the righteous purpose of God's judgment
AION
DOES THIS GREEK WORD MEAN "ETERNAL"?
In his Word Studies in the New Testament, Marvin Vincent, D.D., Baldwin Professor of Sacred Literature at Union Theological Seminary, New York, explained:
"Aion, transliterated aeon, is a period of longer or shorter duration, having a beginning and an end, and complete in itself. Aristotle (peri ouravou, i. 9,15) says: "The period which includes the whole time of one's life is called the aeon of each one." Hence it often means the life of a man, as in Homer, where one's life (aion) is said to leave him or to consume away (Iliad v. 685; Odyssey v. 160). It is not, however, limited to human life; it signifies any period in the course of events, as the period or age before Christ; the period of the millenium; the mythological period before the beginnings of history. The word has not "a stationary and mechanical value" (De Quincey). It does not mean a period of a fixed length for all cases. There are as many aeons as entities, the respective durations of which are fixed by the normal conditions of the several entities. There is one aeon of a human life, another of the life of a nation, another of a crow's life, another of an oak's life. The length of the aeon depends on the subject to which it is attached.
It is sometimes translated world; world represents a period or a series of periods of time. See Matt 12:32; 13:40,49; Luke 1:70; 1 Cor 1:20; 2:6; Eph 1:21. Similarly oi aiones, the worlds, the universe, the aggregate of the ages or periods, and their contents which are included in the duration of the world. 1 Cor 2:7; 10:11; Heb 1:2; 9:26; 11:3. The word always carries the notion of time, and not of eternity. It always means a period of time. Otherwise it would be impossible to account for the plural, or for such qualifying expressions as this age, or the age to come. It does not mean something endless or everlasting. To deduce that meaning from its relation to aei is absurd; for, apart from the fact that the meaning of a word is not definitely fixed by its derivation, aei does not signify endless duration. When the writer of the Pastoral Epistles quotes the saying that the Cretans are always (aei) liars (Tit. 1:12), he surely does not mean that the Cretans will go on lying to all eternity. See also Acts 7:51; 2 Cor. 4:11; 6:10; Heb 3:10; 1 Pet. 3:15. Aei means habitually or continually within the limit of the subject's life. In our colloquial dialect everlastingly is used in the same way. "The boy is everlastingly tormenting me to buy him a drum."
In the New Testament the history of the world is conceived as developed through a succession of aeons. A series of such aeons precedes the introduction of a new series inaugurated by the Christian dispensation, and the end of the world and the second coming of Christ are to mark the beginning of another series. Eph. 1:21; 2:7; 3:9,21; 1 Cor 10:11; compare Heb. 9:26. He includes the series of aeons in one great aeon, 'o aion ton aionon, the aeon of the aeons (Eph. 3:21); and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews describe the throne of God as enduring unto the aeon of the aeons (Heb 1:8). The plural is also used, aeons of the aeons, signifying all the successive periods which make up the sum total of the ages collectively. Rom. 16:27; Gal. 1:5; Philip. 4:20, etc. This plural phrase is applied by Paul to God only.
The adjective aionios in like manner carries the idea of time. Neither the noun nor the adjective, in themselves, carry the sense of endless or everlasting. They may acquire that sense by their connotation, as, on the other hand, aidios, which means everlasting, has its meaning limited to a given point of time in Jude 6. Aionios means enduring through or pertaining to a period of time. Both the noun and the adjective are applied to limited periods. Thus the phrase eis ton aiona, habitually rendered forever, is often used of duration which is limited in the very nature of the case. See, for a few out of many instances, LXX, Exod 21:6; 29:9; 32:13; Josh. 14:9 1 Sam 8:13; Lev. 25:46; Deut. 15:17; 1 Chron. 28:4;. See also Matt. 21:19; John 13:8 1 Cor. 8:13. The same is true of aionios. Out of 150 instances in LXX [Septuagint: Greek translation of the O.T. in use at the time of Christ], four-fifths imply limited duration. For a few instances see Gen. 48:4; Num. 10:8; 15:15; Prov. 22:28; Jonah 2:6; Hab. 3:6; Isa. 61:17.
Words which are habitually applied to things temporal or material cannot carry in themselves the sense of endlessness. Even when applied to God, we are not forced to render aionios everlasting. Of course the life of God is endless; but the question is whether, in describing God as aionios, it was intended to describe the duration of his being, or whether some different and larger idea was not contemplated. That God lives longer then men, and lives on everlastingly, and has lived everlastingly, are, no doubt, great and significant facts; yet they are not the dominant or the most impressive facts in God's relations to time. God's eternity does not stand merely or chiefly for a scale of length. It is not primarily a mathematical but a moral fact. The relations of God to time include and imply far more than the bare fact of endless continuance. They carry with them the fact that God transcends time; works on different principles and on a vaster scale than the wisdom of time provides; oversteps the conditions and the motives of time; marshals the successive aeons from a point outside of time, on lines which run out into his own measureless cycles, and for sublime moral ends which the creature of threescore and ten years cannot grasp and does not even suspect.
There is a word for everlasting if that idea is demanded. That aiodios occurs rarely in the New Testament and in LXX does not prove that its place was taken by aionios. It rather goes to show that less importance was attached to the bare idea of everlastingness than later theological thought has given it. Paul uses the word once, in Rom. 1:20, where he speaks of "the everlasting power and divinity of God." In Rom. 16:26 he speaks of the eternal God (tou aioniou theou); but that he does not mean the everlasting God is perfectly clear from the context. He has said that "the mystery" has been kept in silence in times eternal (chronois aioniois), by which he does not mean everlasting times, but the successive aeons which elapsed before Christ was proclaimed. God therefore is described as the God of the aeons, the God who pervaded and controlled those periods before the incarnation. To the same effect is the title 'o basileus ton aionon, the King of the aeons, applied to God in 1 Tim. 1:17; Rev. 15:3; compare Tob. 13:6, 10. The phrase pro chronon aionion, before eternal times (2 Tim. 1:9; Tit. 1:2), cannot mean before everlasting times. To say that God bestowed grace on men, or promised them eternal life before endless times, would be absurd. The meaning is of old, as Luke 1:70. The grace and the promise were given in time, but far back in the ages, before the times of reckoning the aeons.
Zoe aionios eternal life, which occurs 42 times in N. T., but not in LXX, is not endless life, but life pertaining to a certain age or aeon, or continuing during that aeon. I repeat, life may be endless. The life in union with Christ is endless, but the fact is not expressed by aionios. Kolasis aionios, rendered everlasting punishment (Matt. 25:46), is the punishment peculiar to an aeon other then that in which Christ is speaking. In some cases zoe aionios does not refer specifically to the life beyond time, but rather to the aeon or dispensation of Messiah which succeeds the legal dispensation. See Matt. 19:16; John 5:39. John says that zoe aionios is the present possession of those who believe on the Son of God, John 3:36; 5:24; 6:47,54. The Father's commandment is zoe aionios, John 1250; to know the only true God and Jesus Christ is zoe aionios. John 17:3.
Bishop Westcott very justly says, commenting upon the terms used by John to describe life under different aspects: "In considering these phrases it is necessary to premise that in spiritual things we must guard against all conclusions which rest upon the notions of succession and duration. 'Eternal life' is that which St. Paul speaks of as 'e outos Zoe the life which is life indeed, (1 Ti 6:19) and 'e zoe tou theou, the life of God (Eph 4:18). It is not an endless duration of being in time, but being of which time is not a measure. We have indeed no powers to grasp the idea except through forms and images of sense. These must be used, but we must not transfer them as realities to another order."
Thus, while aionios carries the idea of time, though not of endlessness, there belongs to it also, more or less, a sense of quality. Its character is ethical rather than mathematical. The deepest significance of the life beyond time lies, not in endlessness, but in the moral quality of the aeon into which the life passes. It is comparatively unimportant whether or not the rich fool, when his soul was required of him (Luke 12:20), entered upon a state that was endless. The principal, the tremendous fact, as Christ unmistakably puts it, was that, in the new aeon, the motives, the aims, the conditions, the successes and awards of time counted for nothing. In time, his barns and their contents were everything; the soul was nothing. In the new life the soul was first and everything, and the barns and storehouses nothing. The bliss of the sanctified does not consist primarily in its endlessness, but in the nobler moral conditions of the new aeon, the years of the holy and eternal God. Duration is a secondary idea. When it enters it enters as an accompaniment and outgrowth of moral conditions.
In the present passage [2 Thess. 1:9] it is urged that olethron destruction points to an unchangeable, irremediable, and endless condition. If this be true, if olethros is extinction, then the passage teaches the annihilation of the wicked, in which case the adjective aionios is superfluous, since extinction is final, and excludes the idea of duration. But olethros does not always mean destruction or extinction. Take the kindred verb apollumi to destroy, put an end to, or in the middle voice, to be lost, to perish. Peter says "the world being deluged with water, perished (apoleto, 2 Pet. 3:6); but the world did not become extinct, it was renewed. In Heb. 1:11,12, quoted from Ps. 102, we read concerning the heavens and the earth as compared with the eternity of God, "they shall perish" (apolountai). But the perishing is only preparatory to change and renewal. "They shall be changed" (allagesontai). Compare Isa. 51:6,16; 65:22; 2 Pet. 3:13; Rev. 21:1. Similarly, "the Son of man came to save that which was lost" (apololos), Luke 19:10. Jesus charged his apostles to go to the lost (apololota) sheep of the house of Israel, Matt. 10:6, compare 15:24, "He that shall lose (apolese) his life for my sake shall find it," Matt. 16:25. Compare Luke 15:6,9,32.
In this passage, the word destruction is qualified. It is "destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power," at his second coming, in the new aeon. In other words, it is the severance, at a given point of time, of those who obey not the gospel from the presence and the glory of Christ. Aionios may therefore describe this severance as continuing during the millenial aeon between Christ's coming and the final judgment; as being for the wicked prolonged throughout that aeon and characteristic of it, or it may describe the severance as characterizing or enduring through a period or aeon succeeding the final judgment, the extent of which period is not defined. In neither case is aionios, to be interpreted as everlasting or endless." Marvin Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament. 1887. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1973. 61-62. Additional Note on "olethron aionion" (eternal destruction) - 2 Thess. 1:9.
The Greek Word Aión & Aiónios, Translated Everlasting & Eternal
In The Holy Bible, Shown To Denote Limited Duration.
By Rev. John Wesley Hanson, A.M., D.D.
Editor of The New Covenant
Chicago: 1875
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875 By J. W. Hanson,
In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington D. C.
N.T. Smith Print. 286 Wabash Ave., Chicago
PREFACE
The verbal pivot on which swings the question, Does the Bible teach the doctrine of Endless Punishment? Is the word Aión and its derivatives and re-duplications. The author of this treatise has endeavored to put within brief compass the essential facts pertaining to the history and use of the word, and he thinks he has conclusively shown that it affords no support whatever to the erroneous doctrine. It will generally be conceded that the tenet referred to is not contained in the Scriptures if the meaning of endless duration does not reside in the controverted word. The reader is implored to examine the evidence presented, as the author trusts it has been collected, with a sincere desire to learn the truth.
INTRODUCTION
It is a prevalent idea that the words "Eternal, Everlasting, Forever," etc., in the English Bible, signify endless duration. This essay aims to prove the popular impression erroneous. The inquiry will be pursued in a manner that shall be satisfactory to the scholar, and also enable the ordinary reader to apprehend the facts, so that both the learned and the unlearned may be able to see the subject in a light that shall relieve the Scriptures of seeming to teach a doctrine that blackens the character of God, and plunges a deadly sting into the believing heart.
The original Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, by seventy scholars, and hence called "The Septuagint," B.C. 200-300, (1) and the Hebrew word Olam is, in almost all cases, translated Aión, Aiónios etc., (Aíwv, Aíwvios,) so that the two words may be regarded as synonymous with each other. In the New Testament the same words Aión and its derivatives, are the original Greek of the English words,Eternal, Everlasting, Forever, etc.. So that when we ascertain the real meaning of Aión, we have settled the sense of those English words in which the doctrine of Endless Punishment is erroneously taught. It is not going to far to say that if the Greek Aión - Aiónios does not denote endless duration, then endless punishment is not taught in the Bible. We proceed to show that the sense of interminable duration does not reside in the word.
Three avenues are open to us in which to pursue this important investigation:
I. Etymology, II. Lexicography, III. Usage.
Our first appeal will be to Etymology.
I. ETYMOLOGY
We are aware that nothing is more unsafe and treacherous than the guidance of etymology. An ounce of usage is worth a pound of it. Etymology is theory, usage is fact. For instance, our common word prevent is compounded of præ and venio, to come or go before, and once it had that meaning, but it has long since lost it in common usage, in which it now means to hinder. Suppose two thousand years hence some one should endeavor to prove that in the year 1875 the word prevent meant to go before. He could establish his position by the etymology of the word, but he would be wholly wrong, as would appear by universal usage in our current literature. So that if we agree that the etymology of Aión indicates eternity to have been its original meaning, it by no means follows that it had that force in Greek literature. But its derivation does not point in that direction.
LENNEP (2)
Says that it comes from Aó (to breathe) which suggests the idea of indefinite duration. He says: It was transferred from breathing to collection, or multitude of times. From which proper signification again have been produced those by which the ancients have described either age (ævum), or eternity (æternitatem,) or the age of man (hominis ætatem.) Commenting on Lennep's derivation of the word, Rev. E. S. Goodwin, says: (3) "It would signify a multitude of periods or times united to each other, duration indefinitely continued. Its proper force, in reference to duration, seems to be more that of uninterrupted duration than otherwise; a term of which the duration is continuous as long as it lasts, but which may be completed and finished, as age, dispensation, sæculum, in a general sense.' Mr. Goodwin entertained the theory that the word is from the verb aió, its active participle converted into a substantive.
ARISTOTLE'S ETYMOLOGY.
But this etymology is not the popular one. Aristotle, (4) the great Greek Philosopher, explained the derivation as a combination of two Greek words (aei ón) which signify always existing. As there is a great deal of controversy on this famous passage, we will give
THREE TRANSLATIONS OF ARISTOTLE.
I. Dr. Pond (5): In describing the highest heaven, the residence of the gods, Aristotle says: "It is therefore evident that there is neither space, nor time, nor vacuum beyond. Wherefore the things there are not adapted by nature to exist in place; nor does time make them grow old; neither under the highest (heaven) is there any change of any one of these things, they being placed beyond it; but unchangeable, passionless - they continue through all aióna (eternity.) For indeed, the word itself according to the ancients, divinely expressed this. For the period which comprehends the time of every one's life, beyond which, according to nature, nothing exists, is called his aión, (eternity.) And for the same reason, the period of the whole heaven even the infinite time of all things, and the period comprehending that infinity is aión, eternity, deriving its name from aei, einai, always being, immortal and divine."
Dr. J. R. Boise, (6) Professor of Greek in the University of Chicago: "Time is a notation of motion; and motion without a physical body is impossible. But, beyond the heaven, it has been shown that there is neither a body, nor can there be. It is plain, therefore, that there is neither space, nor void, nor time beyond. Therefore, the things there are not by nature in space, nor does time make them grow old, nor is there any change in any one of those things placed beyond the outermost sweep (or current); but, unchangeable and without passion, having the best and most sufficient life, they continue through all eternity (aión); for this name (i.e., aión) has been divinely uttered by the ancients. For the definite period (to telos), which embraces the time of the life of each individual, to whom, according to nature, there can be nothing beyond, has been called each ones's eternity (aión). And, by parity of reasoning, the definite period also of the entire heaven, even the definite period embracing the infinite time of all things and infinity, is an eternity (aión), immortal and divine, having received the appellation (eternity, aión) from the fact that it exists always (apo tou aei einai).
Dr. Edward Beecher: (7) "The limit of the whole heaven, and the limit enclosing the universal system, is the divine and immortal existing (aei ón) (God) deriving his nameAión from his ever existing (aei ón.)" Dr. B. adds: "From the time of Homer to Plato and Aristotle, about five centuries, the word aión is used by poets and historians alongside of various compounds of aei, for the compounds of aei retain the diphthong ei, but aión drops the e. There is a verb aió - to breathe, to live. The passage of Aristotle in which his etymology occurs, has been mistranslated, for it does not give the etymology of the abstract idea eternity, but of the concrete idea God, as an ever-existing person, from whom all other personal beings derived existence and life. What Aristotle has been supposed to assert of aión, in the sense of eternity, he asserts of aión in the sense of God, a living and divine person. That the word aión in the classic Greek sometimes denotes God is distinctly stated in Henry Stephens' great lexicon, (Paris edition,) and the passage referred to in Sophocles (Herac. 900,) fully authorized his statement. In that passage Jupiter is called 'Aión, (the living God) the Son of Kronos.' Moreover, the whole context of Aristotle proves that he is speaking of the great immovable first mover of the universe, the Aión, immortal and divine" * * *
This passage from Aristotle is obscure, and if he were authority, it would not settle the question of the meaning of the word. If we adopt this theory, we may claim that aión had the primary meaning of continuous existence, such being the signification of aei and ón, but there is no warrant even in such an origin for ascribing to it duration without end. But Aristotle does not say or intimate that the word had the meaning of eternity in his day, nor does his statement of its derivation prove that it had that meaning then. On the contrary, Aristotle's use of the word, as we shall hereafter show, clearly proves that it had no such meaning in his mind, even if it is compounded ofaei and ón.
AEI
The word aei from which aión is claimed to grow, is found eight times, (perhaps more, though I have not found it oftener) in the New Testament, and in no one instance does it mean endless. Mark xv:8; Acts vii:51; 2Cor. iv:11; vi:10, Titus, i:12; Heb. iii:10; 1Pet. iii:15; 2Pet. i:12. I give two instances. The multitude desired Pilate to release a prisoner, Mark xv:8: "as he had ever done with them." Heb. iii:10: "They do always err in their heart." An endless duration growing out of a word used thus, would be a curiosity. It is alway, or always, or ever, in each text. Liddell and Scott give more than fifty compounds of aei.
Concerning Aristotle's use of the word in his famous sentence, "Life, an aión continuous and eternal," it is enough to say that if aión intrinsically meant endless, Aristotle never would have sought to strengthen the meaning by adding "continuous" and "eternal," any more than one would say, God has an eternity, continuous and endless. He has a life, an existence, an aión endless, just as man's aión on earth is limited; just as Idumea's smoke in the Old Testament is aiónios. Nor, had Aristotle considered aión to mean eternity, would he have said in this very passage: "the time of the life of each individual has been called his aión."
Cremer, Liddel and Scott, Donnegan, and Henry Stephens adopt the Aristotleian origin of the word. Grimm rejects it, and Robinson in his latest editions gives both etymologies without deciding between them. Stephens says: "Aristotle, and after him many other philosophers, as Plotinus and Proclus, introduced the etymology of aión from aei, and thus added the idea of eternity to the word."
But we have shown that the famous passage in Aristotle refers to God, (apo tou aei einai) and not to abstract duration. We have shown that aei is used eight times in the New Testament, and not in the sense of endless, once. We shall prove that Aristotle himself uniformly used the word in the sense of limited duration, and under the head of Classic Usage will hereafter prove that at the time the Old Testament was rendered into Greek, this was the only meaning the word had with any Greek writer. If aeión, is its origin, which is more than doubtful, it cannot mean more than continuous existence, the precise length to be determined by accompanying words. Adopt either derivation, and indefinite duration is the easy and natural meaning of the word, if we suffer ourselves to be guided by its etymology. Eternity can only be expressed by it when it is accompanied by other words, denoting endless duration, or by the name of Deity.
All will agree that words may change their meaning, and therefore that etymology is an uncertain guide. If etymology point in one direction, and usage in another, the former must yield; but if both utter one fact, each reinforces and strengthens the other. This we have illustrated by the etymology of 'prevent.' Hundreds of words teach the same truth. Words start out with a certain meaning, and change it in process of time. If aión really meant eternity when it was first pronounced, it would not follow that it has this meaning now. That it had not that meaning at first would not hinder it from being thus used subsequently. Etymology proves nothing one way or the other, its evidence is but prima facie; usage is the only decisive authority. But etymology gives no warrant for applying the idea of eternity to the word.
THE PLATONIC DERIVATIONS.
We have proceeded on the ground that Aristotle's etymology is authoritative. But nothing is further from the truth. The scholarship of to-day, possessed by an average educated philologist, is far more competent to trace this or any Greek word to its real source, than Plato or Aristotle was able to do. In his analysis of Plato's Cratylus, (8) Grote accurately observes of Plato's etymologies: "Though sometimes reasonable enough, they are in a far greater number of instances forced, arbitrary, and fanciful. The transitions of meaning imagined, and the structural transformations of words, are alike strange and violent. Such is the light in which these Platonic etymologies appear to a modern critic. But such was not the light in which they appeared either to the ancient Platonists or critics earlier than the last century. The Platonists even thought then full of mysterious and recondite wisdom. So complete has been the revolution of opinion that the Platonic etymologies arenow treated by most critics as too absurd to have been seriously intended by Plato, even as conjectures. It is called 'a valuable discovery of modern times' (so Schleiermacher terms it) that Plato meant most of them as mere parody and caricature."
The character of Aristotle as an etymologist is thus stated by Grote: "Nor are they more absurd than many of the etymologies proposed by Aristotle." A slender hook this, whereon to hang such a doctrine as that of the immortal wo of countless millions of souls.
CONCLUSIONS.
The conclusions to which any judicial mind must arrive are these:
- It is uncertain from what source the word Aión sprang;
- It is of no consequence how it originated;
- Aristotle's opinion is not authority; and
- It is probable that he was not defining the word, but was alluding to that being whose aión, or existence is continuous and eternal. That he did not understand that aión signified eternity, we shall demonstrate from his uniform use of the word, in the sense of limited duration. And we find no reason in its etymology for giving it the sense of endless duration. And if it did thus originate, it does not afford a particle of proof that it was subsequently used with that meaning.
II. LEXICOGRAPHY AND THE CRITICS.
We next appeal to Lexicography. Now lexicograph must always be consulted, especially on disputed words, cum grano salis. A theologian, in his definitions, is quite certain to shade technical words with his own belief, and lean one way or the other, according to his own predilections. Unconsciously and necessarily the lexicographer who has a bias in favor of any doctrine will tincture his definitions with his own idiosyncracies. Very few have sat judicially, and given meanings to words with reference to their exact usage; so that one must examine dictionaries concerning any word whose meaning is disputed, with the same care that should be used in reference to any subject on which men differ.
With this thought in mind let us consult such of the lexicons as have fallen under our notice, and also some of the Biblical critics who have explored the word.
AUTHORITIES.
The oldest lexicographer, Hesychius, (A. D. 400-600,) definesaión thus: "The life of man, the time of life." At this early date no theologian had yet imported into the word the meaning of endless duration. It retained only the sense it had in the classics, and in the Bible.
Theodoret (9) (A. D. 300-400) "Aión is not any existing thing, but an interval denoting time, sometimes infinite when spoken of God, sometimes proportioned to the duration of the creation, and sometimes to the life of man."
John of Damascus (A. D. 750,) says, "1, The life of every man is called aión. . . . 3, The whole duration or life of this world is called aión. 4, The life after the resurrection is called 'the aión to come.' "
But in the sixteenth century Phavorinus was compelled to notice an addition, which subsequently to the time of the famous Council of 544 had been grafted on the word. He says: "Aión, time, also life, also habit, or way of life. Aión is also the eternal and endlessAS IT SEEMS TO THE THEOLOGIAN." Theologians had succeeded in using the word in the sense of endless, and Phavorinus was forced to recognize their usage of it and his phraseology shows conclusively enough that he attributed to theologians the authorship of that use of the word. Alluding to this definition, Rev. Ezra S. Goodwin, one of the ripest scholars and profoundest critics, says, (10) "Here I strongly suspect is the true secret brought to light of the origin of the sense of eternity in aión. The theologian first thought he perceived it, or else he placed it there. The theologian keeps it there, now. And the theologian will probably retain it there longer than any one else. Hence it is that those lexicographers who assign eternity as one of the meanings of aión uniformly appeal for proofs to either theological, Hebrew, or Rabbinical Greek, or some species of Greek subsequent to the age of the Seventy, if not subsequent to the age of the Apostles, so far a I can ascertain."
The second definition by Phavorinus is extracted literally from the "Etymologicon Magnum" of the ninth or tenth century. This gives us the usage from the fourth to the sixteenth century, and shows us that, if the word meant endless at the time of Christ, it must have changed from limited duration in the classics, to unlimited duration, and then back again, at the dates above specified!
From the sixteenth century onward, the word has been defined as used to denote all lengths of duration from brief to endless. We record here such definitions as we have found.
Rost: (German definitions) " Aión, duration, epoch, long time, eternity, memory of man, life-time, life, age of man. Aiónios, continual, always enduring, long continued, eternal."
Hedericus: "An age, eternity, an age a if always being; time of man's life in the memory of men, (wicked men, New Testament,) the spinal marrow. Aiónios, eternal, everlasting, continual."
Schleusner: "Any space of time whether longer or shorter, past, present or future, to be determined by the persons or things spoken of, and the scope of the subjects; the life or age of man. Aiónios, a definite and long period of time, that is, a long enduring, but still definite period of time."
Passow: " Aiónios, long continued, eternal, everlasting, in the classics.
Grove: "Eternity; and age, life, duration, continuance of time; a revolution of ages, a dispensation of Providence, this world or life; the world or life to come. Aiónios, eternal, immortal, perpetual, former, past, ancient."
Donnegan: "Time; space of time; life time and life; the ordinary period of man's life; the age of man; man's estate; a long period of time; eternity; the spinal marrow. Aiónios, of long duration, lasting, eternal, permanent."
Ewing: "Duration, finite or infinite; a period of duration, past or future; an age; duration of the world; ages of the world; human life in this world, or the next; our manner of life in the world; and age of divine dispensation, the ages, generally reckoned three, that before law, that under the law, and that under the Messiah. Aiónios, (from preceding,) ages of the world, periods of the dispensatins since the world began."
Schrevelius: "An age, a long period of time; indefinite duration, time, whether longer or shorter, past, prensent or future; also, in the New Testament, the wicked men of the age, life, the life of man. Aiónios, of long duration, lasting, sometimes everlasting, sometimes lasting through life as æturnus in Latin."
Dr. Taylor, who wrote the Hebrew Bible three times with his own hand, says of Olam, (Greek Aión) it signifies a duration which is concealed, as being of an unknown or great length. "It signifies eternity, not from the proper force of the word, but when the sense of the place or the nature of the subject require it, as God and his attributes."
Pickering: Almost identical with Schrevelius in his definitions.
Hinks: "A period of time; and age, an after time, eternity.Aiónios, lasting, eternal, of old, since the beginning."
Lutz: "An age, time, eternity. Aiónios, durable, eternal."
Macknight: (Scotch Presbyterian.) "These words being ambiguous, are always to be understood according to the nature and circumstances to which they are applied." He thinks the words sustain endless punishment, but adds: "At the same time I must be so candid as to acknowledge that the use of these terms, forever, eternal and everlasting, in other passages of Scripture, shows that they who understand these words in a limited sense, when applied to punishment, put no forced interpretation upon them.
Wright: "Time, age, life-time, period, revolution of ages, dispensation of Providence, present world, or life, world to come, eternity.Aiónios, eternal, ancient."
Robinson: "Life, also an age, that is an indefinite long period of time, perpetuity, ever, forever, eternity, forever, without end, to the remotest time, forever and ever, of old, from everlasting, the world, present or future, this world and the next, present world, men of this world, world itself, advent of Messiah. Aiónios, perpetual, everlasting, eternal, chiefly spoken of future time, ancient."
Jones: "An everlasting age, eternal, forever, a period of time, age, life, the present world, or life; the Jewish dispensation; a good demon, angel as supposed to exist forever . . . Aiónios, everlasting, ancient."
Schweighauser and Valpyv substantially agree.
Maclaine, in his Mosheim: Aión or æon among the ancients, was used to signify the age of man, or the duration of human life."
Cruden: "The words eternal, everlasting, forever, are sometimes taken for a long time, and are not always to be understood strictly, for example, 'Thou shalt be our guide form this time forth, even forever,' that is, during our whole life."
Alex. Campbell: "ITS RADICAL IDEA IS INDEFINITE DURATION."
Whitby: "Nothing is more common and familiar in Scripture than to render a thorough and irreparable vastation, whose effects and signs should be still remaining, by the word aiónios, which we render eternal."Hammond, Benson, and Gilpin, in notes on Jude 7, say the same.
Liddell and Scott also give to aión, in the poets the sense of life and lifetime, as also an age or generation.
Pearce (in Matt. vii:33) says: "The Greek word aión, seems to signify age here, as it often does in the New Testament, and according to its most proper signification." Clarke, Wakefield, Boothroyd, Simpson, Lindsey, Mardon, Acton, agree. So do Locke, Hammond, Le Clerc, Beausobre, Lenfant, Dodridge, Paulus, Kenrick and Olshausen.
T. Southwood Smith: "Sometimes it signifies the term of human life; at other times an age, or dispensation of Providence. Its most common signification is that of age or dispensation."
Scarlett: "That aiónion, does not mean endless or eternal, may appear from considering that no adjective can have a greater force than the noun from which it is derived. If aión means age (which none either will or can deny) then aiónionmust mean age-lasting, or duration through the age or ages to which the thing spoken or relates."
Even Professor Stuart is obliged to say: "The most common and appropriate meaning of aión in the New Testament, and the one which corresponds with the Hebrew word olam, and which therefore deserves the first rank in regard to order, I put down first: an indefinite period of time; time without limitation; ever, forever, time without end, eternity, all in relation to future time.
The different shades by which the word is rendered, depend on the object with whichaiónios is associated, or to which it has relation, rather than to any difference in the real meaning of the word."
J. W. Haley *says: "The Hebrew word 'olam' rendered 'forever,' does not imply the metaphysical idea of absolute endlessness, but a period of indefinite length, as Rambach says, a very long time, the end of which is hidden from us." Olam or olim is the Hebrew equivalent of aión.
Dr. Edward Beecher (11) remarks, "It commonly means merely continuity of action . . . all attempts to set forth eternity as the original and primary sense of aión are at war with the facts of the Greek language for five centuries, in which it denoted life and its derivative senses, and the sense eternity was unknown." And he also says what is the undoubted fact, "that the original sense ofaión is not eternity. . . . It is conceded on all hands that this (life) was originally the general use of the word. In the Paris edition of Henry Stephens' Lexicon it is affirmed emphatically "that life, or the space of life, is the primitive sense of the word, and that it is always so used by Homer, Hesiod, and the old poets; also by Pindar and the tragic writers, as well as by Herodotus and Xenophon." "Pertaining to the world to come," is the sense given to "These shall go away into everlasting punishment," by Prof. Tayler Lewis, who adds (12) "The preacher in contending with the Universalist and the Restorationist, would commit an error, and it may be suffer a failure in his argument, should he lay the whole stress of it on the etymological of historical significance of the words aión, aiónios, and attempt to prove that of themselves they necessarily carry the meaning of endless duration. 'These shall go away into the restraint, imprisonment of the world to come,' is all we can etymologically or exegetically make of the word in this passage."
* "An Examination of the Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible," p.216.
THE TRUE IDEA.
Undoubtedly the definition given by Schleusner is the accurate one, 'Duration determined by the subject to which it is applied.' Thus it only expresses the idea of endlessness when connected with what is endless, as God. The word great is an illustrative word. Great applied to a tree, or mountain, or man, denotes different degrees, all finite, but when referring to God, it has the sense of infinite. Infinity does not reside in the word great but it has that meaning when applied to God. It does not impart it to God, it derives it from him. So of aiónion; applied to Jonah's residence in the fish, it means seventy hours; to the priesthood of Aaron, it signifies several centuries; to the mountains, thousands of years; to the punishments of a merciful God, as long as is necessary to vindicate his law and reform his children; to God himself, eternity. What great is to size, aiónios is to duration. Human beings live from a few hours to a century; nations from a century to thousands of years; and worlds, for aught we know, from a few to many millions of years, and God is eternal. So that when we see the word applied to a human life it denotes somewhere from a few days to a hundred years; when it is applied to a nation, it denotes anywhere from a century to ten thousand years, more or less, and when to God it means endless. In other words it practically denotes indefinite duration, as we shall see when we meet the word in sacred and secular literature. Dr. Beecher well observes:
*"There are SIX AGES, or aggregates of ages, involving temporary systems, spoken of in the Old Testament. These ages are distinctly stated to be temporary, and yet to them all are applied olam and its reduplications, as fully and emphatically as they are to God. This is a positive demonstration that the word olam, as affirmed by Taylor and Fuerst in their Hebrew Concordances means an indefinite period or age, past or future, and not an absolute eternity. When applied to God, theIDEA OF ETERNITY IS DERIVED FROM HIM, AND NOT FROM THE WORD. . . . This indefinite division of time is represented olam (Greek aión). Hence we find, since there are many ages, or periods, that the word is used in the plural. Moreover, since one great period or age can comprehend under it subordinate ages, we find such expressions as an age of ages, or an olam of olams, and other reduplications.
"In some cases, however, the reduplication of olam seems to be a rhetorical amplification of the idea, without any comprehension of ages by a greater age. This is especially true when olam is in the singular in both parts of the reduplication, as "To the age of the age."
"The use of the word in the plural is decisive evidence that the sense of the word is not eternity, in the absolute sense, for there can be but one such eternity. But as time past and future can be divided by ages, so there may be many ages, and an age of ages."
* Christian Union.
ETERNAL DURATION AND MODERN CONCEPTIONS.
It does not seem to have been generally considered by students of this subject that the thought of endless duration is comparatively a modern conception. The ancients, at a time more recent than the dates of the Old Testament, had not yet cognized the idea of endless duration, so that passages containing the word applied to God do not mean that he is of eternal duration, but the idea was of indefinite and not unlimited duration. I introduce here a passage from Professor Knapp, or Knappius, the author of the best edition of the Greek Testament known, and one in use in many colleges and ranks as a scholar of rare erudition. He observes:
"The pure idea of eternity is too abstract to have been conceived in the early ages of the world, and accordingly is not found expressed by any word in the ancient languages. But as cultivation advanced and this idea became more distinctly developed, it became necessary in order to express it to invent new words in a new sense, as was done with the words eternitas,perennitas, etc. The Hebrews were destitute of any single word to express endless duration. To express a past eternity they said before the world was; a future, when the world shall be no more. . . . The Hebrews and other ancient people have no one word for expressing the precise idea of eternity."
AN IMPRESSIVE REFLECTION.
I pause here long enough to raise this question: Is it possible that our heavenly Father had created a world of endless torture, to which his children for thousands of years were crowding in myriads, and that he not only had not revealed the fact to them, but was so shortsighted that he had not given them a word to express the fact, or even a capacity sufficient to bring the idea of the eternal suffering to which they were liable, within the compass of the cognition? He created the horse for man's use, and created man capable of comprehending the horse; he surrounded him with multitudes of animate and inanimate objects, each of which he could name and comprehend, but the most important subject of all-one which must be believed in, or eternal woe is the penalty, he not only had no name for, but was incapable of the faintest conception of the mere fact! Would, or could a good Father be guilty of such an omission?
Can anything be clearer than this, that the lexicographers and critics unite in saying that limited duration is not only allowable, but that it is the prevailing signification of the word? Do they not agree that eternal duration is not in the word, and can only be imparted to it by the subject associated with it? Thus Lexicography declares that Limited Duration is the force of the word, duration to be determined by the subjected treated, if we allow Etymology and Lexicography to declare the verdict. And yet it is possible for these to be mistaken. Incredible, but still possible, that all students and critics of the word should have mistaken its character. But there is one tribunal that cannot mislead, and that is Usage.
III USAGE
In tracing the usage of the word, our sources of information will be (1) The Greek Classics, (2) The Septuagint Old Testament, (3) Those Jewish Greeks nearly contemporary with Christ, (4) The New Testament, and (5) The Early Christian Church.
The Pentateuch was rendered into Greek at about the time of the return from the Babylonish Captivity, and the whole Old Testament, was combined into one collection about B.C. 200-300. At that time there was a large amount of Greek literature, now known as the Classics, and of course the Seventy gave to all Greek words their legitimate meaning, as found in the Classics. To ascertain just what the Greek Old Testament means by Aión or any other word, we need only learn its meaning in the Classics. They would as soon have rendered the Hebrew word for horse by a Greek word meaning fly, as they would have usedaión for endless duration, if, as we shall show is the fact, antecedent Greek literature used it to denote limited duration.
1.-- THE GREEK CLASSICS.
It is a vital question How was the word used in the Greek literature with which the Seventy were familiar, that is, the Greek Classics?
Some years since Rev. Ezra S. Goodwin (13) patiently and candidly traced this word through the Classics, finding the noun frequently in nearly all the writers, but not meeting the adjective until Plato, its inventor, used it. He states, as the result of his protracted and exhaustive examination from the beginning down to Plato, "We have the whole evidence of seven Greek writers, extending through about six centuries, down to the age of Plato, who make use of Aión, in common with other words; and no one of themEVER employs it in the sense of eternity."
When the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew into Greek by the Seventy, the word aión had been in common use for many centuries. It is preposterous to say that the Seventy would render the Hebrew olam by the Greek aión and give to the latter (1) a different meaning from that of the former, or (2) a different meaning from aión in the current Greek literature. It is self-evident, then, that Aión in the Old Testament means exactly what Olam means, and also what Aión means in the Greek classics. Indefinite duration is the sense of olam, and it is equally clear that aión has a similar signification.
In the Iliad and Odyssey Aión occurs thirteen times, as a noun, besides its occurrence as a participle in the sense of hearing, perceiving, understanding. Homer never uses it as signifying eternal duration. Priam to Hector says, (14) "Thyself shall be deprived of pleasant aiónos" (life.) Andromache over dead Hector, (15) "Husband thou hast perished from aiónos" (life or time.)
Dr. Beecher writes (16) "But there is a case that excludes all possibility of doubt or evasion, in the Homeric Hymn of Mercury, vs. 42 and 119. Here aión is used to denote the marrow as the life of an animal, as Moses calls the blood the life. This is recognized by Cousins in his Homeric Lexicon. In this case to pierce the life (aión) of a turtle means to pierce the spinal cord. The idea of life is here exclusive of time or eternity." These are fair illustrations of Homer's use of the word.
Hesiod employs it twice: "To him (the married man) during aiónos (life) evil is constantly striving, etc. (17) Æschulus has the word nineteen times, after this manner: "This life (aión) seems long, etc. (18) "Jupiter, king of the never-ceasing world." (19) (aiónos apaustau.)
Pindar gives thirteen instances, such as "A long life produces the four virtues." (20)(Ela de kai tessaras aretas ho makros aión.)
Sophocles nine times. "Endeavor to remain the same in mind as long as you live." Askei toiaute noun di aiónos menein. (21) He also employs makraion five times, as long-enduring. The word long increases the force of aión, which would be impossible if it had the idea of eternity.
Aristotle uses aión twelve times. He speaks of the existence or duration (aión) of the earth; (22) of an unlimited aiónos; (23) and elsewhere, he says: aión sunekes kai aidios, "an eternal aión" (or being) "pertaining to God." The fact that Aristotle found it necessary to add aidios to aión to ascribe eternity to God demonstrates that he found no sense of eternity in the word aión, and utterly discards the idea that he held the word to mean endless duration, even admitting that he derived it, or supposed the ancients did, from aei ón according to the opinion of some lexicographers.
A similar use of the word appears in de Cælo. (24) "The entire heaven is one and eternal (aidios) having neither beginning nor end of an entire aión." In the same work (25) occurs the famous passage where Aristotle has been said to describe the derivation of the word, which we have quoted on page 7, Aión estin, apo tou aei einai.
Mr. Goodwin well observes that the word had existed a thousand years before Aristotle's day, and that he had no knowledge of its origin, and poorer facilities for tracing it than many a scholar of the present, possesses. "While, therefore, we would regard an opinion of Aristotle on the derivation of an ancient word, with the respect due to extensive learning and venerable age, still we must bear in mind that his opinion is not indusputable authority." Mr. Goodwin proceeds to affirm that Aristotle does not apply aei ón to duration, but to God, and that (as we have shown) a human existence is an Aión. Completeness, whether brief or protracted, is his idea; and as Aristotle employed it "Aión did not contain the meaning of eternity."
Hippocrates. "A human aión is a seven days matter."
Empedocles, An earthly body deprived of happy life, (aiónos.)
Euripides uses the word thirty-two times. We quote three instances: (26) "Marriage to those mortals who are well situated is a happy aión." (27) "Every aión of mortals is unstable." (28) "Along aión has many things to say," etc.
Philoctetes. "He breathed out the aióna." Mr. Goodwin thus concludes his conscientious investigation of such of the Greek classics as he examined line by line, AION IN THESE WRITERS NEVER EXPRESSES POSITIVE ETERNITY."
In his Physic (29), Aristotle quotes a passage from Empedocles, saying that in certain cases "aión is not permanent."
AIONIOS.
Aiónios is found in none of the ancient classics above quoted. Finding it in Plato, Mr. Goodwin thinks that Plato coined it, and it had not come into general use, for even Socrates, the teacher of Plato, does not use it. Aidios is the classic word for endless duration.
Plato uses aión eight times, aiónios five, diaiónios once, and makraión twice. Of course if he regarded aión as meaning eternity he would not prefix the word meaning long, to add duration to it.
In all the above authors extending more than six hundred years, the word is never found. Of course it must mean the same as the noun that is its source. It having clearly appeared that the noun is uniformly used to denote limited duration, and never to signify eternity, it is equally apparent that the adjective must mean the same. The noun sweetness gives its flavor to its adjective, sweet. The adjective long means precisely the same as the noun length. When sweet stands for acidity, and long represents brevity, aiónios can properly mean eternal, derived from aión, which represents limited duration. To say that Plato, the inventor of the word, has used the adjective to mean eternal, when neither he nor any of his predecessors ever used the noun to denote eternity, would be to charge one of the wisest of men with etymological stupidity. Has he been guilty of such folly? How does he use the word?
PLATO'S USAGE.
1. He employs the noun as his predecessors did. I give an illustration*- "Leading a life (aióna) involved in troubles."
2. The Adjective. (30) Referring to certain souls in Hades, he describes them as in aiónion intoxication. But that he does not use the word in the sense of endless is evident from the Phædon, where he says, "It is a very ancient opinion that souls quitting this world, repair to the infernal regions, and return after that, to live in this world." After the aiónion intoxication is over, they return to earth, which demonstrates that the world was not used by him as meaning endless. Again, (31) he speaks of that which is indestructible, (anolethron) and not aiónion. He places the two words in contrast, whereas, had he intended to use aiónion as meaning endless, he would have said indestructible and aiónion.
Once more, (32) Plato quotes four instances of aión, and three of aiónios, and one ofdiaiónios in a single passage, in contrast with aidios (eternal.) The gods he calls eternal, (aidios) but the soul and the corporeal nature, he says, are aiónios, belonging to time, and "all these," he says, "are part of time." And he calls Time [Kronos] an aiónios image of Aiónos. Exactly what so obscure an author may mean here is not apparent, but one thing is perfectly clear, he cannot mean eternity and eternal by aiónios and aiónion, for nothing is wider from the fact than that fluctuating, changing Time, beginning and ending, and full of mutations, is an image of Eternity. It is in every possible particular its exact opposite.
In De Mundo, (33) Aristotle says: "Which of these things separately can be compared with the order of the heaven, and the relation of the stars, sun, and also the moon moving in most perfect measures from one aión to another aión,"- ex aiónos eis eteron aióna. Now even if Aristotle had said that the word was at first derived from two words that signify always being, his own use of it demonstrates that it had not that meaning then [B.C. 350.] Again, (34) he says of the earth, "All these things seem to be done for her good, in order to maintain safety during her aiónos," duration, or life. And still more to the purpose is this quotation concerning God's existence. (35) Life and an aión CONTINUOUS AND ETERNAL, "zoe kai aión, sunekes kai aidios, etc." Here the word aidios, [eternal] is employed to qualify aión and impart to it what it had not of itself, the sense of eternal. Aristotle could be guilty of no such language as "an eternal eternity." Had the word aión contained the idea of eternity in his time, or in his mind, he would not have added aidios. "For the limit enclosing the time of the life of every man, . . . is called his continuous existence, aión. On the same principle, the limit of the whole heaven, and the limit enclosing the universal system, is the divine and immortal ever-existing aión, deriving the name aión from ever-existing [aei ón.]" (36) In eleven out of twelve instances in the works of Aristotle, aión isused either doubtfully, or in a manner similar to the instance above cited, [from one aión to another, that is, from one age to another,] but in this last instance it is perfectly clear that an aión is only without end when it is described by and adjective like aidios, whose meaning is endless. Nobody cares how the word originated, after hearing from Aristotle himself that created objects exist from one aión to another, and that the existence of the eternal God is not described by a word so feeble, but by the addition of another that expresses endless duration. Here aión only obtains the force of eternal duration by being reinforced by the word immortal. If it meant eternity, the addition of immortal is like adding gilding to refined gold, and daubing paint on the petal of the lily.
In most of these the word is enlarged by descriptive adjectives. Æschylus calls Jupiter "king of the never-ceasing aión," and Aristotle expressly states in one case that the aión of heaven "has neither beginning nor end," and in another instance he calls man's life his aión, and the aión of heaven "immortal." If aión denotes eternity, why add "neither beginning nor end," or "immortal," to describe its meaning? These quotations unanswerable show that aión in the Classics, never means eternity unless a qualifying word or subject connected with it add to its intrinsic value.
Says Dr. Beecher: In Rome there were certain periodical games known as the secular games, from the Latin seculum, a period, or age. The historian, Herodian, writing in Greek, calls these aiónian games, that is, periodical, occurring at the end of a seculum. It would be singular, indeed, to call them eternal or everlasting games. Cremer, in his masterly Lexicon of New Testament Greek, states the general meaning of the word to be 'Belonging to the aión.'" Herodotus, Isocrates, Xenophon, Sophocles, Diodorus Siculus use the word in precisely the same way. Diodorus Siculus says ton apéiron aióna, "indefinite time."
* De Legib. Lib. iii.
THE CLASSICS NEVER USE AION TO DENOTE ETERNITY.
It appears, then, that the classic Greek writers, for more than six centuries before the Septuagint was written, used the word aión and its adjective, but never once in the sense of endless duration.
When, therefore, the Seventy translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, what meaning must they have intended to give to these words? It is not possible, it is absolutely insupposable that they used them with any other meaning than that which they had held in the antecedent Greek literature. As the Hebrew word meaning horse, was rendered by a Greek word meaning horse, as each Hebrew word was exchanged for a Greek word denoting precisely the same thing, so the terms expressive of duration in Hebrew became Greek terms expressing a similar duration. The translators consistently render olam by aión, both denoting indefinite duration.
We have shown, p. 18, that the idea of eternity had not entered the Hebrew mind when the Old Testament was written. How then could it employ terms expressive of endless duration? We have now shown that the Greek literature uniformly understands the word in the sense of limited duration. This teaches us exactly how the word was taken at the time the Septuagint was prepared, and shows us how to read understandingly the Old Testament.
When at length the idea of eternity was cognized by the human mind, probably first by the Greeks, what word did they employ to represent the idea? Did they regard aión-aiónion as adequate? Not at all, but Plato and Aristotle and others employ aidios, and distinctly use it in contrast with our mooted word. We have instanced Aristotle, (37) "The entire heaven is one and eternal [aidios] having neither beginning nor end of a complete aión, [life, or duration.]" In the same chapteraidiotes is used to mean eternity.
Plato, (38) calls the gods aidion, and their essence aidion, in contrast with temporal matters, which are aiónios. Aidios then, is the favorite word descriptive of endless duration in the Greek writers contemporary with the Septuagint.Aión is never thus used.
When, therefore, the Seventy translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek they must have used this word with the meaning it had whenever they had found it in the Greek classics. To accuse them of using it otherwise is to charge them with an intention to mislead and deceive.
Mr. Goodwin well observes: "Those lexicographers who assign eternity as one of the meanings of aión, uniformly appeal for proofs to either theological, Hebrew or Rabbinnical Greek, or some species of Greek subsequent to the age of the Seventy, if not subsequent to the age of the apostles, so far as I can ascertain. I do not know of an instance in which any lexicographer has produced the usage of ancient classical Greek, in evidence that aión means eternity. ANCIENT CLASSICAL GREEK REJECTS IT ALTOGETHER. . . . " By ancient he means the Greek existing in ages anterior to the days of the Seventy.
Thus it appears that when the Seventy began their work of giving the world a Greek version of the Old Testament that should convey the exact sense of the Hebrew Bible, they must have used aión in the sense in which it then was used. Endless duration is not the meaning the word had in Greek literature at that time. Therefore the word cannot have that meaning in the Old Testament Greek. Nothing can be plainer than that Greek Literature at the time the Hebrew Old Testament was rendered into the Greek Septuagint did not give to Aión the meaning of endless duration. Let us then consider the Old Testament Usage.
2.-- THE OLD TESTAMENT USAGE.
We have concluded, a priori, that the Old Testament must employ the word Aión in the sense of indefinite duration, because that was the uniform meaning of the word in all antecedent and contemporaneous Greek literature. Otherwise the Old Testament would mislead its readers. We now proceed to show that such is the actual usage of the word in the Old Testament.
And let us pause a moment on the brink of our investigation to speak of the utter absurdity of the idea that God has hung the great topic of the immortal welfare of millions of souls on the meaning of a single equivocal word. Had he intended to teach endless punishment by one word, that word would have been so explicit and uniform and frequent that no mortal could mistake its meaning. It would have stood unique and peculiar among words. It would no more be found conveying a limited meaning than is the sacred name of Jehovah applied to any finite being. Instead of denoting every degree of duration, as it does, it never would have meant less than eternity. The thought that God has suspended the question of man's final destiny on such a word would seem too preposterous to be entertained by any reflecting mind, did we not know that such an idea is held by Christians.
Endless duration is never expressed or implied in the Old Testament by Aión or any of its derivatives, except in instances where it acquires that meaning from the subject connected with it.
How is it used? Let us adduce a few illustrative
EXAMPLES.
Gen. vi:4, "There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, (aiónos), men of renown." Gen. ix:12; God's covenant with Noah was "for perpetual (aiónious) generations." Gen. ix:16; The rainbow is the token of "the everlasting (aiónion) covenant" between God and "all flesh that is upon the earth." Gen. xiii:15; God gave the land to Abram and his seed "forever," (aiónos). Dr. T. Clowes says of this passage that it signifies the duration of human life, and he adds, "Let no one be surprised that we use the word Olam (Aión) in this limited sense. This is one of the most usual significations of the Hebrew Olam and the Greek Aión." In Isa. lviii:12; it is rendered "old" and "foundations," (aiónioi and aiónia). "And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places; thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach." In Jer. xviii:15, 16, ancient and perpetual, (aiónious and aiónion). "Because my people hath forgotten me, they have burned incense to vanity, and they have caused them to stumble in their ways from the ancient paths, to walk in paths, in a way not cast up; to make their land desolate, and a perpetual hissing; every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished, and wag his head." Such instances may be cited to an indefinite extent. Ex. xv:18, "forever and ever and further," (ton aióna, kai ep aióna, kai eti.) Ex. xii:17, "And ye shall observe the feast of unleavened bread; for in this selfsame day have I brought your armies out of the land of Egypt, therefore shall ye observe this day in your generations by an ordinance forever," (aiónion). Numb. x:8, "And the sons of Aaron the priests, shall blow with the trumpets; and they shall be to you for an ordinance forever (aiónion) THROUGHOUT YOUR GENERATIONS." "Your generations," is here idiomatically given as the precise equivalent of "forever." Canaan was given as an "everlasting (aiónion) possession;" (Gen. xvii:8, xlviii:4; Lev. xxiv:8,9;) the hills are everlasting (aiónioi;) (Hab. iii:6;) the priesthood of Aaron (Ex. xl:15; Numb. xxv:13; Lev. xvi:34;) was to exist forever, and continue through everlasting duration; Solomon's temple was to last forever, (1 Chron. xvii:12;) though it was long since ceased to be; slaves were to remain in bondage forever, (Lev. xxv:46;) though every fiftieth year all Hebrew servants were to be set at liberty, (Lev. xxv:10;) Jonah suffered an imprisonment behind the everlasting bars of earth, (Jon. ii:6;) the smoke of Idumea was to ascend forever, (Isa. xxxiv:10;) though it no longer rises, to the Jews God says (Jer. xxxii:40;) "and I will bring an everlasting reproach upon you, and a perpetual shame, which shall not be forgotten," and yet, after the fullness of the Gentiles shall come in, Israel will be restored. Rom. xi:25-6.
Not only in all these and multitudes of other cases does the word mean limited duration, but it is also used in the plural, thus debarring it from the sense of endless, as there can be but one eternity. In Dan. xii:3; the literal reading, if we allow the word to mean eternity, is "to eternities and farther," (eis tous aiónas kai eti.) Micah iv:5, "We will walk in the name of the Lord our God to eternity, and beyond," eis ton aióna kai epekeina. Ps. cxix:43-4, "And take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth; for I have hoped in thy judgments. So shall I keep thy law continually forever and ever." This is the strongest combination of the aionian phraseology: eis ton aióna kai eis ton aióna tou aiónos, and yet it is David's promise of fidelity as long as he lives among them that "reproach" him, in "the house of his pilgrimage." Ps. cxlviii:4-6, "Praise him, ye heaven of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens. Let them praise the name of the LORD: for he commanded and they were created. He hath also established them for ever and ever: he hath made a decree which shall not pass. The sun and moon, the stars of light, and even the waters above the heavens are established forever,"eis ton aióna tou aiónos, and yet the firmament is one day to become as a folded garment, and the orbs of heaven are to be no more. Endless duration is out of the question in these and many similar instances.
In Lam. v:19, "forever and ever" is used as the equivalent of "from generation to generation." Joel ii:26-27, "And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you: and my people shall never be ashamed. And ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the Lord your God and none else: and my people shall never be ashamed." This is spoken of the Jewish nation. Isa. lx:15, "Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that no man went through thee, I will make thee an eternal (aiónion) excellency, a joy of many generations." Here many generations and eternal are exact equivalents. 1 Sam. i:22, "But Hannah went not up: for she said unto her husband, I will not go up until the child be weaned, and then I will bring him, that he may appear before the LORD, and there abide forever." The remaining of Samuel in the temple was to be "forever" (aiónos) 2 Kings, v:27, "The leprosy therefore of Naaman shall cleave unto thee, and unto thy seed forever." (ton aióna). Undoubtedly the seed of Gehazi is still on earth: but whether so or not the leprosy has departed. Daniel ii:4, "Then spake the Chaldeans to the king in Syriac, O king, live forever: eis tous aióna." The Chaldean's live forever meant precisely what the French Vive, and the English "Long live the King" mean. Eternal duration never entered the thought. Jerem. xvii:25, "Then shall there enter into the gates of this city kings and princes sitting upon the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they, and their city shall remain forever," eis ton aióna. Eternity was not promised here. Long duration is the extent of the promise. Josh. iv:7, "Then ye shall answer them, That the waters of Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD: when it passed over Jordan, the waters of Jordan were cut off; and these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel forever," tou aiónos. These stones are no longer a memorial. This forever has ended.
Forever and ever is applied to the hosts of heaven, or the sun, moon, and stars: to a writing contained in a book; to the smoke that went up from the burning land of Idumea; and to the time the Jews were to dwell in Judea. (39) The word never is applied to the time the sword was to remain in the house of David, to the time the Jews should experience shame. (40)
"Everlasting" (41) is applied to God's covenant with the Jews; to the priesthood of Aaron; to the statutes of Moses; to the time the Jews were to possess the land of Canaan; to the mountains and hills; and to the doors of the Jewish temple. (42) The word forever is applied to the duration of man's earthly existence; to the time a child was to abide in the temple; to the continuance of Gehazi's leprosy; to the duration of the life of David; to the duration of a king's life; to the duration of the earth; to the time the Jews were to possess the land of Canaan; to the time they were to dwell in Jerusalem; to the time a servant was to abide with his master; to the time Jerusalem was to remain a city; to the duration of the Jewish temple; to the laws and ordinances of Moses; to the time David was to be king over Israel; to the throne of Solomon; to the stones that were set up at Jordan; to the time the righteous were to inhabit the earth; and to the time Jonah was in the fish's belly. (43)
And yet, the land of Cannan, the Jews' "everlasting possession," has passed from their hand; the convenant of circumcision, an "everlasting covenant" was abolished almost two thousand years ago; the Jewish atonement (Lev. xvi,) an everlasting statute, is abrogated by the atonement of Christ; David was never to want a man to sit on Israel's throne. This aionian line of succession was long ago broken.
We have found the noun Aión three hundred and ninety-four times in the Old Testament, and the adjective Aiónion one hundred and ten times, and in all but four times it is the translation of Olam.
THE NOUN.
Waiving the passages where it is applied to God, and where by accommodation it may be allowed to imply endlessness, just as great applied to God means infinity, let us consult the general usage: Eccl. i:10, "Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new! It hath been already of old time, which was before us." Ps. xxv:6, "Remember, O LORD, thy tender mercies and thy loving kindnesses; for they have been ever of old," (aiónos). Ps. cxix:52, "I remembered thy judgementsof old, O LORD; and have comforted myself." Isa. xlvi:9, "Remember the former things ofold." Isa. lxiv:4, "Since the beginning of the world," (aiónos). Jer. xxviii:8, "The prophets that have been before me and before thee of old prophesied both against many countries, and against great kingdoms, of war, and of evil, and of pestilence." Jer. ii:20, "For of old time I have broken thy yoke, and burst thy bands." Prov. viii:23, "I (wisdom) was set up from everlasting (aiónos) from the beginning, or ever the earth was." Here aiónos and "before the world was, " are in apposition. Ps. lxxiii:12, "Behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world," (time, aiónos.) Deut. xxxii:7, "Remember the days of old." Ezek. xxvi:20, "The people of old time." Ps. cxliii:3, "Those who have been long dead." --Same in Lam. iii:6. Amos ix:11, "Days ofold." Isa. i:9, "Generationsofold." Micah vii:14, "Days ofold." Same in Malachi iii:4. Ps. xlviii:14, "For this God is our God for ever and ever: he will be our guide even unto death." This plural form denotes "even unto death." Christ's kingdom is prophesied as destined to endure "forever," "without end," etc. Dan. ii:44; Isa. lix:21; Ps. cx:4; Isa. ix:7; Ps. lxxxix:29. Now if anything is taught in the Bible, it is that Christ's kingdom shall end. In 1 Corin. xv: it is expressly and explicitly declared that Jesus shall surrender the kingdom to God the Father, that his reign shall entirely cease. Hence, when we read in such passages as Dan. ii:44, that Christ's kingdom shall stand forever, we must understand that the forever denotes the reign of Messias, bounded by "the end," when God shall be "all in all."
Servants were declared to be bound forever, when all servants were emancipated every fifty years. Thus in Deut. xv:16,17, we read, "And it shall be, if he say unto thee, I will not go away from thee; because he loveth thee and thine house, because he is well with thee, then thou shalt take an awl, and thrust it through his ear unto the door, and he shall be thy servant forever." And yet we are told, Lev. xlv:10,39,41, "And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family. And if thy brother that dwelleth with thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee; thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bond servant, but as a hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee unto the year of jubilee: and then shall he depart from thee, both he and his children with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the possession of his father shall he return." This forever at the utmost could only be forty-nine years and three hundred and sixty-four days and some odd hours. And certainly no one will ascribe endless duration to aión in the following passages: II Sam. vii:16,29; I Ki. ii:45, and ix:5; I Chron. xvii:27, and xxviii:4; II Chron. xiii:5; Psa. lxxxix:4,336,37; Ezek. xxxvii:25; I Sam. xiii:13; II Sam. vii:13,16,25,26; xxii:51; I Ki. ii:33; I Chron. xvii:12,14,14,23, and xxii:10, xxviii:7; Psa. xviii:50, lxxxix:4, and cxxxii:12; Ex. xxxii:13, Josh. xiv:9; I Chron. xx:7; Jud. ii:1; II Ch. vii:3; Psa. cv:8; Gen. xiii:15; I Ch. xxviii:4,7,8; Jer. xxxi:40; Ezek. xxxvii:25; Jer. vii:7,7; II Sa. vii:24; I Chron. xvii:22; Joel iii:20; II Ki. xxi:7; II Chron. xxxiii:4; Psa. xlviii:8; Jer. xvii:25; I Chron. xxiii:25; Isa. xxviii:7; I Ki. ix:3; II Chron. xxx:8; Ezek. xxxvii:26,28; II Chron. vii:16; Ex. xix:9, and xl:15; I Chron. xxiii:23, 13; I Chron. xv:2; Lev. iii:17; II Chron. ii:4; Ex. xii:24; Josh. iv:7; Am. i:11; Isa. xiii:20; Isa. xxxiii:20, xxxiv:10; I Ki. x:9; II Chron. ix:8; Psa. cii:28; Ezek. xliii:7.
Many passages allude to the earth as enduring forever -- to the grave, as man's "long home," to God's existence, as "Forever, etc." Often the language is equivalent to "to the ages," or "from age to age," and sometimes eternal duration is predicated, never because the word compels it, but because the theme treated requires it.
THE ADJECTIVE
is applied to God, Zion, and things intrinsically endless, and thus acquires from the connected subjects a meaning not inherent in the word, as in the following passages: Gen. xxi:33; Ex. iii:15; Job xxxiii:12; Isa. xl:28, li:11, liv:8, lv:3,13, lvi:5; lx:15,19, lxi:7,8; lxiii:12; Ezek. xxxvii:26; Dan. vii:27, ix:24, xii:2; Hab. iii:6; Ps. cxii:6, cxxx:8.
THE ADJECTIVE LIMITED.
But it is found with limited meaning in these and other passages: Gen. ix:12-16; Gen. xvii:8,13,19; and Num. xxv:13; Ex. xii:14,17; xxvii:21; xxviii:43; xxix:28; xxx:21; xxxi:16,17; Lev. vi:18,22; vii:34,36; x:15; xvi:29,31,34; xvii:7; xxiii:14,31,41; xxiv:3,8,9. Num. x:8; xv:15; xviii:8,11,19,23; xix:10,21; II Sam. xxiii:5; I Chron. xvi:17; Isa. xxiv:5; Ezek. xvi:60; Psa. lxxvii:5; Isa lxiii:11; Jer. vi:16; xviii:15; Job xxi:11; xxii:15; Isa. lviii:12; lxi:4; Ezek. xxvi:20; Prov. xxii:28; xxiii:10; Ezek. xxxvi:2; xxxv:5; Isa. liv:4; Jer. v:22; xviii:16; xxv:9,12; Ezek. xxxv:9; Jer. xx:17; xxiii:40; li:39; Micah ii:9.
Let us quote some of the foregoing texts: "And ye shall observe the feast of unleavened bread; for in this selfsame day have I brought your armies out of the land of Egypt: therefore shall ye observe this day in your generations by an ordinance for ever." "And thou shalt command the children of Israel, that they bring thee pure olive beaten for the light, to cause the lamp to burn always." "In the tabernacle of the congregation without the veil, which is before the testimony, Aaron and his sons shall order it from evening to morning before the Lord: it shall be a statute for everUNTO THEIR GENERATIONS on behalf of the children of Israel." "And they shall be upon Aaron and upon his sons, when they come in unto the tabernacle of the congregation, or when they come near unto the altar to minister in the holy place; that they bear not iniquity and die: it shall be a statute for ever unto him and his seed after him." "Hast thou not marked the old way which wicked men have trodden?" "Fear ye not me: saith the Lord: will ye not tremble at my presence, which have placed the sand for the bound of the sea by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it: and though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail; though they roar, yet can they not pass over it?"
To render the word eternal will show how absurd that definition is, in the following passages (44):
"I will give unto thee, and thy seed after thee, the land wherin thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an eternal possession." "And thou shalt anoint them as thou didst their father, that they surely be a priesthood through the eternity." "Then his master shall bring him to the door, or unto the door-posts, and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall serve him through the eternity."
"The water compassed me about --even to the soul;
The weeds were wrapped about my head,
I went down to the bottoms of the bountains;
The earth with her eternal bars was about me."
Still further do the subjoined texts demonstrate the impropriety of the popular rendering, which would compel us to read (45): "The Lord shall reign to the eternity, and during the eternity, and LONGER." "And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars through the eternities and longer." "And we will walk in the name of Jehovah our God through the eternity and longer." But substitute ages and the sense is perfect. Ex. xv:18, "The Lord shall reign from age to age, and beyond all the ages;" Dan. xii:3, "Through the ages and beyond them all;" Micah iv:5, "Through the age and beyondit."
No one can read the Old Testament carefully and unbiassed, and fail to see that the word has a great range of meaning, bearing some such relation to duration as the word great does to size. We say God is infinite when we call him the Great God, not because great means infinite, but because God is infinite. The aiónion God is of eternal duration, but the aiónion smoke of Idumea has expired, and the aiónion hills will one day crumble, and all merely aionian things will cease to be.
While it is a rule of language that adjectives qualify and describe nouns, it is no less true that nouns modify adjectives. A tall flower, a tall dog, a tall man, and a tall tree are of different degrees of length, though the different nouns are described by the same adjective. The adjective is in each instance modified by its noun, just as the aionian bars that held Jonah three days, and the aionian priesthood of Aaron already ended, and the aionian hills yet to be destroyed, and aionian punishment, always proportioned to human guilt, are of different degrees of length. The adjective is modified and its length is determined by the noun with which it is connected.
THE SUBJECT DETERMINES THE DURATION DESCRIBED BY THE ADJECTIVE.
Prof. Tayler Lewis says, "'One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever.' This certainly indicates, not an endless eternity in the strictest sense of the word, but only a future of unlimited length. Ex. xxxi:16; 'Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant.' Olam here would seem to be taken as a hyperbolical term for indefinite or unmeasured duration." Where the context demands it, as "I live forever," spoken of God, he says it means endless duration, for "it is the subject to which it is applied that forces to this, andNOTany etymological necessity in the word itself." He adds that Olam and Aion, in the plural, ages, and ages of ages, demonstrate that neither of the words, of itself, denotes eternity. He admits that they are used to give an idea of eternity, but that applied to God and his kingdom, the ages are finite (46). Prof. L. is eminently learned and as eminently orthodox.
THE END OF AIONIAN THINGS.
Now the Jews have lost their eternal excellency; Aaron and his sons have ceased from their priesthood; the Mosaic system is superseded by Christianity; the Jews no longer possess Canaan; David and his house have lost the throne of Israel; the Jewish temple is destroyed, and Jerusalem is wiped out as the holy city; the servants who were to be bondmen forever are all free from their masters; Gehazi is cured of his leprosy; the stones are removed from Jordan, and the smoke of Idumea no longer rises; the righteous do not posses the land promised them forever; some of the hills and mountains have fallen, and the tooth of Time will one day gnaw the last of them into dust; the fire has expired from the Jewish altar; Jonah has escaped from his imprisonment; all these and numerous other eternal, everlasting things -- things that were to last forever, and to which the various aionian words are applied -- have now ended, and if these hundreds of instances must denote limited duration why should the few times in which punishments are spoken of have any other meaning? Even if endless duration were the intrinsic meaning of the word, all intelligent readers of the Bible would perceive that the word must be employed to denote limited duration in the passages above cited. And surely in the very few times in which it is connected with punishment it must have a similar meaning. For who administers this punishment? Not a monster, not an infinite devil, but a God of love and mercy, and the same common sense that would forbid us to give the word the meaning of endless duration, were that its literal meaning, when we see it applied to what we know has ended, would forbid us to give it that meaning when applied to the dealings of an Infinite Father with an erring and beloved child. But when we interpret it in the light of its lexicography, and general usage out of the Old Testament, and perceive that it only has the sense of endless when the subject compels it [emphasized by editor], as when referring to God, we see that it is a species of blasphemy to allow that it denotes endless duration when describing God's punishments.
APPLIED TO PUNISHMENT.
A few prominent instances illustrate the usage of the word connected with punishment. Ps. ix:5, "Thou hast destroyed the wicked." How? The explanation follows: "Thou hast put out their name forever and ever," (ton aiona, kai eis ton aióna tou aionos.) His is not endless torment, but oblivion. Solomon elsewhere observes: Prov. x:7, "The name of the wicked shall rot," while David says, Ps. cxii:6, "The righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance." Ps. lxxviii:66, "He put them (his enemies) to a perpetual reproach." Is. xxxiii:14, "Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?" The prophet is here speaking of God's temporal judgments, represented by fire. "The earth mourneth; Lebanon is ashamed; the people shall be as the burnings of lime." Who will dwell in safety amid these fiery judgments? These aionian burnings? "He that walks uprightly." Earthly judgements among which the upright are to dwell in safety are here described, and not endless fire hereafter. Jer. xvii:4, "Ye have kindled a fire in mine anger which shall burn forever." Where was this to be? The preceding verse informs us. "I will cause thee to serve thine enemies in a land which thou knowest not." Jer. xxiii:40, "I will bring an everlasting reproach upon you; and a perpetual shame which shall not be forgotten." The connection fully explains this verse 39, "I will utterly forget you, and I will forsake you, and the city that I gave you and your fathers. See Jer. xx:11. Mal. i:4, "The people against whom the Lord hath indignation forever." This is an announcement of God's judgements on Edom" "They shall build but I will throw down" and they shall call them the border of wickedness, and the people against whom the Lord hath indignation forever."
EVERLASTING SHAME AND CONTEMPT.
Dan. xii:2, "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." When was this to take place? "At that time." What time? Verse 31, chap. xi, speaks of the coming of the "abomination that maketh desolate." Jesus says, Matt. xxiv:15,16, Luke xxi:20,21, "When ye therefore (the disciples) shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet stand in the holy place, then let them which be in Judea flee to the mountains. And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto." Daniel says this was to be (xii:7) "When he shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people." Jesus says, "For then shall be great tribulations, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time; no, nor ever shall be." And when that was Jesus tells us: "this generation shall not pass away, till all these things be fulfilled." The events discussed in Daniel are the same as those in Matt. xxiv, and came in this world in the generation that crucified Jesus.
DUST OF THE EARTH.
The phrase sleeping in the dust of the earth, is of course employed figuratively, to indicate sloth, spiritual lethargy, as in Ps. xliv:25; Isa. xxv:12; xxvi:5; I Tim. v:6; Rev. iii:1, "For our soul is bowed down to the dust." "And the fortress of the high fort of thy walls shall he bring down, lay low, and bring to the ground, even to the dust." "For he bringeth down them that dwell on high; the lofty city, he layeth it low; he layeth it low, even to the ground; he bringeth it even to the dust." "But she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth." "I know thy works; that thou hast a name, and that thou livest and art dead."
It was a prophecy of the moral awakening that came at the time of the advent of Jesus, and was then fulfilled. When we come to Matt. xxiv and xxv we shall see the exact nature of this judgment. Walter Balfour describes it, (47) "They," (those who obeyed the call of Jesus) "heard the voice of the Son of God, and lived." See John v:21,25,28,29, Eph. v:14. The rest kept on till the wrath of God came on them to the uttermost. They all, at last, awoke; but it was to shame and everlasting contempt, in being dispersed among all nations, and they have become a by-word and an hissing even unto this day. Jeremiah in chapter xxiii:39,40, predicted this very punishment and calls it an "everlasting reproach and a perpetual shame."
These few passages, not one of which conveys a hint of endless punishment, are all that connect our word denoting duration with punishment in the Old Testament.
Out of more than five hundred occurrences of our disputed word in the Old Testament, more than four hundred denote limited duration, so that the great preponderance of Old Testament usage fully agrees with the Greek classics. The remaining instances follow the rule given by the best lexicographers, that it only means endless when it derives its meaning or endlessness from the nature of the subject with which it is connected.
Dr. Beecher (48) remarks that the sense of endless given to the aionian phraseology "fills the Old Testament with contradictions, for it would make it declare the absolute eternity of systems which it often and emphatically declares to be temporary. Nor can it be said that aiónios denotes lasting as long as the nature of things permits. The Mosaic ordinances might have lasted at least to the end of the world, but did not. Moreover, on this principle the exceptions to the true sense of the word exceed its proper use; for in the majority of cases in the Old Testament aiónios is applied to that which is limited and temporary."
Now if endless punishment awaits millions of the human race, and if it is denoted by this word, is it possible that only David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Malachi use the word to define punishment, in all less than a dozen times, while Job, Moses, Joshua, Ruth, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Solomon, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habbakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, and Zachariah never employ it thus? Such silence is criminal, on the popular hypothesis. These holy men should and would have made every sentence bristle with the word, and thus have borne the awful message to the soul with an emphasis that could be neither resisted nor disputed. The fact that the word is so seldom, and by so few applied to punishment, and never in the Old Testament to punishment beyond death, demonstrates that it cannot mean endless.
TESTIMONY OF SCHOLARS.
The best critics concede that the doctrine of endless punishment is not taught in the Old Testament. But the word in dispute is found in connection with punishment in the Old Testament. This is a concession that the word has no such meaning in the Old Testament. Milman: "The lawgiver (Moses) maintains a profound silence on that fundamental article, if not of political, at least of religious legislation -- rewards and punishments in another life." Paley, Jahn, Whately are to the same purport, and H. W. Beecher says, "If we had only the Old Testament we could not tell if there were any future punishment." (49)
We should then conclude that the word means one thing in the Old Testament and another in the New, did we not find that the same meaning continues in the New that we have found to prevail uniformly in the Old Testament, and in antecedent and contemporaneous Greek literature.
THREE QUESTIONS
Here press the mind with irresistible force, and they can only receive one answer. 1st, Had God intended endless punishment, would the Old Testament have failed to reveal it? 2d, If God does not announce it in the Old Testament, is it supposable that he has revealed it elsewhere: 3d, Would he for thousands of years conceal so awful a destiny from millions whom he had created and exposed to it? No child of God ought to be willing to impeach his Heavenly Father by withholding an indignant negative to these questions.
3. -- JEWISH GREEK USAGE.
Those Jews who were contemporary with Christ, but who wrote in Greek, will teach us how they understood the word. Of course when Jesus used it, he employed it as they understood it.
Josephus (50) applies the word to the imprisonment to which John the tyrant was condemned by the Romans; to the reputation of Herod; to the everlasting memorial erected in re-building the temple, already destroyed, when he wrote; to the everlasting worship in the temple which, in the same sentence he says was destroyed; and he styles the time between the promulgation of the law and his writing a longaión. To accuse him of attaching any other meaning than that of indefinite duration to the word, is to accuse him of stultifying himself. But when he writes to describe endless duration he employs other, and less equivocal terms. Alluding to the Pharisees, he says:
"They believe that the wicked are detained in an everlasting prison [eirgmon aidion] subject to eternal punishment" [aidios timoria]; and the Essenes [another Jewish sect] "allotted to bad souls a dark, tempestuous place, full of never-ceasing punishment [timoria adialeipton], where they suffer a deathless punishment, [athanaton timorian]."
It is true he sometimes applies aiónion to punishment, but this is not his usual custom, and he seems to have done this as one might use the word great to denote eternal duration, that is an indefinite term to describe infinity. But aidion and athanaton are his favorite terms. These are unequivocal. Were only aiónion used to define the Jewish idea of the duration of future punishment, we should have no proof that it was supposed to be endless.
Philo, who was contemporary with Christ, generally usedaidion to denote endless, and always used aiónion to describe temporary duration. Dr. Mangey, in his edition of Philo, says he never usedaiónion to interminable duration. He uses the exact phraseology of Matthew, xxv:46, precisely as Christ used it. "It is better not to promise than not to give prompt assistance, for no blame follows in the former case, but in the latter there is dissatisfaction from the weaker class, and a deep hatred and everlasting punishment [kolasis aiónios] from such as are more powerful." Here we have the exact terms employed by out Lord, to show that aiónion did not mean endless but did mean limited duration in the time of Christ.
Philo always uses athanaton, ateleuteton or aidion to denote endless, and aiónion for temporary duration.
Stephens, in his Thesaurus, quotes from a Jewish work, [Solom. Parab.] "These they called aiónios, hearing that they had performed the sacred rites for three entire generations." This shows conclusively that the expression "three generations" was then one full equivalent of aiónion. Now these eminent scholars were Jews who wrote in Greek, and who certainly knew the meaning of the words they employed, and they give to the aionian words the meaning that we are contending for, indefinite duration, to be determined by the subject.
Thus the Jews of our Savior's time avoided using the word aiónion to denote endless duration, for applied all through the Bible to temporary affairs, it would not teach it. If Jesus intended to teach the doctrine held by the jews, would he not have used the terms they used? Assuredly; but he did not. He threatened age-lasting, or long-enduring discipline to the believers in endless punishment.Aiónion was his word while theirs was aidion, adialeipton, or athanaton, -- thus rejecting their doctrines by not only not employing their phraseology, but by using always and only those words connected with punishment, that denote limited suffering.
And, still further to show that he had no sympathy with those cruel men who procured his death, Jesus said to his disciples: "Take heed and beware of the leaven [doctrine] of the Pharisees and the Sadducees" [believers in endless misery and believers in destruction].
Had aiónion been the strongest word, especially had it denoted endless duration, who does not see that it would have been in general use as applied to punishment, by the Jewish Greeks of nineteen centuries ago?
We thus have an unbroken chain of Lexicography, and Classic, Old Testament, and Contemporaneous Usage, all allowing to the word the meaning we claim for it. Indefinite duration is the meaning generally given from the beginning down to the New Testament.
4.-- THE NEW TESTAMENT USAGE.
AION THE SAME IN BOTH TESTAMENTS.
Speaking to those who understood the Old Testament, Jesus and his Apostles employed such words as are used in that book, in the same sense in which they are there used. Not to do so would be to mislead their hearers unless they explained a change of meaning. There is certainly no proof that the word changed its meaning between the Old and New Testaments, accordingly we are under obligation to give it precisely the meaning in the New it had in the Old Testament. This we have seen to be indefinite duration. An examination of the New Testament will show that the meaning is the same, as it should be, in both Testaments.
NUMBER OF TIMES FOUND AND HOW TRANSLATED.
The different forms of the word occur in the New Testament one hundred and ninety-nine times, if I am not mistaken, the noun one hundred and twenty-eight, and the adjective seventy-one times.
Bruder's Concordance, latest edition, gives aión one hundred and twenty-six times, and aiónios seventy-two times in the New Testament, instead of the former ninety-four, and the latter sixty-six times, as Professor Stuart, following Knapp's Greek text, declares.
In our common translation the noun is rendered seventy-two times ever, twice eternal, thirty-six times world, seven times never, three times evermore, twice worlds, twice ages, once course, once world without end, and twice it is passed over without any word affixed as a translation of it. The adjective is rendered once ever, forty-two times eternal, three times world, twenty-five times everlasting, and once former ages.
1 -- THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST.
Ten times it is applied to the Kingdom of Christ. Luke i:33, "And he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end." See also i:55; Heb. vi:20; vii:17,21; I Pet. iv:11; II Pet. i:11; iii:18; Rev. i:6; xi:15. But the Kingdom of Christ is to end, and he is to surrender all dominion to the Father, therefore endless duration is not taught in these passages. See I Cor. xv.
2 -- THE JEWISH AGE.
It is applied to the Jewish age more than thirty times: 1 Cor. x:11, "Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples; and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come." Consult also Matt. xii:32; xiii:22,39,40,49; xxiv:3; xxviii:20; Mark iv:19; Luke i:70; xvi:8; xx:34; John ix:32; Acts iii:21; xv:18; Rom. xii:2; I Cor. ii:6,7,8; iii:18; II Cor. iv:4; Gal. i:4; Eph. i:21; ii:2; iii:9; 1 Tim. vi:17; II Tim. iv:10; Titus ii:12; Heb. ix:26. But the Jewish age ended with the setting up of the Kingdom of Christ. Therefore the world does not denote endless duration here.
3 -- THE PLURAL FORM.
It is used in the plural in Eph. iii:21; "the age of the ages." tou aionos ton aionon. Heb. i:2; xi:3, "By whom he made the worlds." "The worlds were framed by the word of God." There can be but one eternity. To say "By whom he made the eternities" would be to talk nonsense. Endless duration is not inculcated in these texts.
4 -- THE SENSE OF FINITE DURATION.
The word clearly teaches finite duration in such passages as Rom. xvi:25; II Cor. iv:17; II Tim. i:9; Philemon 15; Titus i:2. Read Rom. xvi:25: "Since the world (eternity?) began." II Cor. Iv:17: "A far more exceeding eternal weight of glory." Here "and" is a word supplied by the translators, and the literal is "an excessively exceeding aionian weight." But endless cannot be exceeded. Therefore aiónion does not here mean eternal.
5 --EQUIVALENT TO NOT.
The word is used as equivalent to not in Matt. xxi:19; Mark xi:14; John xiii:8; I Cor. viii:13. "Peter said unto him 'thou shalt never wash my feet'," is a specimen of this use of the word. It only denotes eternal by accommodation.
6 --APPLIED TO GOD, ETC.
It is applied to God, Christ, the Gospel, the good, the Resurrection world, etc., in which the sense of endless is allowable because imputed to the word by the subject treated, as declared by Taylor and Fuerst, on page 17 of this book, in Rom. i:25; ix:5; xi:36; xvi:27; Gal. i:5; Phil. iv:20; I Tim. i:17; II Tim. iv:18; I John ii:17; I Peter v:11; Rev. vii:12, xv:7; Rom. xvi:26; II Cor. iv:18, v:1; II Tim. ii:10; Heb. vi:2, ix:12,14,15, xiii:20; I Pet. v:10; Rev. iv:10; John viii:35, xii:34, xiv:16; II Cor. ix:9, xi:31; Gal. i:5; Eph. iii:11; II Tim. iv:18; Heb. vii:24,28, xiii:8,21; I Pet. i:25; II Pet. iii:18; II John 2; Jude 25; Rev. i:18, iv:9,10, v:13, x:6, xxii:5.
7.--LIFE ETERNAL.
It is applied to life, "Everlasting and Eternal Life." But this phrase does not so much denote the duration, as the quality of the Blessed Life. It seems to have the sense of durable in these passages: Matt. xix:16,29, xxv:46; Mark x:17,30; Luke x:25, xvi:9, xviii:18,30; John iii:15,16,36, iv:14,36, v:24,39, vi:27,40,47,54,68, x:28, xii:25,50, xvii:2,3; Rom. ii:7, v:21, vi:22,23, Gal. vi:8; II Thess. ii:16; I Tim. i:16, vi:12; Titus i:2, iii:7; Heb. v:9; I John i:2, ii:25, iii:15, v:11,13,20; Jude 21; Mark x:30; Luke xviii:30; John iv:14, vi:51,58, viii:51,52, x:28, xi:26. See this subject treated further on.
PASSAGES DENOTING LIMITED DURATION.
Let us state more definitely several passages in which all will agree that the word cannot have the sense of endless.
Matt. xxii:22, "The care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word," the cares of that age or "time." Verses 39, 40, 49, "The harvest is the end of the world," i.e. age, Jewish age, the same taught in Matt. xxiv, which some who heard Jesus speak were to live to see, and did see. Luke i:33, "And he (Jesus) shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end." The meaning is, he shall reign to the ages (eis tous aionas). That long, indefinite duration is meant here, but limited, is evident from I Cor. xv:28, "And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all." His reign is for ever, i.e., to the ages, but it is to cease. Luke i:55, "As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever, (to an age, aiónos.) Luke i:70. "As he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began," or "from an age," (ap aiónos). "Of old," would be the plain construction. Luke xvi:8, "For the children of thisworld are in their generation wiser than the children of light." That is, the people of that time were more prudent in the management of their affairs than were the Christians of that day in their plans. John ix:32, "Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind." From the age, (ek tou aiónos) that is from the beginning of our knowledge and history. Romans xvi:25, "Since the world began," clearly shows a duration less than eternity, inasmuch as the mystery that had been secret since the world began, was then revealed. The mystery wasaiónion but did not last eternally. It was "now made manifest" "to all nations." Phil. iv:20. "Now unto God and our Father be glory for ever and ever," for the ages of the ages (eis tous aiónas ton aiónon). (Gal. i:5 same.) "For the eternities of the eternities," is an absurd expression. But ages of ages is a proper sentence. Eternity may be meant here, but if the word aión expressed the idea, such a reduplication would be weak and improper. I Tim. vi:17, "Charge them that are rich in this world." (age or time). I Tim. i:17. "Now to the King eternal (of the ages) be glory for the ages of the ages." What is this but an asscription of the ages to the God of the ages? Eternity can only be meant here as ages piled on ages imply long, and possibly endless duration. "All the ages are God's; him let the ages glorify," is the full import of the words. Translate the words eternity, and what nonsense. "Now to the God of the eternities (!) Be glory for the eternities of the eternities (!!) Heb. i:8, "The age of the age." Eph. ii:7, "That in the ages (aións) to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace." Here at least two aións, eternities are to come. Certainly one of them must end before the other begins. Eph. iii:21, "The generations of the age of the ages." IITim. iv:18, "The age of the ages." The same form of expression is in Heb. xiii:21; I Pet. iv:11; Rev. i:6, iv:9, v:13, vii:12, xiv:11, xv:7, xx:10. When we read that the smoke of their torment ascends eis aiónas aiónon, for ages of ages, we get the idea of long, indefinite, but limited duration, for as an age is limited, any number however great, must be limited. The moment we say the smoke of their torment goes up for eternities of eternities, we transform the sacred rhetoric in jargon. There is but one eternity, therefore as we read of more than one aión, it follows that aión cannot mean eternity. Again, I Cor. x:11, "Our admonition, on whom theENDS of the aións (ages, ta tele ton aiónon) have come." That is, the close of the Mosaic and the beginning of the gospel age. How absurd to "ends of the eternities!" Here the apostle had passed more than one, and entered, consequently, upon at least a third aión. Heb. ix:26, "Now at an end of the ages." Matt. xviii:39, 40, xxiv:4, "The conclusion of the age." Eternity has no end. And to say ends of eternities is to talk nonsense. II Tim. ii:9, "Before the world began," i.e., before the aiónion times began. There was no beginning to eternity, therefore the adjective aiónion here has no such meaning as eternal. The fact that aión is said to end and begin, is a demonstration that it does not mean eternity.
ABSURDITY OF POPULAR VIEWS.
Translate the word eternity, and how absurd the Bible phraseology becomes! It represent the Bible as saying, "To whom be the glory during the ETERNITIES, even TO THE ETERNITIES." Gal. i:5. "Now all these things happened unto them, for ensamples, and they are written for our admonition upon whom the endsOF THE ETERNITIES are come." I Cor. x:11. "That in the ETERNITIES coming he might show the exceeding riches of his grace." Eph. ii.7. "The mystery which hath been hid from theETERNITIESand from the generations." Col. i:26. "But now once in the end of the eternities, hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." Heb. ix:26. "The harvest is the end of the eternity." Matt. xiii:39. "So shall it be in the end of this eternity." Matt. xiii:40. "Tell us when shall these things be, and what the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the eternity." Matt. xxiv:4. But substitute "age" or "ages," and the sense of the Record is preserved.
IT ACQUIRES VARIOUS MEANINGS.
This is seen in many passages. Luke xx: 34, 35. "The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage; but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, ** are equal unto the angels," etc. Here "that world" (tou aiónos ekeinou) denotes the eternal world, not because the word aión intrinsically means that, but because the resurrection state is the topic of discourse. The words literally mean that age or epoch, but in this instance the immortal world is the subject that defines the word and gives it a unique meaning. So when the word refers to God, it denotes a different duration than when it applies to the Jewish dispensation. That in some of the places referred to the mooted word has the sense of endless, we do not question, but in all such cases it derives that meaning from the subject connected with it. (51)
Let us indicate its varied use. Matt. vi:13 is probably spurious: (52) "Thine is the glory forever," that is through the ages. Here eternity may be implied, but the phrase "forever" literally means "for the ages." Mark iv:19, same as Matt. i:22. Mark x:30. "But he shall receive a hundred fold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in theworld to come eternal life." Literally, in the age to come the life of that age," i.e., gospel, spiritual, Christian life. We have shown that the world to come denotes the Christian dispensation.-Mark xi:;14. "No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever," that is "in the age," meaning the period of the tree's existence.-John xii:34. "The people answered him, We have heard out of the law that Christ abideth for ever;" (to the age). The Jews believed that their dispensation was to continue, and Messiah would remain as long as it would last. This language means that Christ was to remain through the Mosaic epoch. So the Jews thought.-John xiii:8. "Thou shalt never wash my feet" is equivalent to "Thou shalt not wash my feet."-John xiv:16. "And I will pray the Father and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever,"eis ton aióna, "unto the age," that is, accompany them into the coming or Christian era.-John vi:51. 58, "If any man eat of this bread he shall live for ever;" eis ton aióna, into the age, that is, enjoy the life of the world that is to come, the Christian life. Its duration is not described here at all.-John viii:35. "And the servant abideth not in the house for ever; (to the age,) but the Son abideth ever."- The Jews are here told that their religion is to be superseded by the Christ only. They are to leave the house because slaves to sin, while the Son will remain to the age-permanently.-John viii:51, 52. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying he shall never see death. Then said the Jews unto him, Now we know that thou hast a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets; and thou sayest, If a man keep my saying he shall never taste of death." Moral, spiritual death is impossible to a man as long as he keeps the saying of Christ, is the full meaning of the words.
OCCURRENCE OF THE ADJECTIVE.
The adjective aiónios is (incorrectly) said by Professor Stuart to (53) occur sixty-six times in the New Testament, be we make it seventy-two times. Of these fifty-seven are used in relation to the happiness of the righteous; three in relation to God or his glory; four are of a miscellaneous nature; and seven relate to the subject of punishment. Now these fifty-seven denote indefinite duration, "everlasting life" being a life that may or may not -- certainly does not always -- endure forever.
Thus the great preponderance of usage in the New Testament is indefinite duration. But if the preponderance were against this usage, we ought, in order to vindicate God's character, to understand it in the sense of limited when describing a Father's punishment of his children.
APPLIED TO PUNISHMENT.
How many times does the word in all its forms describe punishment? Only fourteen times in thirteen passages in the entire New Testament, and these were uttered on ten occasions only. The Noun, Matt. xii:32, Mark iii:29, 2 Pet. ii:17, Jude 13, Rev. xiv:11, xix:3, xx:10. The Adjective, Matt. xviii:8, xxv:41, 46, Mark iii:29, 2 Thess. i:9, Jude 7, Heb. vi:2.
Now if God's punishments are limited, we can understand how this word should be used only fourteen times to define them. But if they are endless how can we explain the employment of this equivocal word only fourteen times in the entire New Testament? A doctrine that, if true, ought to crowd every sentence, frown in every line, only stated fourteen times, and that, too, by a word whose uniform meaning everywhere else is limited duration! The idea is preposterous. Such reticence is incredible. If the word denotes limited duration, the punishments threatened in the New Testament are like those that experience teaches follow transgression. But if it means endless, how can we account for the fact that neither Luke nor John records one instance of its use by the Savior, and Matthew but four, and Mark but two, and Paul employs it but twice in his ministry, while John and James in their epistles never allude to it? Such silence is an unanswerable refutation of all attempts to foist the meaning of endless into the word. "Everlasting fire" occurs only three times, "everlasting punishment" only once, and "eternal damnation" once only. Shall any one dare suppose that the New Testament reveals endless torment, and that out of one hundred and ninety-nine occurrences of the word aion it is applied to punishment so seldom, and that so many of those who wrote the New Testament never use the word at all? No. The New Testament usage agrees with the meaning in the Greek classics, and in the Old Testament. Does it not strike the candid mind as impossible that God should have concealed this doctrine for thousands of years, and that for forty centuries of revelation he continually employed to teach limited duration the identical word that he at length stretched into the signification of endless duration? The word means limited duration all through the Old Testament; it never had the meaning of endless duration among those who spoke the language, (as we have demonstrated,) but Jesus announced the doctrine of endless punishment, and selected as the Greek word to convey his meaning the very word that in the Classics and the Septuagint never contained any such thought, when there were several words in the copious Greek tongue that unequivocally conveyed the idea of interminable duration! Even if Matthew wrote in Hebrew or in Syro-Chaldaic, he gave a Greek version of his gospel, and in that rejected every word that carries the meaning of endlessness, and appropriated the one which taught nothing of the kind. If this were the blunder of an incompetent translator, or the imperfect record of a reckless scribe, we could understand it, but to say that the inspired pen of the evangelist has deliberately or carelessly jeoparded the immortal welfare of countless millions by employing a word to teach the doctrine of ceaseless woe that up to that very hour taught only limited duration, is to make a declaration that carries its own refutation.
We come now to the sheet-anchor of the great heresy of the partialist church,
THE PRINCIPAL PROOF-TEXT
of an error hoary with antiquity, and not yet wholly abandoned. Matt. xxv:46, is the great proof-text of the doctrine of endless punishment: "These shall go away into everlasting punishment, and the righteous into life eternal." We shall endeavor to establish the following points against the erroneous view of this Scripture. 1. The punishment is not for unbelief, but for not benefitting the needy. 2. The general antecedent usage of the word denoting duration here, in the Classics and in the Old Testament, proves that the duration is limited. 3. One object of punishment being to improve the punished, the punishment heremust be limited; 4. The events here described took place in this world, and must therefore be of limited duration. 5. The Greek word kolasin, rendered punishment, should be rendered chastisement, as reformation is implied in its meaning.
1. THE AIONIAN PUNISHMENT IS FOR EVIL WORKS.
Practical benevolence is the virtue whose reward is here announced, and unkindness is the vice whose punishment is here threatened, and not faith and unbelief, on which heaven and hell are popularly predicated. Matt. xxv:34-45. "Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was a hungered, and ye game me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee a hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you,Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. Then shall he say unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was a hungered, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee a hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me."
If cruelty to the poor --neglect of them even,--constitutes rejection of Christ --as is plainly taught here --and all who are guilty are to suffer endless torment "who then can be saved?" the single consideration that works, and not faith are here made the test of discipleship, cuts away the foundation of the popular view of this text.
2. THE WORD AIONION DENOTES LIMITED DURATION.
This appears in Classic and Old Testament usage. It is impossible that Jesus should have used the word rendered everlasting in a different sense than we have shown to have been its meaning in antecedent literature.
3. GOD'S PUNISHMENTS ARE REMEDIAL.
All God's punishments are those of a Father, and must therefore be adapted to the improvement of his children. Heb. xii:5, "My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons: for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence. Shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby." Prov. iii:11, 12. "My son, despise not the hastening of the Lord; neither be weary of his correction: For whom the Lord loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth." Lam. iii:31, 33. "For the Lord will not cast off forever: But though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies. For he doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men." See also Job v, xxv; Lev. xxvi; Psalms cxxix:67, 71, 75; Jer. ii:19.
4. THESE EVENTS HAVE OCCURRED.
The events here described too place in this world within thirty years of the time when Jesus spoke. They are now past. In Matt. xxiv:4, the disciples asked our Lord when the then existing age would end. The word (aión) is unfortunately translated world. Had he meant world he would have employedkosmos, which means world, as aión does not. After describing the particulars he announced that they would all be fulfilled, and the aión end in that generation, before some of his auditors should die. If he was correct the end came then. And this is demonstrated by a careful study of the entire discourse, running through Matthew xxiv and xxv. The disciples asked Jesus how they should know his coming and the end of the age. They did not inquire concerning the end of the actual world, as it is incorrectly translated, but age. This question Jesus answered by describing the signs so that they, his questioners, the disciples themselves, might perceive the approach of the end of the Jewish dispensation (aión). He speaks fifteen times in the discourse of his speedy coming, (Matt. xxiv:3, 27, 30, 37, 39, 42, 46, 48, 50, and xxv:6, 10, 13, 19, 27, 31). He addresses those who shall be alive at his coming. Matt. xxiv:6. "Ye shall hear of wars, etc." 20. "Pray that your flight be not in the winter." 33, 34. "So likewiseye when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled."
Campbell, Clarke, Wakefield, and Newton (54) translate the phrase, end of the world (sunteleia tou aiónos) "conclusion of the age," "end of this dispensation." The question was, then, what shall indicate thy second coming and the end of the Mosaic economy (aión)? "When shall all these things be fulfilled?" Mark xiii:1, 34. He spoke of the temple (Luke xxi:5, 7,) saying one stone should not be left on another, and the question of his disciples was, how shall we know when this is to take place? The answer is, "Ye shall hear of wars." xxiv:6. "Ye shall see the abomination of desolation." 15. "Pray that your flight be not in winter." 20. The adverbs "Then" and "When" connect all the events related in the two chapters in one unbroken series. And what infallible token did he give that these events would occur "then?" Matt. xxiv:34. "Verily I say unto you this generation shall not pass tillall these things be fulfilled." What things? The "son of man coming in his glory in the clouds," and the end of the existing aión, or age. Mark phrases it: "This generation shall not pass till all these things be done." See Luke xxi:25, 32. This whole account is a parable describing the end of the Jewish aión, age, or economy, signalized by the destruction of Jerusalem, and the establishment if the new aión, world, or age to come, that is the Christian dispensation. Now on the authority of Jesus himself the aión then existing ended within a generation, namely, about A.D. 70. Hence those who were sent away into aiónion punishment, or the punishment of that aión, were sent into a condition corresponding in duration to the meaning of the word aión, i.e., age-lasting. A punishment cannot be endless, when defined by an adjective derived from a noun describing an event, the end of which is distinctly stated to have come.
5. THE WORD TRANSLATED PUNISHMENT MEANS IMPROVEMENT.
The word is Kolasin. It is thus authoritavely defined: Greenfield, "Chastisement, punishment." Hedericus, "The trimming of the luzuriant branches of a tree or vine to improve it and make it fruitful."Donnegan, "The act of clipping or pruning --restriction, restraint, reproof, check, chastisement." Grotius, "The kind of punishment which tends to the improvement of the criminal, is what the Greek philosophers called kolasis or chastisement." Liddell, "Pruning, checking, punishment, chastisement, correction." Max Muller, "Do we want to know what was uppermost in the minds of those who formed the word for punishment, the Latin pæna or punio, to punish, the root pu in Sanscrit, which means to cleanse, to purify, tells us that the Latin derivation was originally formed, not to express mere striking or torture, but cleansing, correcting, delivering from the stain of sin." That it had this meaning in Greek usage we cite Plato: (55) "For the natural or accidental evils of others, no one gets angry, or admonishes, or teaches or punishes (kolazei) them, but we pity those afflicted with such misfortunes. ** For if, O Socrates, you will consider what is the design of punishing (kolazein) the wicked, this of itself will show you that men think virtue something that may be acquired; for no one punishes (kolazei) the wicked, looking to the past only, simply for the wrong he has done,--that is, no one does this thing who does not actLIKE A WILD BEAST, desiring only revenge, without thought --hence he who seeks to punish (kolazein) with reason, does not punish for the sake of the past wrong deed, ** but for the sake of the future, that neither the man himself who is punished, may do wrong again, nor any other who has seen him chastised. And he who entertains this thought, must believe that virtue may be taught, and he punishes (kolazei) for the purpose of deterring from wickedness." Like many other words this is not always used in its exact and full sense. The apocrypha employs it as the synonym of suffering, regardless of reformation. See Wis. iii:11,