Inamissible and inadmissible and amissible and amissibility

One of the words that lawyers dread hearing after they have attempted to introduce something into evidence is a ruling from the bench that it is "inadmissible." Something is inadmissible because it violates one of the hearsay rules, it isn't relevant, it is redundant or is highly prejudicial. Because of a spate of law-oriented TV shows and celebrity trials in the past decade or so, the general American public knows this word now. It is one of the few five-syllable words that flows effortlessly from the lips of great and small alike.* America, however, doesn't know is aural cousin, inamissible. Something inamissible is "not liable to be lost." The word ought to have

[*The only other five-syllable word that all America seems to know is "irresponsible." Oft-times it seems you can't have a child over 12 without invoking the word regularly. "Responsibility" is the singular six-syllable word that all know. The only two seven-syallable words that all lawyers can say without tripping are "unconscionability" and "inadmissibility." I wouldn't have a clue about doctors and their favorite multi-syllabic words, though I think shrinks have a penchant for "narcissism."]

greater "play" in our communication patterns because of the psychological and theological reality to which it points. That is, we gain and lose things in life. Many things we gain are things we don't want to lose. We sometimes will pay a great deal of money to people who can assure us that what we have is inamissible. What parent who has wept over the seemingly errant path of a child would not be comforted by words that comforted Monica, mother of Augustine: "It is impossible that a child of such tears would be lost." An inamissible child. What a thought. And, the thought of loss is what drives us to buy insurance to protect against loss. Risk-averse spiritual people develop vigorous doctrines of eternal security to guard against losing salvation. On it goes.

And we should pause on theology for more than the sound-byte that the most tolerant in our culture are wont to give it. One of the burning debates in the past between the Reformed and Arminian traditions of Protestant theology was whether salvation, once granted, could be "lost." The embers of this controversy are relatively cool to the touch now, even though they spring temporarily to life whenever an eager young convert comes upon the question of eternal security. Like many young people who discover the pleasures of sex, most who take up the old question of eternal security think that they were the first ones to happen upon it. Thus, it isn't unexpected that four of the five OED attestations of inamissible reflect theological (or philosophical) concerns. From the redoubtable preacher Jeremy Taylor: "As this is irremediable and irrecoverable, so is the other inamissible." Or, from 1741: "How can you infer that the life of faith is inamissible?" Most of the congregants who heard the following words hoped, I am sure that there was not a "d" in the "big" words: "The Scriptures..declare..that virtue will be inamissible in heaven."

One might argue, in good Reformed fashion, that the perseverence of the saints and the inamissibility of salvation are reverse and obverse of a coin. All of this makes John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, a staple of Puritan (Reformed) piety, interesting because he is never really clear, in his metaphorical description of the Christian life, if salvation ever is "assured" before one enters the gates of the Heavenly City. One of the chilling lines near the end of the book describes the chute that goes straight to Hell even from the gates of Heaven. As Maxwell Smart might say, "Missed by that much!" Maybe the chute to Hell was decorated with wall hangings and streamers that said, "Not inamissible after all." But that was beyond Bunyan's dream.

Amissible

Something amissible is, obviously, something that can be lost. Care should be taken to distinguish amiss from amissible. Amiss* is derived from "miss" meaning "to miss the mark," or "fall short," while amissible is derived from "amittere" meaning "to lose." The Century and the OED know four words that are

[*I can't resist, however, giving one clever poetic citation for amiss. From Tennyson, "There's somewhat in this world amiss/ Shall be unriddled by and by."]

close cousins of amissible: amissibility, amission, amissive and amissing. But amissing is like "acourting," and no one will miss it if it is lost. From a legal case: "A deponent..does not know by what means the said lock..now amissing, was lost." Agree that we can lay it aside?

You have to admit, if you study the word for any length of time, that theology does seem to have a lock on it. "The same grace now..is not amissible as that was." And, from John Wesley, whose Methodism took away the confidence of the Reformed's doctrine of eternal security: "It [entire Sanctification] is amissible, capable of being lost." It wouldn't be good to leave this essay without a quotation from Richard Baxter, the 17th century Puritan divine and author of the deservedly famous The Reformed Pastor. In another one of his books he muses about "The Amissibility of a state of Infant Justification, or rather the cessation of it."

Conclusion

But now I see, that by giving you more than the accepted amount of theology, I have opened numerous cans of worms that have largely and properly been cast on the ash heap of intellectual culture (e.g., whether infants dying before ability to 'make a choice' for God are "saved"; whether one can be "entirely santified"--without "known" sin--in this life), I will sign off, and encourage you to read the next essay, which has a much more earthy theme.

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