The Qualities Of Godlessness

In these terrible days men would be braggarts and arrogant. In Greek writings these two words often went together; and they are both picturesque.

Braggart has an interesting derivation. It is the word alazon ( Greek #213 ) and was derived from the ale, which means a wandering about. Originally the alazon ( Greek #213 ) was a wandering quack. Plutarch uses the word to describe a quack doctor. The alazon ( Greek #213 ) was a mountebank who wandered the country with medicines and spells and methods of exorcism which, he claimed, were panaceas for all diseases. We can still see this kind of man in fairs and market-places shouting the virtues of a patent medicine which will act like magic. Then the word went on to widen its meaning until it meant any braggart.

The Greek moralists wrote much about this word. The Platonic Definitions defined the corresponding noun (alazoneia, Greek #212 ) as: "The claim to good things which a man does not really possess." Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics, 7: 2) defined the alazon ( Greek #213 ) as "the man who pretends to creditable qualities that he does not possess, or possesses in a lesser degree than he makes out." Xenophon tells us how Cyrus, the Persian king, defined the alazon ( Greek #213 ): "The name alazon ( Greek #213 ) seems to apply to those who pretend that they are richer than they are or braver than they are, and to those who promise to do what they cannot do, and that, too, when it is evident that they do this only for the sake of getting something or making some gain" (Xenophon: Cyropoedia, 2, 2, 12). Xenophon in the Memorabilia tells how Socrates utterly condemned such impostors. Socrates skid that they were to be found in every walk of life but were worst of all in politics. "Much the greatest rogue of all is the man who has gulled his city into the belief that he is fit to direct it."

The world is full of these braggarts to this day; the clever know-all's who deceive people into thinking that they are wise, the politicians who claim that their parties have a program which will bring in the Utopia and that they alone are born to be leaders of men, the people who crowd the advertisement columns with claims to give beauty, knowledge or health by their system, the people in the Church who have a kind of ostentatious goodness.

Closely allied with the braggart, but--as we shall see--even worse, is the man who is arrogant. The word is huperephanos ( Greek #5244 ). It is derived from two Greek words which mean to show oneself above. The man who is huperephanos ( Greek #5244 ), said Theophrastus, has a kind of contempt for everyone except himself. He is the man who is guilty of the "sin of the high heart." He is the man whom God resists, for it is repeatedly said in scripture, that God receives the humble but resists the man who is proud, huperephanos ( Greek #5244 ) ( James 4:6 ; 1 Peter 5:5 ; Proverbs 3:24 ). Theophylact called this kind of pride akropolis (compare Greek #206 and Greek #4172 ) kakon ( Greek #2556 ), the citadel of evils.

The difference between the braggart and the man who is arrogant is this. The braggart is a swaggering creature, who tries to bluster his way into power and eminence. No one can possibly mistake him. But the sin of the man who is arrogant is in his heart. He might even seem to be humble; but in his secret heart there is contempt for everyone else. He nourishes an all-consuming, all-pervading pride; and in his heart there is a little altar where he bows down before himself.