1.05. Damnation

Damnation

I will begin with a large quote from a book entitled Mercy and Judgment by F.W. Farrar, a canon of the Anglican Church. He writes on page 369: The words "damn" and its derivatives do not once occur in the Old Testament. In the New Testament they are the exceptional and arbitrary translation of two Greek verbs or their derivatives; which occur 308 times. These words are "apollumi" and "krino." "Apolleia" (destruction or waste) is once rendered "damnation" and once "damnable" (2 Peter 2:3; 2 Peter 2:1); "krino" (judge) occurs 114 times, and is only once rendered "damned" (2 Thessalonians 2:12). "Krima" (judgment or sentence) occurs 24 times, and is 7 times rendered "damnation." "KataKrino" (I condemn) occurs 24 times, and is twice only rendered "be damned."

Now turn to a modern dictionary, and you will see "damnation" defined as "exclusion from divine mercy; condemnation to eternal punishment." In common usage the word has no other sense. But to say that such is the necessary meaning of the words which are rendered by "damn" and "damnation," is to say what is absurdly and even wickedly false. It is to say that a widow who marries again must be damned to endless torments (1 Timothy 5:12, "having damnation," krima), although St. Paul expressly recommends young widows to do so two verses later on. It is to say that everyone who ever eats the Lord’s Supper unworthily, eats and drinks "eternal punishment" to himself, though St. Paul adds, almost in the next verse, that the judgment (krima) is disciplinary or educational, to save us from condemnation (1 Corinthians 11:29-34). It is to say that "the Day of Judgment" ought to be called "Day of Damnation" (John 5:29). It is curious that our translators have chosen this most unfortunate variation of "damn" and its cognates only fifteen times out of upwards of two hundred times that krino and its cognates occur; and that they have used it for "krisis" and "krima," but not for the stronger compounds "katakrima," etc. The translators, however, may not be to blame. It is probable that "damn" was once a milder word than condemn, and had a far milder meaning than that which modern eschatology has furnished to modern blasphemy. We find from an Act passed when a John Russell was Chancellor (in the reign of Richard III or Henry VII), that the sanction of an Act against extorted benevolences is called "a damnation" -- that is, "the infliction of a loss." This is the true etymological meaning of the word, as derived from damnum, "a loss"; and this original meaning is still found in such words as "damnify," "indemnify," and "indemnity." In the margin of 1 Corinthians 11:29, we find "judgment" for "damnation"; whereas in 1 Corinthians 11:32 the "judgment" of the Lord is milder than His "condemnation." Dr. Hey, in his lecture on the Ninth Article, thinks that the phrase, "it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation," is used in the milder sense of the word which was originally prevalent. However this may be, the word has, as the Bishop of Chester says, undergone a modification of meaning from the lapse of time, and it is an unmixed gain that both it and its congeners will wholly disappear from the revised version of the English Bible. "Judgment" and "condemnation" are the true representatives of krisis and katakrisis, and they are not steeped, like the word "damnation," in a mass of associated conceptions which do not naturally or properly belong to them. Equally unfortunate is the word "hell." The above was written in 1881, the year the first revision of the King James Bible appeared. It appears the author above, in his prediction about the "damn" words being removed from the revision was true. Checking a Revised Standard Concordance, I discovered the "damn" words were gone. To show you the above scholars were correct in tracing the "damn" word, I will quote from a modern dictionary of word origins by John Ayto. It is entitled Dictionary of Word Origins published in 1990.

Damn comes via Old French "damner" from Latin "damnare," a derivative of the noun "damnum." This originally meant "loss, harm" (it is the source of English "damage"), but the verb "damnare" soon spread its application to "pronounce judgment upon" in both the legal and the theological sense. These meanings (reflected also in the derived "condemn") followed the verb through Old French into English, which dropped the strict legal sense around the 16th century but has persisted with the theological one and its more profane offshoots. Condemn, damage, indemnity. In conclusion, I must repeat that these words "apollumi" and "apolleia" like so many other words such as "krima," "krino," and "krisis" are relative terms. The first two words usually carry the sense of loss by someone. God is the great loser in many of their occurrences. The coin was lost by the woman, the sheep was lost by the shepherd, the prodigal son was lost by the father, Israel was lost by Yahweh, men are lost by God. Who was it that created them? Are they not His work? Will He not be the loser if they are not saved?

Almost all the reasoning about the words translated "destruction" fails to recognize the deity of God. We are asked to consider the fate of wineskins which were destroyed. We are told that as wineskins they past out of existence. Therefore, those who teach annihilation say, men pass out of existence as such when they are destroyed. The fact that these words "apollumi" and "apolleia" are never used of the second death in which this final destruction is supposed to take place should show the fallacy of this reasoning. The fact that all who are destroyed or lost are resurrected to be judged, absolutely refutes the idea of any final destruction. In the theory of annihilation, God is left out of it. We should not equate men losing wineskins to God losing men. Who lost the wineskins? Who lost the men? Suppose we are not able to recover what we lost. Is that proof that God cannot do so? Are we the equals of the Creator? Did anything originate with us? Why then reason about God as though He were unable to find and save what He has lost. God can recall His creatures from the tomb, can we? All mankind was lost and all mankind will be justified and made alive by God. Study Romans 5:18-19; 1 Corinthians 15:22-28; Colossians 1:16-20. When we touched the "damn" words (because apolleia was translated as such a couple of times), we found that changes in our English language combined with theological tamperings, have introduced words into our Bibles that no longer convey the true spirit in which the original writers wrote. The word "hell" has almost completely disappeared in most Bible translations. Many of the religiously tainted renderings found in our Bibles are being removed. This is coming about because we are beginning to bypass the inadequate scholarship of the dark ages and reformation which was plagued with superstition and medieval concepts. Due to discoveries such as those found at Qumran, Israel and the deserts of Egypt, we are able to get closer to the original manuscripts and the original meaning of the Greek and Hebrew words contained in the Bible. For more information about words in some of our Bibles which do not faithfully convey the original meaning, write for the audio tape, A Word About The Word.