Fulfillment

My Greek mentor once told me he was initially inspired to study the language because some pretentious British author ended a novel with the words: Τὸ Tἐλος (to tel-os). As you might imagine this means, “The End” in ancient Greek.  My mentor guessed that was the meaning but he took the time to look it up. Doing so inspired him to learn more about not only Greek but the other language, Latin, with which 18th and 19th century British authors loved to pepper their compositions. Eventually he became a professor of Classics.

Long before the professor told me this anecdote, τἐλος had become my favorite Greek word. It happened when I was struggling to read the Gospel of John with my painfully elementary knowledge of the language. The phrase in question is in John 19:30 where Jesus says, “It is finished.” or in Greek, “Τετέλεσται. (te-tel-es-tai)” Right away I recognized that the translation I had been reading all my life was not conveying the full meaning of the Greek. The verb here is in the Perfect Tense meaning “It has been finished.” Now perhaps that’s a distinction that makes no real difference but I also knew the Greeks used this tense to speak about something that had been done and remains done. So the very form of the verb brings with it additional meaning. 

Beyond this came the recognition that the connotations which I associate with the English word “finished” don’t tell the whole story.  When I think of “finished” or “the end” my mind goes to the past tense of “to do.” That is to say, “It’s over” or “It’s done” or maybe “There is no more.” But the Greek word is intended to convey the idea of completion or fulfillment. So what John meant when he put the word Τετέλεσται in Jesus’ mouth was more along the lines of “It has been completely fulfilled, once and for all.”

Interestingly, Aristotle attached a special meaning to the word in his philosophical writings. He argues that everything has an inherent purpose which he labelled its τἐλος and that ultimate good is achieved when someone or something fulfills that purpose.

Figuring all this out sold me on the value of reading texts in the original language rather than relying solely on translations. There’s nothing wrong with the translation, “It is finished.” Being succinct it actually gets across the idea that in Greek it’s a one word quotation. But my thoughts don’t naturally go toward “completion” and “fulfillment” when I read the word “finished.” It took seeing it in Greek to bring those ideas to mind.

All the above was prompted by seeing another derivative of τἐλος when I was reading Luke recently. In Luke 1:45 Elizabeth tells Mary, “And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”  Fulfillment here is τελείωσις (tel-ei-os-is) which comes from the same root as τἐλος. Little did Mary or Elizabeth imagine that the fulfillment would actually be found in the execution by crucifixion of the child she was carrying in her womb at the time.

Everyone seeks fulfillment or closure. Constantly living with open-ended challenges is simply too exhausting for the human psyche. Sometimes, when you get to the end of a book you’ve really enjoyed you wish that it would go on for a little longer but even then you know it had to end at some point. With a book, you know how many pages are left to be turned. Not so with most of the things we face in life. You may know how many semesters are left before you graduate from college, but you never know how many years you will spend working in the profession for which that education has prepared you. Worrying about how it all ends brings many to despair. I think that much of the angst we see in the world today is the result of people who have no assurance of their τἐλος.

Christians rest in assurance of the fulfillment of what has been spoken to them by their Lord. It is our duty to demonstrate this through the example of our lives so that those in despair might turn to us and ask how we have achieved this peace of mind.