When an Apology is Not Pardon: Fifth Week

 

The word for the blog this week is “apology.” Likely unknown to most people, this word has a very different classical meaning than is found today. Current use is almost always to say that one is sorry for some deed done thought offensive or hurtful to another. The original Greek meaning is very different.

Johnson states that the English word comes from the Greek root ἀπολογία – meaning a reasoned defense. Johnson’s meaning is a “defence” or “excuse.” He says further that it “generally signifies rather excuse than vindication.” It is this shift from defense (“vindication”) to “excuse” that brought the word into its current usage. The earliest example of “apology” given in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1533 and concerns a defense given by Sir Thomas More after he had “given over” the Office of Lord Chancellor of England. More was ousted from his chancellorship for refusing to accede to Crown authority over the authority of the Catholic Church, which refusal led to his execution in 1535. This usage is consistent with the Greek. 

However, the OED also records early uses of “apology” in its common modern meaning. As early as 1597, Shakespeare employs the usage in Richard III, where Richard Duke of Gloucester assures his lord Buckingham that the lord need make no apology but ought rather to pardon him. The contextual connection of “apology” with pardon declares its use as an appeal for forgiveness.

As might be guessed, the Greek New Testament uses ἀπολογία several times. Acts chapters twenty-one and twenty-two offer the account of Paul’s arrest at the Temple in Jerusalem. While being taken to the Antoine soldiers’ barracks (castle, KJV) Paul petitioned the Roman commander that he be allowed to speak to the Jews, gathered about him, who had instigated his arrest. The apostle began his speaking, saying, “Men, brethren, and fathers, hear ye my defence which I make now unto you” (Acts 22:1, emp. mine). “Defence” is a translation of the Greek root ἀπολογία. Paul was saying – Hear my apology. His defense continued unto the twenty-first verse when he was stopped by his audience. Paul gave proofs of his conversion to Christianity, his commitment to the work of the Lord, and of the Gospel itself. His defense was reasoned from one step to the next, each building on the previous – the hallmarks of a logical apology.

Another example of an apology is one much more contemporary than the days of Paul, Thomas More, or Shakespeare. Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth president of the United States, constitutionalist, and advocate for American union, spoke eloquently on behalf of the “perpetuity” of the union of the states that form this country. In his First Inaugural speech, March 04, 1861, Lincoln argued that a state of perpetual union exists between the American states. Universal law and the Constitution were the basis for the “perpetuity.” Action by any state by its own initiative to dissolve the constitutional union was unlawful, rendering any state law affecting secession “void.” Lincoln’s conclusion was that the Union was stronger than any state alone and subject only to the sovereign power of the people, as a whole. Lincoln’s speech is a great apology for the American Union.

Though one often hears and even uses the term “apology” to ask pardon or forgiveness, ἀπολογία has a long and illustrious history found in great oration, brave defiance, and irresistible reasoning, leaving honorable examples to a contemporary audience willing to learn the lessons.