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Bible Dictionaries
Soberness Sobriety
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or The object of this article is to determine the meanings of the two word-groups, νηφάλιος (νήφω) and σώφρων (and cognates), which are translated ‘sober’ in the NT. (The term ἐγκράτεια is discussed in the article Temperance.) These two groups of words differ both in their original and in their secondary meanings and are accordingly treated separately here.
1. νηφάλιος (νήφω).-The Authorized Version translates the adjective twice and the verb four times by ‘sober’ (1 Timothy 3:11, Titus 2:2; 1 Thessalonians 5:6; 1 Thessalonians 5:8, 1 Peter 1:13; 1 Peter 5:8), the adjective once by ‘vigilant,’ and the verb twice by ‘watch’ (1 Timothy 3:2, 2 Timothy 4:5, 1 Peter 4:7). The reason for this variety of rendering on the part of the Authorized Version may be the natural desire to avoid dull uniformity, but probably also it is due to dubiety as to whether in the original the words are used in their primary or in their secondary sense. The Revised Version adopts a uniform rendering-for the adjective always ‘temperate’ and for the verb ‘sober.’
The primary meaning is clearly seen in a passage such as Xen. Cyr. VII. v. 20. The elder Cyrus encourages his soldiers to attack Babylon, and he reminds them that once before they overcame those enemies when they (i.e. the enemy) were awake (ἐγρηγορότας), sober (νήφοντας), armed (ἐξωπλισμένους), and drawn up in battle array (συντεταγμένους). Therefore they should overcome them now when many of them are asleep (καθεύδουσι), many of them drunk (μεθύουσι), and all of them unprepared (ἀσύντακτοι). The word νήφω is thus the direct opposite of μεθύω, and it is excellently rendered ‘sober’ (Lat. sobrius = sine + ebrius). There is such a literary similarity between the above passage from Xenophon and 1 Thessalonians 5:6 ff. that, if it were conceivable, one might say that St. Paul had it in his mind; and therefore it is especially instructive as a parallel. To be sober, then, is more intensive (1 Thessalonians 5:6 ff.) than to be awake (γρηγορέω), for a man may not be asleep and yet not be sober. His wits may be wandering, the loins of his understanding may be loose. (In 1 Peter 5:8, however, γρηγορέω seems to be the stronger word.) From the Latin equivalent of γρηγορέω we get ‘vigils’ and the proper name Vigilantius; and in the history of the Church the vigilantes did not always escape the vices of drunkenness and lust, as even Jerome, who with his usual coarseness of language defends them against Vigilantius (a curious irony in the name), has to admit (circa, about Vigilantium, 9). The primary meaning of νήφω in the NT thus excludes two ideas-on the one hand the slumber of the drunkard, and on the other the listless stupor which is characteristic of the half-awakened, or the weariness which creeps over those who watch long. The word is also used tropically in the NT, but the literal meaning is almost invariably in the background, and in some cases it is preponderant. This is probably largely due to the influence of our Lord’s parable (Mark 13:34-37), in which some are depicted as overtaken by their lord’s coming, in a drunken state; and it is appalling to think how many even yet in Christian lands die in this sad condition.
To describe the transition from drunken sleep to sobriety ἐκνήφω is used in the Septuagint (νήφω and νηφάλιος do not occur), of Noah (Genesis 9:24), of Nabal (1 S [Septuagint 1 Kings] 25:37), of the drunkards of Joes’s time (Joel 1:5). When Eli asks Hannah to put away her wine from her, his meaning is that she should sleep it off (1 Samuel 1:14; Septuagint περιελοῦ). In Sirach 34:2 (31) the word is used tropically and transitively. ‘Wakeful anxiety will crave slumber, and a grievous sickness will banish sleep’ (ἐκνήψει ὕπνον-the reading, however, may be ὕπνος). In the only passage where ἐκνήφω occurs in the NT (1 Corinthians 15:34, ‘Awake to a righteous life of sobriety and sin not’) the tropical sense is evident but the original force of the word is not absent. The Corinthians must not forget the Resurrection, for ‘evil communications corrupt good manners.’ If they did, their motto would soon become, ‘Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.’ Already at the love-feasts did not some of them get drunk, while their poorer brethren had neither food nor drink sufficient for their needs (1 Corinthians 11:21)? It is thus clear that the danger of actual drunkenness is included in the warning, ‘Do not err.’ The ideas of sobriety, righteousness, and the Parousia are here associated, as in St. Paul’s speech to Felix, where he spoke of righteousness, temperance, and the judgment to come (Acts 24:25). The word νήφω indeed is commonly used with a reference to the coming of the Lord (1 Thessalonians 5:6 f., 1 Peter 1:13). To be ignorant of this or to forget it in pleasure is foolish and dangerous. Included in the idea of sobriety or closely akin to it is the thought of vigilance, as of the sentinel, and of preparedness and armed security, as of the soldier. There is a military atmosphere about the word. It is the necessary equipment of prayer-the watchful longing of the Christian soldier for the coming of his Lord (1 Peter 4:7). He is not to sleep on duty even if his Lord should tarry till the third watch. Nor should the Christian forget that he fights against a subtle, powerful enemy-the Great Adversary who is ever on the outlook to devour him (1 Peter 5:8). This is also a favourite idea with St. Paul. The ignorance of the day and hour of Christ’s coming is an additional motive to sobriety-cf. Revelation 16:15 : ‘Behold I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.’ But this ignorance has for its sphere a day of moral and spiritual life in which Christians are to live as children of the day. So in 1 Thessalonians 5:6 ff. St. Paul contrasts the Christian with the heathen who sleeps and is drunken in the night. He means not simply the avoidance of intoxication; he means also spiritual sobriety.
As Anaxagoras appeared to Aristotle (Met. i. 3) like a sober (νήφων) man among a crowd of drunkards, so in a deeper sense must the Christian appear. Similarly in Romans 13:11-14 the night is the sphere of spiritual blindness resulting in all manner of riotous excess, but the day calls for wakefulness, sobriety, and spiritual readiness. St. Peter (1 Peter 1:13) compares the Christians to the Israelites in Egypt ready to march out. His warning against a relapse into their former life of lusts indicates that he does not forget the possibility of actual drunkenness, but this is only one symptom of spiritual stupor-ignorance of God (1 Corinthians 15:34). Just as pleasure and case must not tempt to slumber and drunken stupor, so must not danger and suffering; rather should suffering warn them against this sin and make them cast their cares on God (1 Peter 5:7-8, 2 Timothy 4:5). The unusual compound ἀνανήφω occurs in 2 Timothy 2:26. Those who resist the Christian evangelist are taken captive by the devil to do his will. (It is forced to refer this to God’s will or the will of the Evangelist.) They are in his snare, but perhaps by considerate dealings they may be aroused to sobriety (ἀνανήφω only here in the NT and not in the Septuagint ).
We may thus say that νήφω on its positive side is the watchful, alert state of soul which knows that the day of Christ has already dawned, the earnest expectation (ἀποκαραδοκία) of the coming of the Master, the prayerful, hopeful, longing spirit of love for the coming of the full day of Christ. On its negative side it implies a knowledge of the power of evil, of the night in which the Great Adversary roams for prey, when sons of Belial flown with insolence and wine are active, the night of secret sinful conclaves. The Christian soldier is armed against this by a life of sobriety, of righteousness, of longing prayer. Thus he cannot be surprised by the force of the enemy, or by the suddenness of his Lord’s returning, as the Babylonians were by Cyrus or the Egyptians by the angel of death. It is specially indispensable for the Christian evangelist to have this wakeful attentive attitude for himself and for those under his care, for whom he must give account (Hebrews 13:17; cf. also Acts 20:31, Mark 13:34). So St. Paul says to Timothy, ‘Be sober in all things,’ not like the dumb dogs, the blind watchmen of Isaiah’s time (Isaiah 56:9-12, an instructive contrast).
The adjective νηφάλιος is confined to the Pastorals. The bishop must be sober (1 Timothy 3:2, Titus 2:2), so also deaconesses (1 Timothy 3:11). The question here is whether the word is used in its primary meaning of ‘not given to much wine’ (μὴ οἴνῳ πολλᾧ προσέχοντες, 1 Timothy 3:8; μὴ πάροινος, 1 Timothy 3:3) or in the more general sense of ‘vigilantes animo’ (Bengel, on 1 Timothy 3:2). The Greek interpreters favour the wider meaning, but much can be said for the more restricted one. Josephus says that Moses did not permit priests to drink wine so long as they wore their sacerdotal garments (Ant. III. xii. 2), and the word νηφάλιος seems to be a sacrosanct term for priestly sobriety or the prerequisite of a true worshipper. CEdipus considers it a favourable omen that he came untasting wine to the seat of the Erinyes, who loathe the wine cup in libations offered to them (Soph. CEd. Col. 100). This is similar to the usage in 1 Peter 4:7, ‘Be sober unto prayer,’ and it is attested by inscriptions (see Expositor , 7th ser., ix. [1910] 284). Fielding’s Parson Adams was never wholly unknown in the Christian Church. On the other hand, the warning to Timothy, ‘Be sober in all things,’ favours the wider reference, as does also the fact that there is no reason to suppose that Christian ministers or members were addicted to this special vice. The wider meaning includes the narrower without unduly submerging it.
2. σωφρονέω and cognates.-Cicero found difficulty in rendering the ideas included in these terms in Latin (Tusc. Disp. iii. 5), and he used three words-temperantia, moderatio, modestia (ib. iii. 8; de Off. i. 27). The same difficulty is felt in regard to our own language, and as these words were used in a technical sense in Greek philosophy there is a danger, in fixing their connotation, of being over-precise.
(a) The words in Greek often mean ‘sanity’ in its literal sense, and σωφρονέω is thus used in the Gospels (Mark 5:15, Luke 8:35) of the Gadarene demoniac, after he was healed by Jesus. He was clothed and in his right mind-‘rationis usu,’ as Bengel has it (in loc.). The opposite is μανία. Thus when Helen is told that Ajax fell on his own sword and destroyed himself she exclaims, ‘Was he mad, for no sane person would do so?’ (μανέντʼ, ἐπεὶ τίς σωφρονῶν τλαίη τάδʼ ἄν; Eur. Hel. 97). Xenophon also says that Socrates ‘was always discussing about human affairs, asking what piety was, and what impiety, what beauty, what ugliness … what sanity (σωφροσύμη) and what insanity (μανία)’ (Mem. I. i. 16). Insanity is the supreme example of mental derangement, of lack of self-control, and so δαιμονίζεσθαι is the very opposite of σωφρονεῖν. Akin to this is St. Paul’s usage of the word in Acts 26:25, 2 Corinthians 5:13. Festus, as he heard the Christian message, especially of the Resurrection, from St. Paul’s perfervid lips, exclaimed, ‘Paul, thou art mad; thy much learning doth turn thee to madness’ (εἰς μανίαν). In the ancient world the enthusiastic utterance of an oracle-giver was attributed to a temporary suppression of the reason. ‘No man, when in his wits, attains prophetic truth and inspiration; but when he receives the inspired word, either his intelligence is enthralled in sleep, or he is demented by some distemper or possession’ (Plato, TimCEus, 71 E, translation B. Jowett3, Oxford, 1892, vol. iii. p. 493). St. Paul’s courteous but firm reply reveals that he at once grasped Festus’s attitude. He was not mad, but spoke the words of truth and sanity. It was natural for a man like Festus to imagine that St. Paul was living in a world of illusions and that his reason was for the moment obscured. St. Paul’s message was utterly novel to him, and he consequently attributed his intense emotion to mental derangement, just as he regarded the content of his message as illusion and not reality (ἀλήθεια). Similarly, Penelope when roused from her slumber by the old nurse who came with the message that her long-lost Ulysses is home looks on the nurse as one whom the gods had deprived of her sanity (Ods. xxiii. 13).
In 2 Corinthians 5:13 the opposite of σωφρονεῖν is ἐκατῆναι. The phenomena of the Day of Pentecost were familiar in the early Christian Church. Men were carried out of themselves by a new experience of the Divine power. Excitement and enthusiasm such as men had never felt before led them on to action. Now the cautious onlooker was tempted to put this down to aberration, and unfortunately such might be the case. Rationalism is always tempted to explain enthusiasm as madness. ‘Quench not the spirit’ was a necessary warning even to a Christian people. Men naturally distrust emotion, and this was especially true of an emotional people like the Greeks.
‘The Greeks, or some sections of the Greek race, were very liable to violent emotions; and hence it was that the Greek moral philosophers insisted on control of emotion as they did. The Greeks had a sort of natural want of self-respect and a tendency to forget themselves which particularly struck the Romans as unworthy’ (Nettleship, Lectures on Plato’s Republic, p. 96).
St. Paul undoubtedly exhibited the signs of deep emotion. He was an enthusiast, but to God. The criticism that he was actuated by σωφροσύνη (ironical) was the best answer to this (2 Corinthians 5:13). Here the word includes self-control-constraint which had reason on its side. It was due to the love of Christ that he was so enthusiastic, and that love prompted a sober judging of man’s needs and of the means to meet those needs. The Spartan king Archidamus (ξυνετὸς δοκῶν εἶναι καὶ σώφρων) exhibits sanity in this sense when he warns his people to think σωφρόνως before going to war with Athens (Thuc. Hist. i. 79 ff.). They should see to it that their resources are sufficient. There is included in the word in this connexion a sober balancing of ways and means, a counting of the cost as our Lord enjoined-a distrust of a course of action simply because it appeals to the fancy or the feelings. It must also appeal to sober common sense. St. Paul had done this and so had reached a σωφροσύνη on a higher level than mere prudence, a true intellectual love of God and man, to use Spinoza’s famous phrase. [Note: Ecce Homo11, London, 1873, p. 7: ‘No heart is pure that is not passionate; no virtue is safe that is not enthusiastic. And such an enthusiastic virtue Christ was to introduce.’] Philosophers are divided as to whether will or intellect has the primacy in man’s constitution, and emotion is distrusted; yet the true Christian σώφρων is one, like St. Paul, in whom the apprehended love of Christ rules the will and illumines the intellect. The emotional harmony is in the region of the spirit. Here is its source, and its sway is over the whole man from above.
In dealing with self-control Plato has always in view unworthy exhibitions of emotion. ‘Is the picture of a hero rolling on the ground with grief a worthy example?’ he asks. From this point of view he criticizes Greek religion, Greek poetry and music. He was thus correcting a national weakness. ‘Throughout the treatment of these virtues we find the characteristic Greek idea that excess, whether in grief or in laughter or in appetite or in any passion or emotion, is intrinsically bad. We have to remember that dignity was not a strong point of Greek character’ (Nettleship, op. cit., p. 96). St. Paul also had to face this question, especially in Corinth, but he solves it by the appeal to love (1 Corinthians 13). He philosophizes on a plane so different from that of Plato that in trying to compare their ideas we have no common denominator.
(b) In Romans 12:1-8 σωφρονεῖν is contrasted with ὑπερφρονεῖν. The Apostle, as is clear from the context, includes in σωφροσύνη the absence of boasting, of vain, glory, undue emphasis on and opinion of oneself, et hoc genus omne. It implies the Christian grace of humility, the recognition that all we are and have we owe to God. Positively there is included the thoughtful yet humble recognition of the nature and place of the powers that we possess, and their exercise in the service of the Christian community of which we are members. The reference is not obtrusively to the control of bodily pleasures-‘eating and drinking and sexual desires’ (περὶ σιτίων καὶ ποτῶν καὶ τῶν ἀφροδισίων), which is the specific meaning in Greek moral philosophy (see Green, Prolegomena to Ethics4, p. 327). This restricted usage is not unknown in the NT. It is found in 1 Peter 4:7, where the meaning is determined by the opposition to ἐν ἀσελγείαις, ἐπιθυμίαις (1 Peter 4:3), and it is prominent in Titus 2:12, where prudence (σωφρόνως) is opposed to worldly lusts and associated with justice and piety. This passage in Titus is valuable because it gives us the ground, the scope, and the hope of Christian morals. The ground is in the revealed grace of God; the scope includes self-control, justice towards others, and piety towards God; the hope is the appearing of the Saviour God. Green (bk. iii. ch. v.) shows how much wider the scope of Christian self-control is than Greek, and, though he attempts to prove that the principle is still the same, few Christians will agree with him. What St. Paul calls the grace of God which brings salvation for all men is not within the vision of Plato or Aristotle. In Romans (ch. 12) the word is used rather of the humble temper of mind which saves from overweening excess or self-depreciating defect. The former error is more noticeable in men in general, but the latter is not unknown. The talent may be hid in a napkin or buried in the earth, and in this case there is a lack of σωφροσύνη as truly as there is in self-aggrandizement. ‘God does not require of us a false humility. We are not to think less highly of ourselves than we ought to think. We are to think soberly. We are to find out the truth about ourselves and think that. Then there will be no danger of our thinking too highly’ (Rabbi Duncan, Colloquia Peripatetica5, Edinburgh, 1907, p. 169). The sphere of σωφροσύνη here is not so much the sensual pleasures as the Christian charismata in their social bearing. The social aspect of this grace is enforced just as it is enforced by Plato in his analysis of the same virtue (Rep. 430 D-432 B).
The whole passage Romans 12:1-21; Romans 13:1-14 has to be considered if one is to grasp the wide scope of σωφροσύνη in St. Paul’s teaching. If moves in the sphere of a community redeemed by the mercies of God (Romans 12:1), renewed in mind (Romans 12:2), endowed with varied graces by God’s Spirit (Romans 12:6), to which love is the fulfilling of the law (Romans 13:10), and which is waiting for the day of Christ (Romans 13:11-14). On this plane light is thrown on the term by the wider Platonic usage, and we may go on to discuss (circa, about ) the third application of the term by St. Paul in Timothy and Titus.
‘The meaning of σωφροσύνη is best understood by its opposite ὕβρις, which is the general spirit of setting oneself up against what is higher than oneself, whether by insubordination to constituted authority (cf. Romans 13:1) and divine law, or by the rebellion of the appetites against the law of reason (cf. Romans 13:13). Thus this quality in some degree includes what we call humility. It is often said that the virtue of humility is not recognized in the Greek moral code, but the man who was σώφρων in regard to the gods would be a humble man, and the ὑβριστικός is the “proud man” in the language of the Bible’ (Nettleship, p. 98).
It is in this wide sense that we are to understand these terms in 1 Timothy 2:9-15; 1 Timothy 3:1-2 and Titus 2:2-6 where St. Paul shows the universal application of this principle to conduct. It applies to all sections of the Christian community in all their relations, to men and women, to old and young, in the soul, in the family, in the Church, and in the State. In one passage it condescends even to the matter of dress. Married women should use decorous garb in adorning themselves with modesty and propriety. ‘In “modesty” is involved an innate moral repugnance to the doing of the dishonourable act’ (Trench, Synonyms of the NT8, p. 65). Here it includes the feeling of disgust at unnecessary display, while propriety points rather to the sense of tact which leads a married woman to dress aright without erring either on the side of shabbiness or on that of show. But this saving grace extends much further and penetrates much deeper than the outward person. It implies the gentle, gracious sense of subordination and obedience to authority, the subordination of the younger women to their husbands; and the older women ought by their own conduct to teach [Note: σωφρονίζειν, ‘sophronize.’ The word is sometimes used in English; cf. A. P. Stanley, Life of Arnold8, London, 1858, vol. i. p. 30: ‘I am confirmed in my resolution not to do so [i.e. raise the entrance fees] lest I should get the sons of very great people as my pupils whom it is almost impossible to sophronize.’] this virtue to the younger (Titus 2:4-5). It implies the right attitude of the young to their elders and their superiors, and to their reason. It becomes the bishop and presbyter, for how else can they exercise authority without the excess of rigour or the laxity of weakness? There is an air of graciousness about the word which is not found in ἐγκράτεια, for ἐγκράτεια is forcible restraint, and even Plato and Aristotle insist that a man is not σώφρων ‘unless his mastery of his passions and impulses is so easy and assured that there is no sense of constraint about it’ (Nettleship, p. 97, footnote). Harmony as well as subordination is included-a harmony resulting from every thing and every person being in their appropriate place.
In 1 Timothy 2:15 there is doubt as to whether this virtue is to be understood of women or of children or of parents. ‘She shall be saved through the child-bearing, if they continue in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety.’ It is possible to understand this of the women themselves; it is possible to understand it of husband and wife alike in their home relations; but it is better to refer it to the children who in the atmosphere of this virtue have been brought up in faith and love and sanctification. Thus the mother will see the primal curse turned into a blessing in her children. This virtue also avoids the extremes of softness and sourness, of laxity and harshness. Hence Timothy is reminded that the Christian spirit is one, not of fear, but of fortitude, of love, and of σωφρονισμός. This is to be understood not simply of personal self-control, but of ability to control others as well. Fear is the vice which shrinks from duty through terror of pain. Its opposite is fortitude-a virtue always associated with self-control, which is doing one’s duty when pleasure would say ‘No.’
J. Moffatt aptly quotes Gilbert Murray (The Rise of the Greek Epic2, Oxford, 1911, p. 48), that σωφροσύνη ‘Is something like Temperance, Gentleness, Mercy; sometimes Innocence, never mere Caution; a tempering of dominant emotions by gentler thought.… The man or woman who is sôphrôn walks amid the beauties and perils of the world, feeling the love, joy, anger, and the rest; and through all he has that in his mind which saves.-Whom does it save? Not him only, but, as we should say, the whole situation. It saves the imminent evil from coming to be’ (Expositor , 8th ser., ii. [1911] 564).
Σωφροσύνη indicates that ‘each sex and situation has lines of conduct appropriate to itself, and that the individual must have tact and strength of will enough to pursue these lines instead of lapsing into excesses on one side or the other’ (Moffatt, ib. p. 564 f.).
Literature.-The Lexicons under both words are most instructive; R. C. Trench, Synonyms of the NT8, London, 1876, p. 66 ff.; T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics4, Oxford, 1899, bk. iii. ch. v.; R. L. Nettleship, Lectures on Plato’s Republic, London, 1898, p. 96 ff.; Plato, Cratylus; Aristotle, Nic. Ethics, vi. 5, 6; John Caird, Essays for Sunday Reading. London, 1906, xi.; I. Taylor, Natural History of Enthusiasm, do., 1829, Fanaticism, do., 1833; Hugh Blair, Sermons, do., 1815, vol. i. no. xi., vol. iii. no. xii.; Augustine Birrell, Selected Essays, do., 1909, p. 258f.; see also under ‘Self-Control’ and ‘Self-Denial’ in Dict. of Christ and the Gospels .
Donald Mackenzie.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Soberness Sobriety'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/s/soberness-sobriety.html. 1906-1918.
