from Word Studies in the New Testament
by Marvin R. Vincent
Note on
Olethron
Aionion
(eternal
destruction)
'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, 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, and 'e zoe tou theou,
the life of God. 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 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 characterising 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.