How Eternal is Eternal?-part one
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How Eternal is Eternal?-part one
How Eternal is Eternal? DR JONES
Nov 03, 2009
Augustine, the fifth-century bishop of Hippo, argued against Universal Reconciliation in his book, The City of God, XXI, xi,
"Moreover, some of those against whom we are defending in the city of God think it unjust that a man should be condemned to eternal punishment for crimes, however great committed in a short period of time. As if any just law would ever make it an aim that punishment should equal in length of time it took to become liable to punishment!"
Obviously, the argument is spurious, because no one says that the length of time it takes to commit a sin has anything to do with the length of time it takes to bring judgment. It may take only a few minutes to rob someone of thousands of dollars, but to repay it might take years.
What his Greek opponents were saying was that the word aionian is not a word that means infinite time. The word for infinite was aidios, as used in Rom. 1:20,
"For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes, His ETERNAL [aidios] power and divine nature, have been clearly seen . . .
If Paul had used the tern aionian here, many might have misunderstood him, thinking he was limiting God's power. So Augustine's opponents, who spoke Greek as their native tongue, understood that God was the Savior of all men (1 Tim. 4:10) and that He would reconcile all of creation (Col. 1:16-20).
Augustine continues:
"Now since fine, loss of status, exile and slavery are generally so imposed that they are not eased by any pardon, are they not comparable to eternal punishment, as far as the measure of this life allows? Note that the reason why they cannot be eternal is that the life of one punished by them is not eternally prolonged. However, the crimes that are avenged by penalties of longest duration are perpetrated in the shortest time, and no man living would propose that the torments of the guilty should be ended as quickly as the deed was done--murder, or adultery, or sacrilege, or any other crime that ought to be measured not by length of time, but by the enormity of its injustice and impiety."Here Augustine draws the parallel to the Roman law system. If a man commits a crime that draws a "life sentence," the criminal would theoretically continue in slavery forever, if he were immortal.
I'm not sure that even the Romans would have passed laws demanding eternal slavery, if they knew that someone was immortal. But that is a moot point. The fact that men might be so unmerciful only shows the contrast between the character of man and the character of God. Surely Augustine must have had some knowledge of the law of Jubilee, which limited liability for major crimes. Surely, he must have known about the limit of 40 stripes for misdemeanors.
When Augustine tries to argue on the basis of law, he shows his ignorance of biblical law. Instead, he appeals to Roman law, with which his audience was familiar.
Augustine also argues that "eternal life" is the same length of time as "eternal judgment." Technically, he is right, because each refers to an appropriate AGE in which men are either immortal or experiencing judgment. To be given "age-abiding life" is to be given immortality in the first resurrection, wherein the overcomers enjoy immortality in THE AGE to come. The Hebrews often referred to "The Age" as being the great Messianic Age, i.e., the Millennial Sabbath. Hence, Strong's Concordance tells us about the word aion (#165), giving as one of its meanings, "spec. (Jewish) a Messianic period (present or future)."
When a Judean spoke of "The Age," he was referring to the Messianic Age to come. And the term aionian meant "pertaining to The Age (to come)".
Life in The Age, then, referred to immortality given at the resurrection. While Jewish thought did not account for more than a single resurrection, John makes it clear in Revelation 20 that there were to be TWO resurrections. Not all would be raised in the first, and so the NT admonishes people to believe (Passover) and to learn obedience (Pentecost), so that they might inherit aionian life (Tabernacles) in the first resurrection.
Every believer will eventually inherit immortality, but only the overcomers will qualify for aionian life. As for "eternal judgment," there is an appropriate age for judgment as well. It is not the same age as the one in which aionian life is granted, but is rather the age AFTER the Millennial Sabbath.
Aionian life is immortality following the first resurrection. Aionian judgment is judgment following the second resurrection. So Augustine's argument is again spurious, because it is based upon his lack of knowledge. He did not know the Greek language, nor did he understand the Messianic terminology commonly used in the first century. In Peter Brown's book, Augustine of Hippo, page 6, we read,
"Augustine's failure to learn Greek was a momentous casualty of the late Roman educational system; he will become the only Latin philosopher in antiquity to be virtually ignorant of Greek."
Some time after Augustine made his arguments, his error was apparently pointed out to him, but by this time it was difficult to make the change. Dr. F.W. Farrar tells of this in his book, Mercy and Judgment, page 178, "Since aion meant 'age,' aionios means, properly, 'belonging to an age,' or 'age-long,' and anyone who asserts that it must mean 'endless' defends a position which even Augustine practically abandoned twelve centuries ago."
Here is what A. W. Argyle says in The Cambridge Bible Commentary in regard to Matt. 25:46, "46. eternal punishment, i.e., punishment characteristic of the Age to come, not meaning that it lasts forever." "eternal life, i.e., the life that belongs to the Age to come, the full abundant life which is fellowship with God." This is why Young's Literal Translation of the New Testament renders the term "life age-during." This is why The Emphasized Bible renders the term "life age-abiding." There are others who simply avoided the whole problem. Wilson's New Testament translation, The Emphatic Diaglott, simply leaves it as "aionian life." So does the Concordant Version.
All of these scholars (and many more) recognized the futility of insisting that aionian must mean an infinite period of time. The fact is, an age is an indefinite period of time, but not infinite. Ages can be of varying lengths. Aionian life is 1000 years; aionian judgment is 42,000 years. The time of an age can vary, but an age always comes to an end.
Once we understand the idea of "The Ages," we can understand the biblical teaching on life and judgment. But we must get past the Latin word aeternum, which Jerome used to translate aionian,and which has come into the English language as eternal. Jerome was a contemporary of Augustine in the fifth century. He did not face a language barrier, but in his day aeternum had a double meaning. It could mean either "unending time" or "a period of time (age)."
Unfortunately, aeternum now means just one thing: unending time. ________________________________________
How Eternal is Eternal?-part two Nov 04, 2009
There are many scholars who tell us that no ancient language had a direct expression of "eternity" as we know it today. The Hebrew olam literally means "obscurity" and expresses the idea of an indefinite or an unknown period of time. Other languages follow similar patterns.
The Hebrew Old Testament began to be translated into Greek around 280 B.C., that is, about 40 years after the death of Alexander the Great. His conquests made Greek the common and commercial language from Italy to the Euphrates. In the first century, Paul wrote a letter to the saints in Rome using the Greek language, knowing that it was the common language used there, which all would understand. There were many Latin dialects in Italy and North Africa, but Greek was the language that most of them had in common.
Alexander the Great built the city of Alexandria in Egypt and invited Jews to immigrate there. Many did, and within a generation many of them no longer spoke Hebrew. This created a need for a Greek translation of Scripture. Hence the Septuagint was produced by 70 Hebrew scholars.
When they came to the Hebrew word olam, they rendered it by the Greek equivalent, aion andaionian. So technically, it matters little how the Greeks actually used aion. What really matters is how the Hebrews used olam. The Greek term was only the closest word they could find to express a Hebrew concept. So even if one was speaking or reading Greek, it was necessary to think Hebrew.
Even so, aion was used by the Greeks to mean an eon, or age, a period of time that might vary widely, but in the end it was a limited period of time.
As Rome consolidated its empire, Greek remained the language of culture for a long time. Even so, there were many local Latin dialects throughout Italy and North Africa. In particular, the Latin spoken in North Africa was quite different from that spoken in Italy. The first Latin translation of Scripture (into "Old Latin") was of the "African" type, largely free of Greek influence.
From about 190-220 A.D., Tertullian of Carthage, who was a Roman lawyer, used this Old Latin version, which is how we even know of its existence. When it was introduced into Italy, its grammar broke many of the rules of more refined Latin and its roughness grated on their nerves. And so many took it upon themselves to make corrections and refinements. Soon there were a multitude of Latin translations, and it was said that there were as many translations as there were manuscripts!
This was the situation in the fifth century when Jerome decided to produce a standard Latin translation of the Bible. Up to that time, the Septuagint had been the most widely used version, but the need for a Latin translation was by this time quite apparent. So he spent considerable time learning Hebrew from the rabbis.
In the course of translation, Jerome had to translate the Hebrew olam and the Greek aion into Latin. Essentially, he had two Latin words to choose from, each being used in the various Latin dialects. These were seculum and aeternum.
Seculum, as defined in Latin dictionaries, meant a generation, an age, the world, the times, the spirit of the times, and a period of a hundred years (being the outer limits of a man's life span).
The more important question is how Jerome viewed the meaning of the word aeternum. Being fluent in Greek, Jerome certainly knew the meaning of aionian. He must have known that the Latin wordaevum, which (letter for letter) was almost identical to aion, was used to denote "lifetime, life, an age." According to Alexander Thomson's book, Whence Eternity?, page 20, "Aevum is never found in Latin standing for endless time."
On page 17, Thomson writes,
"Farrar says that even the Latin Fathers who had a competent knowledge of Greek knew that aeternum was used in the same loose way, for an indefinite period, in Latin writers, as aionion was used in Greek."
Jerome appears to have compromised by using both seculum and aeternum interchangeably. Out of 130 occurrences of aion in the New Testament, Jerome translated it seculum 101 times andaeternum 27 times.
A thousand years later, when the Reformers began translating the Bible into the common languages of the people, they generally followed Jerome's lead. Where Jerome used seculum, the English translators used "world." Where Jerome used aeternum, Tyndale particularly used "for ever."
In the 16th century, Phavorinus' Etymologicum Magnum states with a certain irony,
"Aion is the imperceptible (aidios) and the unending (ateleutetos), as it seems to the theologian."
In other words, theologians were equating aion with other Greek words that were used in the New Testament to express the idea of unending time. Phavorinus decided not to contradict established Roman doctrine, but he softly registered his protest.
He knew, of course, that a thousand years earlier, the Emperor Justinian had taken it upon himself to extend the meaning of aionian in Church doctrine to indicate unending time. Justinian wrote a letter (about a century after Jerome's time), in which he says,
"The holy church of Christ teaches an endless eonian (ateleutetos aionios) life for the just, and endless (ateleutetos) punishment for the wicked."
It is obvious that Justinian had to add a word to aionios to make it truly mean "eternal." He is the emperor who called for the Church Council of Constantinople (548), where Origen and others were anathematized for the first time. Justinian objected to the long-held view of the Restoration of All Things and wanted to ban it officially. Even so, the Church Council merely condemned Origen's view that Satan and his angels would be saved in the end, without referencing the ultimate reconciliation of all men.
Universal Reconciliation was not actually condemned by a Church Council until 696 A.D.
The idea of never-ending torture for most of humanity came primarily out of the Latin Fathers: Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine. Their view was that evil was a force apart from God. Mankind was conspersis damnata, massa perditionis, "one damned batch and mass of perdition," and only a few would be saved out of it. With such a view, it is not surprising that they would have extended the meaning of aeternus to infinite time.
In the end, however, it does not really matter what the Latin words originally meant or how these words have changed in meaning over the years. All that really matters is what the Greek words meant when the New Testament writers used them. And more importantly, what matters is not what the Greek word means but what its Hebrew equivalent means (olam). The Septuagint had used Greek words to express Hebrew thought. Though the Greek meanings were usually near to the Hebrew thought patterns, certain words like hades did not adequately express the Hebrew concept of sheol.
In the case of olam, however, the Greek word aion was a near equivalent. Neither expressed the idea of endless time, but obscure or indefinite time. The Latin aeternum started out as a proper translation, but later it was extended to mean "eternity" as we know it today.
