The Evangelical Universalist Forum

"Terms for Eternity: Aiônios & aïdios" talk part 2

Dear Alex and friends,

  It’s a thrill to know that people are taking such an interest in what we did.  In answer to the first question, the published version is basically the same paper, but with some footnotes.  The real detail is, I’m afraid, in the book, where case after case is examined: we tried to be exhaustive (and it was exhausting!), so we covered as many examples as possible.

  On the second question, perhaps the following formulation will help.  One meaning of eternity is infinite time; if I live eternally, I live forever, with no end.  But at any given moment, I’m right here, with a past and a future, just like anyone else.  But another meaning of eternity is outside of time.  For example, when God created the universe, did he also create time, or did time exist before?  If time existed, why did God decide to create the universe at one time rather than another?  In addition, is Christ younger than God, because He is the son?  The ancient thinkers worried about this, and some held that before the universe was created, there was no time at all.  Besides, God sees all the past and the future simultaneously: it’s there like a picture to Him, not unfolding moment by moment but altogether present.  It is thoughts like that which lead to a conception of eternity in which time, is, as it were, folded up.  That was Plato’s intuition.  It’s a hard thing to grasp, needless to say.

Very best,
David

Yes, thank you for that very eloquent explanation. It’s something I stumbled upon in C.S. Lewis’ writings when I was much younger and explained alot to me.

What I was wondering about was something more along the relationship between eternity and time, and a hint at why Plato may have used a denotation of time to describe something of eternity. In a sense an age in and of itself is eternal, it’s just our perception of it which leads us to think of it as being based in what’s before it and finalized in the future. But that’s exactly what I was getting at. The “aeon” is eternal not in the sense that it has an infinite extension but that it has a life and essence all of its own, in the realm of the eternals. Does that make sense?

Thanks again for your help.
Justin

Dear Justin,

Indeed, it does make sense.

All the best, David

Dr. Konstan,

Thanks for the exhausting and hard work. It’s truly a gift. I’ve yet to read through your posts, so my question may be answered. But let me quickly post a couple of thoughts that came up on another thread elsewhere on this site and then ask you to comment (on Jude 1.6).


Tom: I don’t see how June 1.6 doesn’t sink his thesis. It’s not a defeater for UR, but it doesn’t look good for his thesis about aidios (that it always means “eternal”). Regardless of how you construe ‘until’ (“eis” + the accusative as showing finality or purpose or direction, whatever), it seems to me that these “chains” cannot be “eternal” in the sense he David claims because these chains are not divine, they’re created (or they represent a created/finite state of affairs) which by definition makes them corruptible and finite.

Robin quoting Dr. Konstan on his (Robin’s) blog: We turn now to the two uses of the more strictly philosophical term aïdios in the New Testament. The first (Rom 1:20) refers unproblematically to the power and divinity of God. In the second occurrence, however (Jude 6), aïdios is employed of eternal punishment—not that of human beings, however, but of evil angels, who are imprisoned in darkness “with eternal chains” (desmois aïdiois). But there is a qualification: “until the judgment of the great day.” The angels, then, will remain chained up until Judgment Day; we are not informed of what will become of them afterwards. Why aïdios of the chains, instead of aiônios, used in the next verse of the fire of which the punishments of the Sodomites is an example? Perhaps because they continue from the moment of the angels’ incarceration, at the beginning of the world, until the judgment that signals the entry into the new aiôn: thus, the term indicates the uninterrupted continuity throughout all time in this world—this could not apply to human beings, who do not live through the entire duration of the present universe; to them applies rather the sequence of aiônes or generations.

To which I replied: I’m not sure. It seems that given Konstand’s thesis, I suspect just what he seems to have suspected, that aionios would be the appropriate term here (June 1.6), not aidios. To explain it by saying aidios is used “to indicate the uninterrupted continuity throughout all time in this world” is just to give aidios the sort of meaning one gives to aionios. Doesn’t that undermine his thesis?


I should probably say that I don’t find absolute timelessness/atemporality a helpful notion. I mean helpful in explaining God or God’s relations to a temporal world (least of all explaining supposed divine foreknowledge of all that occurs temporally along our timeline). I know the “eternal/timeless now” is a very popular argument, but I’m disinclined to adopt it. Not that rejecting divine atemporality doesn’t involve its own problems. It does. But in the end I think it’s less problematic than is divine timelessness.

Tom

Dear all,

  Jude 6 is indeed a troubling text, and I confess that it continues to worry me.  We certainly don’t want to indulge in special pleading, and these do look like eternal chains, though it is significant that they are applied to angels, in contrast to human beings.  Does it mean that fallen angels will suffer eternally?  And does this include the time after the final judgment?  Here is where we are left in some doubt by the text: if the angels are liberated at the end of days, then perhaps the chains go all the way back in time – they are eternal in that direction – but not all the way forward, to the very end.  If that was the distinction intended, then perhaps we can see why the language was a bit strained.  But this invites further reflection and discussion.

        Very best,


        David

Hey, Tom. Perhaps this is a discussion for another thread, but have you considered the possibility of a meta-time in which God can indeed move and take action, yet is freely able to access both our past and future simultaneously?

Tom: Sure, it’s a popular view. I think Hugh Ross advocates something like this; a kind of hyper-time or supra-time in which God acts temporally but where our entire timeline is accessible from his own unique timeline or dimension.

The problem is that all events within our time are *by definition already the result of whatever God has done to influence them from his own dimension of meta-time. Being able to view events in our time from some dimension which supposedly gives God access to these events all at once could not provide God a basis upon which to act so as to bring about or prevent or otherwise influence what is foreknown in our time; what is foreknown from God’s meta-dimension is what actually happens in our universe. It can’t also be the basis upon which God acts to prevent or bring things about in our universe.

Tom*

…back to aidios…

David,

Thanks again for taking time (no pun intended!) to engage us here. I think it’s probably best to think that if we have overwhelming reason to believe the semantic field for a term to be such and such that very rare exceptions are either a) poor language skills on the part of the speaker (in this case Jude), or b) well, I don’t know what (b) would be.

What I’d like to ask is whether or not it’s feasible to measure Jude against the larger witness of antiquity and just say Jude didn’t really graps aidios so well himself and actually misuses the word here. Those who want to believe divine inspiration agree (because they have to) that such inspiration makes room for bad grammar and mispelling. Why not other misuses of language?

Just thinking out loud.

Tom

Dear Tom,

  Since aidios is so rare in the NT and the LXX, it’s certainly possible that the term had a special meaning in Jude.  I think this is a sensible position: we’re not looking to hold Jude or any other text to rigorous standards of vocabulary, but to get the drift of their thinking.  Taking account of the broad history of a term, as Ilaria and I did, is useful, even essential, but one must always be alert to idiosyncrasies.  So yes, this is a way to proceed.

        All the best,  David

I’ll discuss Jude 6 and many other verses in my Wipf & Stock working title Conditional Futurism. We also can consider that if the fallen angels with “eternal chains” accept the gift of liberation, then we don’t need to focus on how to literally interpret eternal chains.

Dear Dr. Konstan,

Thanks again for all of this! I’m especially interested in the bit where you say:

"Origen … in the Commentary on Matthew, the future life (aiônios) is contrasted with that in the present (proskairos). Again, Origen in a series of passages opposes the ephemeral sensible entities of the present time (proskaira) to the invisible and lasting objects of the world to come (aiônia)."

I’m wondering if this solves one of my big textual problems: 2 Corinthians 4:18 – with things proskaira being set against things aionia. Cf these 3 translations of the verse:

King James Bible
While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen [are] temporal; but the things which are not seen [are] eternal.

English Standard Version (©2001)
as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

International Standard Version (©2008)
because we do not look for things that can be seen but for things that cannot be seen. For things that can be seen are temporary, but things that cannot be seen are eternal.

What I always wanted to do with that verse was this:
to take proskaira as temporal /in time, over against aionia which is outside of time, or at least belonging to the age to come.

However, it always bugged me that the other three appearances of proskairos in the NT (Mk 4:17 / Mt 13:21 and Heb 11:25) clearly had a “temporary” nuance rather than a “temporal” (in time) nuance.

But now there’s hope for me, I think.
Is it the case, from Origin’s quote, that the proskaira in 2 Cor 4:18 could indeed have the temporal nuance, over against a Platonic aionia ? Pls let me know what you think. I don’t mind if I’ve got it wrong – my life doesn’t depend on it !! :confused:

I have argued somewhere else on the forum, in detail, that the meaning for aidios here must be “unseen” more than “sequentially eternal”, based not only on local contexts but on parallels with the Petrine epistle and some other scriptures. Since the word could carry that meaning, then it seems reasonable to go with the meaning that results in no contextual problems rather than the other meaning if that one results in contextual problems.

Good point, too! (I’m really looking forward to the completed version of that book, btw. Sorry for not helping much with the editing. :wink: )

I’m not sure about this one. Proskairos does mean of the present moment, and hence transient but also embedded in time. Aionios can refer to the coming eon, the time between now and the resurrection, and this would be a reasonable contrast to the present time, without necessarily implying an atemporal sense of eternity. But again, aionios can shade into the sense of eternal, and in the Church Fathers the Platonic notion of a timeless eternity is well established; so it may be reasonable to take unseen things as having a timeless existence, like the Platonic forms.

  I hope this helps.

        Warmest wishes to all,

        David

Dear David,

Thanks for that very useful reply. There is one other issue I’d like to share with you.

In this paper you mention, in passing, the phrase “eis tous aionas” but maybe you have more on it in the book. My interest is in the longer phrase “eis tous aionas ton aionion” – unto the ages of the ages – found 12 times throughout Revelation.

Those who take it to mean “for ever and ever” and want to support the idea of everlasting punishment, quote three passages where it applies to

(a) God’s existence:
“Thanks to Him who sits on the throne, who lives for ever and ever.” (Rev 4:9)

(b) the suffering of the damned:
“The Devil, the Beast and the False Prophet will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.” (Rev 20:10)

© the joy of the redeemed:
“God will be their light, and they (the Redeemed) shall reign for ever and ever.”

Before my big question to you, I’ll share these thoughts:

(1) As Robin Parry has said, the devil, beast and false prophet could be representations of wickedness in the spiritual, civil and religious realms, and not persons at all.

(2) If the above presentation had wanted to fix “eis tous aionas ton aionon” to human punishment, it could have used Rev 19:3 where the smoke of destroyed Babylon rises up for ever and ever. However, this city could also be a symbolic representation – a symbol of wickedness in the commercial realm, and not persons at all. Moreover, this case of “eis tous aionas ton aionon” is clearly taking place in this world, and not in the next. If the smoke is truly to be everlasting, it will (in some way) need to continue on through the end of this age and on into the next (into the lake of Fire??).

And so we come to Rev 14:11 where many would say we have a clear case of human persons being sent into punishment “for ever and ever”. However the phrase here is not
eis TOUS aionas TON aionon
but
eis aionas aionon.

In other words, 12 times in Revelations we find the phrase “eis tous aionas ton aionon”, but only this once (when talking about human punishment) it is “eis aionas aionon” (without the article).

It seems to me that this must be more than mere coincidence, or random linguistic variation. And my big question: does the absence of the article (unto ages of ages) give us a slightly different nuance? Thanks!

Thanks for this question – as always, going to the heart of the matter. Here is our footnote 78 to the chapter “From the Septuagint to the New Testament”:

We understood aiôn to mean a long period of time, and the duplicated expression does not necessarily signify eternity. I’m attaching the entry on aiôn that Ilaria and I wrote for the Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception; here we talk about some of the relevant issues.

           With warmest regards,

                          David

EBR-Aion.pdf (63.3 KB)

Hi David:

Just had a chance to read your essay/talk and thank you very much for it. Though I do confess that this sort of thing falls into the “second tier” of arguments for me personally. Which is to say that UR makes best sense to me in the context of ideas about God’s Love and the Universal nature of Christ’s sacrifice and the bibles insistence on God’s total and complete victory over death and sin and so on…

But there is another problem here which can be awkward at times too. And it’s been talked about I realize but I still struggle with the solution(s). It has to do with specific terms being used in different ways/senses depending on contexts. That is, if we say (or suggest) that “eternal” when applied to the fellowship of the redeemed with God lasting on for a time that has no end, then that meaning is sidestepped for another sense when it comes to the rehabilitative punishment of “hell” as being somehow “temporary” and having an end, we should expect to receive criticism.

IT seems to me a similar thing happens when we talk about words like “all”. Does all mean all without distinction – or only a weaker sense like “many”? Or take the phrase “kings of the earth” in Revelation. When we say this must be the exact same group that is pictured going IN to the Holy City as was earlier seen being cast into the lake of fire, our non-Universalist friends insist it must be a different group…

So I guessI wish I had a rule of thumb by which I could easily resolve ALL of these sorts of issues, but it seems we must handle each one as a individual case as we try to argue for one coherent whole theology…

TotalVictory
Bobx3

Dear Bob,

  My colleague Ilaria would agree with you entirely that the real issue is theological, and so would I; but we tried to base our argument solely on philological method, because otherwise we would have been open to the charge of circular reasoning: we prove the meanings of the words from the theological position, and vice versa.  I was the one who attempted to limit our evidence as narrowly as possible.

  I believe you are right about the problem of different meanings in different contexts.  Here, Ilaria and I probably have a slight disagreement.  I would have said that aionios in relation to God refers to his role in the world to come, and that only by accident does it suggest “eternal,” since we know that God is eternal.  We argued that aionios has two related senses: long-lasting, but also referring to the next aion; and many of the applications to God can be understood in the second sense.  However, my solution too runs into problems, and you’ve put your finger on a major one.

  All the best,

        David

Hi David; I have a question.

In my study of “universalism” (although for various reasons, I prefer “restorationism”) over the past few years, it seems that I continually run into two major scholarly camps on the issue of aion, aionios, etc. One seems to insist on it meaning literally without end, and the other camp varies in intensity, but comes up somewhere short of a literal endlessness. If scholars cannot seem to agree on this issue, how are we to know who is right?

The evidence that I have seen seems to strongly point in the direction favorable to the universalist (or what-have-you), but the other position seems rather entrenched (but maybe that’s just my perception), so I wonder if you could comment on these issues.

To some extent, I think, the division in the ranks is due to prior commitments, whether to apocatastasis (and “restorationism” is a very good translation of that term) or to eternal punishment. This can be seen clearly in some earlier studies of the two terms, which we refer to in our book: in these, the motivation was explicit. It’s why I insisted that we avoid theological issues and focus on the words themselves.

  Now, the words are not always perfectly clear in their meaning, and sometimes the sense appears to depend on the context.  Still, there is no question but that the early sense of aion is simply a lifetime, and that it comes to mean also a long period of time, an eon or age; and aionios follows suit.  Plato introduces the confusion, but employing aionios for his new idea of a timeless eternity, since aidios was too clearly connected with a time extending to infinity.  Still, in classical literature the difference is fairly clear.

  Then, with the Septuagint, aionios becomes the common term, and so too in the NT.  It’s meaning here depends in part on the sense of the Hebrew terms that lie behind this usage, but since koine Greek is subtly different from classical, one has to do the work separately on these texts.

  Now, aionios is most certainly applied to God, and my colleague Ilaria wants it to mean infinite in that case; of course, God is infinite in every respect, but is this the force of aionios when so used?  My sense is that it still bears the connotation of belonging to another aion or epoch, and can mean something like “transcendent,” but it’s a delicate issue.  At all events, here is where there is space for disagreement.

  We did our best to lay out the evidence fairly, and came down on the side of restorationism.

  I hope this helps,

        Very best, David