In Ephesians 6:4, fathers are told to bring up their children in the “nurture and admonition” of the Lord. This is all very well, and the words underlying this phrase are paideia and nouthesia. Back in the day, I used to say (in print and on audio tapes) that paideia was the word we rendered as nurture, and which we should understand as encompassing, as Thayers puts it, “the whole training and education of children.” But then I discovered somewhere, don’t remember how, that paideia includes the sense of admonition, which is the second word in the English phrase. For some reason I concluded that the English word admonition was the translation of paideia, and talked (and perhaps wrote) that way for a while. Now I have flipped back again. I am like the women that Paul refers to, always learning and never coming to a knowledge of the truth.
But pity my plight. The ESV renders the phrase as “discipline and instruction.” The NKJV does the same. The NIV gives us “discipline and admonition.” The problem is that it appears that a legit translation could give us “intruction and discipline,” or even “admonition and nurture” instead of “nurture and admonition.” I would prefer “education and instruction.” At any rate, this post has a time stamp on it, and you may consider this a retraction of any previous garble.