Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 8:44 am
JasonPratt wrote:...I came to pretty much the same conclusion regarding the meaning of {aio_nios} myself several years ago
So did an Anglican Theologian by the name of Frederick Dennison Maurice.
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id= ... &ct=result
To him, "eternal punishment" meant "Providential punishment," and to "perish everlastingly" ment to feel the absence of real life.
This may even be relevant to a discusion I started here (as he used this understanding of aionian/aeternum to explain his interpretation of the damnatory clauses in the Athanasian Creed), but he seems to have gone too far.
He seems to have taken timelesness/Divinity to be the essential meaning of "aion."
http://anglicanhistory.org/maurice/jelf_letter1854.html
And this would seem to make gibberish of the expression translated "forever and ever" in our English Bible ("aion tou aionios," if my memory serves me correctly.)
Wouldn't such an expression have to mean something like "unto the age of ages," or "for ages and ages"?