit, must rest on deeper foundations than its own, on those namely which ταπεινοφροσύνη has laid for it, and can only subsist while it continues to rest on these. It is a grace in advance of ταπεινοφροσύνη, not as more precious than it, but as presupposing it, and as being unable to exist without it.
1 They will do this, even though they stop short of lengths to which Fritzsche, a very learned but unconsecrated modern expositor of the Romans, has reached; who, on
2 He concludes, ‘Unde dignus esset reprehensione qui graciles illas et exiles notiones quas pagani de virtutibus habuerunt Christianarum virtutum nominibus subjiceret.’
[The following Strong's numbers apply to this section:G4236,G5012.]
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