DAMNATION, ETC.
Damnation, damned, etc., in the New Testament, are precisely equivalent to condemnation, condemned, etc. The former words, with their generally accepted meaning, would never occur if the Greek words thus rendered were correctly translated. What is the meaning of the word damnation? It is not a condition of suffering in an endless hell. The bible defines it as meaning condemn, judge, punish, etc. When Paul says, Rom 5:18, “Therefore, as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation;” when Christ says, “And this is condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil;” John 3:18, “He that believeth not is condemned already; because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten son of God;” John 9:39, “For judgment I am come into this world,” and in John 12:31, “Now is the judgment of this world:” and when the Revelator says: Rev. 14:6-7, “And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him, for the hour of his judgment is come;” the meaning is precisely the same. Dr. Campbell says that damned “is not a just version of the Greek word. The term damned, with us, relates solely to the doom which shall be pronounced upon the wicked at the last day. This cannot be affirmed, in truth, of the Greek katakrino, which corresponds exactly to the English word condemn.” Such is its meaning in the passage which speaks of
Eating And Drinking Damnation.
“For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.”—1 Cor. 11:29.
The word translated “damnation” is very improperly rendered. Krima denotes punishment, resulting in improvement, according to verse 32: “But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.” The best rendering of krima is judgment, by which word it is usually represented in English. Matt. 7:2, “For with what judgment ye judge,” etc. Luke 23:40, it is rendered condemnation: “Thou art in the same condemnation.” Luke 24:20, it is rendered condemned: “Deliver him to be condemned to death.” Jesus applied the word to himself, in John 9:39, “For judgment I am come into this world.”
If we substitute damnation for these words, we shall see how improperly it is said, he “eateth damnation, etc.” Verse 30 explains krima: “For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.” Those who had made the Lord’s Supper an occasion of gluttony, had eaten and drunken condemnation.
Whitby:—”Damnation: the word imports temporal judgments; as when St. Peter saith, the time is come, arxasthai to krima, that judgment must begin at the house of God. (1 Peter 4:17)
THE UNBELIEVER DAMNED.
“He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not, shall be damned.”—Mark 16:16.
If we admit that “damned” means final torment, we shut out of salvation all infants, idiots, insane, and heathen, for they do not believe. We also consign all the rest of mankind to endless torment, for according to the test given, there is not a believer on earth today. We are told in the next verse that all believers may be known by their being able to heal the sick, and take poison without injury: “and these signs shall follow them that believe; in my name they shall cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. Now all are damned who cannot perform these wonderful deeds, because no others are believers in the sense meant. In other words, all souls must be endlessly tormented if the word damned denotes endless torment. It has no such signification. The Greek word rendered damned denotes condemned, says George Campbell, the Presbyterian. Bishop Horne thus translates it: “He that believeth not shall be condemned, or accountable for his sins.”
The same word occurs and has the same meaning in several places. In Matt. 20:18, it is applied to Christ; “They shall condemn him to death. Again in Matt. 27:3, “Then Judas, who had betrayed him, (Jesus) when he saw that he was condemned. repented himself,” etc. John 8:10, Jesus said to the guilty woman, “Hath no man condemned thee:—neither do I condemn thee.” “They all condemned him (Christ) to be guilty of death.” Mark 14:64.
The word has no referencer to what the word damnation is popularly supposed to mean.
The text had a primary application to the apostolic age, though by accommodation it may be employed today to state the great fact that believers are saved from the penalties of unbelief, while unbelievers are condemned. John 3:18-19, “He that believeth not, is condemned (or damned) already, and this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” The language has not the remotest reference to the idea of endless torment.
All men have been unbelievers, and therefore—as there is no saving clause for such—if damnation means endless woe, then all men must experience endless torment. But if we give the word its true meaning, and render it condemn, then it will appear that, having experienced the full amount of condemnation earned, faith can follow, and the salvation resulting from Christian faith will ensue.
Cannon Farrar says, (preface to “Eternal Hope”): The verb “to damn and its cognates does not once occur in the Old Testament. No word conveying any such meaning occurs in the Greek of the New Testament. The words so rendered mean “to judge,” “judgment” and “condemnation;” and if the word “damnation” has come to mean more than these words do—as to all but the most educated readers is notoriously the case—then the word is a grievous mistranslation, all the more serious because it entirely and terribly perverts and obscures the real meaning of our Lord’s utterances; and all the more inexcusable, at any rate for us with our present knowledge, because if the word “damnation” were used as the rendering of the very same words in multitudes of other passages (where our translators have rightly translated them) it would make those passages both impossible and grotesque.”
In his sermon, “Hell—what it is not,” he says: “The verb ‘to damn’ in the Greek Testament is neither more nor less than the verb ‘to condemn,’ and the words translated ‘damnation’ are simply the words which, in the vast majority of instances the same translators have translated, and rightly translated by ‘judgment’ and ‘condemnation.'” And in Excursus II, in ‘Eternal Hope,’ he says: “In the New Testament the words krino, krisis and krima occur some one hundred and ninety times, the words katakrino, katakrisis, katakrima twenty-four times, and yet there are only fifteen places out of more than two hundred in which our translation has deviated from the proper renderings of ‘judge’ and ‘condemn’ into ‘damn’ and its cognates. It is singular that they should have used ‘damnation’ only for the milder words kirisis and krima. This single fact ought to be decisive to every candid mind.”
He makes these corrections: “Damnable heresies,” in 2 Peter 2:1, should be “destructive heresies.” 2 Thess. 2:12, “might be damned” should be “may be judged.” “Greater damnation in Matt. 23:14; Mark 12:40; Luke 20:47; should be “severer judgment.” Matt 23:33, “damnation of hell” should be “judgment of Gehenna.” Mark 3:29, “Eternal damnation” should be “æonian sin.” Mark 16:16, “He that believeth not shall be damned,” ought to be “disbelieving shall be condemned.” John v:29, “Resurrection of damnation” should be “resurrection of judgment,” etc.
Chas. Kingsley says, (“Letters”): “The English damnation, like the Creek katakrisis, is, perhaps, krisis simple, simple meaning condemnation, and is (thank God) retained in that sense in various of our formularies, where I always read it, e.g., ‘eateth to himself damnation, with sincere pleasure, as protests of the true and rational meaning of the word, against the modern and narrower meaning.”
The unbeliever experiences the condemnation which unbelief imparts—this is the plain and total meaning of the passage.
That They All Might Be Damned.
“And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”—1 Thess. 2:11-12.
The word “damned” here should be “judged”. In 1 Tim. 5:12—”Having damnation because they have cast off their first faith,” and in Rom. 3:8, of slanderers, “whose damnation is just” the present tense is used, showing that the damnation is already experienced.
The Resurrection of Damnation.
“Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto to resurrection of damnation.”—John 5:28-29.
This resurrection is a moral awakening, and not the final, literal resurrection, as is evident from its phraseology. All men do not participate in it. Only “those that have done good,” and “those that have done evil.” come forth to “life” or to “damnation.” Such a resurrection would not include more than half of the human race; infants, dying without ever having done good or evil would not rise. Such a resurrection would leave countless millions in their graves. This demonstrates that the final resurrection is not here referred to.
What sort of a resurrection did Jesus here teach? The context shows. He had just cured the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda, and declared that he had derived his power from God. “For as the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, even so the son quickeneth whom he will,” and he then continues to talk of a moral quickening or spiritual resurrection, then about occurring: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life.” That is, the resurrection he was referring to had taken place with some who were then living on earth. And he then adds: verses 25-27—”Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; and hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of Man.”
The “Damnation” in 5:29, is the same Greek word that is translated “condemnation” in the 24th, and “judgment” in the 27th. Jesus was repeating the substance of Daniel 12:2, “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting contempt;” words that are fulfilled in Eph. 2:1, “and you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and in sin.”
It was a moral awakening that occurred in consequence of the annunciation of Christianity, which this language announces. Those who were quickened into a perception of the truth, and disregarded the heavenly message, experienced a resurrection from their death in trespasses and sins, but it was to condemnation, and thus to the “second death”.
Says Dr. George Campbell, a learned “orthodox” divine, in his “Notes” on the Four Gospels, vol. ii. p. 113:
“The word anastasin, or rather the phrase anastasis tou nekron, is indeed the common term by which the resurrection, properly so called, is denominated in the New Testament. Yet, this is neither the only nor the primitive import of the word anastasis; it denotes simply being raised from inactivity to action, or from obscurity to eminence, or a return to such a state after an interruption. The verb anastemi, has the like latitude of signification; and both words are used in this extent by the writers of the New Testament, as well as by the LXX. Agreeably, therefore, to the original import, rising from a seat, is properly termed anastasis; so is waking out of sleep, or promotion from an inferior condition.”
This is the sense in which the prophet speaks:
“Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of our graves; and shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land: then shall ye know that I the Lord have spoken it, and performed it, saith the Lord.”—Ezek. 37:12-14.
And the poet enforces the same idea:
“But when the Gospel comes,
It sheds diviner light,
It calls dead sinners from their tombs,
And gives the blind their sight.”
But beyond the final resurrection there is no condemnation. All are then “made alive in Christ,” (1 Cor. 15.) and are “equal to the angels, and are the children of “God,” (Luke 20:36, Mark 12:25) The language in John 5:27-29 had its fulfillment in this world, in our Savior’s day, in the moral awakening he caused.
The absurdity of the popular view will be seen when we observe that it makes all men saved, and at the same time all men damned forever. Apply it to all who have reached accountability, and it will be seen that as all have “done good” all will be forever happy, and as all have “done evil”—for “no man liveth and sinneth not,” all must be forever unhappy. Observe, it says nothing of those who, having done evil, repent, but the damnation is for all who have done evil. But if we give the word its proper meaning, we find no difficulty, for each evil act can receive its proper condemnation, and then be followed by salvation.
Lightfoot observes: “These words might also be applied to a spiritual resurrection, as were the former, (and so, coming out of graves meaneth, Ezek, 37:12) the words of the verse following being only translated and glossed thus: and they shall come forth, they that do good, after they hear his voice in the gospel, to the resurrection of life; and they that do evil, after they hear the gospel, unto the resurrection of damnation. But they are more generally understood of the general resurrection,” etc.—Harm. Evang Part III. John 5:28
The resurrection to damnation was a moral awakening, and not the final resurrection, and the word damnation wherever used, has precisely the same meaning as condemnation, with no reference whatever to the duration of the condition thus designated.