THE English word “Advent” sets the theme of the season, coming from the Latin adventus, meaning arrival. It is the period through which Christians reflect on Christ’s coming — or, quite, his comings, since we mix preparation for Christmas with getting ready for the tip of all things.
We call Christ’s second coming the Parousia, a Greek word meaning “arrival” or “presence”, corresponding to adventus in Latin. It was used especially for an arrival in person, comparable to a royal visit. Another seasonal Greek word is maranatha, meaning “Come, Lord!” or “Our Lord has come!” (1 Corinthians 16.22).
THE Four Last Things have traditionally provided material of sermons on the Sundays of Advent. The first — death — has little to supply by way of etymology, since words with that sound have shared that meaning into the mists of linguistic time. The thing has not modified (the 2 constants in human life being, as Benjamin Franklin observed, “death and taxes”); so neither has the sound of the word.
Scholars do note, though, how often and creatively people give you euphemisms for death: “to kick the bucket”, “to pass”, and so forth. On the one hand, then, the word “death” stays static; on the opposite, we’re endlessly inventing recent ways to discuss it obliquely.
The second last item is judgement. The word goes back to the Latin ius (law), giving us iudex, a judge (from ius + dicere: one who speaks the law). In Advent, we will not be so concerned with law (ius) as an abstraction as with the one who sits in judgement (Christ as judge).
A Twentieth-century trend in theology, related to Karl Barth, which sought to get better a way of God’s judgement, was often called “crisis theology”. “Crisis” derives from the Greek krino, meaning to guage, investigate, or separate (as in John 3.19). In English, it originally had a medical sense, because the decisive moment or turning point in the middle of a disease (following ancient physicians, comparable to Hippocrates and Galen).
Heaven is the third last item. The origins of the word have a physical solid to them, probably meaning “covering”: the heavens are what cover the earth. The related word “paradise” is fascinating, deriving from an ancient Persian term that entered the Greek of New Testament times as paradeisos. It had originally meant an enclosure, comparable to an enclosed park, and is present in Luke 23.43: “today you can be with me in paradise” (as also in Revelation 2.7).
The Old Persian (pairi-daeza) was something enclosed by a clay wall, from pairi (like “peri” in “periscope”), and a word deriving from something like dheigh (to knead clay). From this we also get “dough”, and, by an unexpected path, the English word “lady”: originally, one who kneads bread (hl?fdige, “loaf-kneader”).
The origins of the word “hell”, the fourth last item, are again strikingly physical. As the unseen place, it derives from the primitive stem kel, from which we also get “cellar”. “Hades” is formed by the negation of the Greek idein (that which is seen), being subsequently “not seen”.
TURNING to some words beyond the Four Last Things, “tribulation” comes from the Latin for “to press or extract” (tribulare). It conjures up the biblical image of the wine press (Isaiah 63.2-3; Lamentations 1.15; Revelation 14.19-20, 19.15). It may additionally be related to some words of John the Baptist in Matthew 3.12: “His winnowing-fork is in his hand, and he’ll clear his threshing-floor and can gather his wheat into the granary; however the chaff he’ll burn with unquenchable fire.”
Before you’ll be able to winnow chaff from grain, you’ve got to detach them from one another by pressing and rending the pinnacle of every stalk. For that, you run over the sheaves with a rough, heavy threshing sledge. In Latin, it is a tribulum. So, the basis for our word “tribulation” is obliquely present in John’s saying, in his reference to the “threshing-floor” and the way it’s used.
“Purgatory”, one other eschatological word, derives from purgare (from purus + agere, “to make pure”), denoting a spot and technique of cleansing (1 Corinthians 3.11–15; Ephesians 5.27).
Our word “mercy” points to compassion, but its roots lie in what might look like the opposite direction: in “reward”, from the Latin mercedem (wages, recompense, reward), as in “market” and “merchant”. By the mercy of God, we first don’t receive what we deserve (justification). Then, by the further grace or mercy of sanctification, we come so to bear the righteousness of Christ as to have the opportunity justly to share his reward.
That word “reward” pertains to someone who has been noticed and cared for (or, perhaps, to someone who notices and cares for one more). The “ward” a part of the word shows up once we speak of a baby who’s “kept in ward” or a “ward of court”.
WORDS to do with ending and reckoning are much in mind during Advent. “Fate” has religious roots, from the Latin fari, “to talk”. From it comes fatum: “that which has been spoken” — whether by gods or oracles. Alongside it stands “destiny”, as that which has been firmly appointed, from destinare (“to set fast”).
The dark English word “doom” derives from a Old English word, dom, meaning law, judgment, or condemnation. Even sterner is “wrath” from a bleak Old English word sounding very like that (wrað — indignant, fierce, cruel, hostile). It evokes the sense of being twisted by anger, as in “wreath” and “writhe”. This is why Julian of Norwich wrote that “God is that goodness that is probably not wroth; for God is nothing but goodness”: the divine nature can’t be twisted off form.
Finally, “end” (ende in Old English, and back into Proto-Germanic) meant a limit or boundary in a temporal or spatial sense, but this has expanded to absorb a way of purpose or achievement, just like the Greek telos. God — the Christian end — is more consummation than conclusion.
The Revd Dr Andrew Davison is Regius Professor of Divinity within the University of Oxford and a Canon Residentiary of Christ Church, Oxford.
