The Evangelical Universalist Forum

is there a single example in the scripture where aionios

means for sure eternal or everlasting?
i don’t talk about aion , i talk about aionios (or olam)
i know there is a case in jonah where olam doesn’t mean eternal , do you know other verses
thank you for your help
i seek on the internet , i will write what i find myself but if you already know and want to share with me you are welcome

We do have quite a bit of discussion here on this already, Erwan, if you’d like to search around.

Some of us (like myself) believe it can sometimes be properly translated “eternal” because of reference to its object; others of us think it ought to be translated more consistently but vaguely in every circumstance (and I could agree with that, too); others of us think it ought to be translated more consistently but particularly in a way that refers to temporary (but long) time.

As I noted in the other thread, I myself actually agree with the article from (non-universalist) Don Hewey found by another new member “Wigglytug”, where DH lists a bunch of important places that {aiônios} and related prepositional phrases can be legitimately interpreted (although not literally translated) “forever” or “eternal”. I don’t agree with the argument he tries to make from it, but his data set isn’t bad–just incomplete for the argument he’s trying to make. I would want to double-check to make sure, but after a moderately close look over it I wouldn’t object to posting that here as a quick version of my own answer to the question. :slight_smile:

But as an even quicker answer, I’d say any time the scriptures talk about “eonian life”, that’s a specially eternal life (not to be confused with temporally natural life which of course we may and will lose when we die.) But I don’t believe the main importance to eternal life is its everlasting quality, so I wouldn’t recommend translating it that way. (I don’t think it would be wrong to do so, but it would be too limiting to do so.)

And a strong majority of the adjective’s usage in the New Testament is in relation to “eonian life”, so that’s far from a trivial number of examples where I’d accept “eternal” as an interpretation (and wouldn’t be entirely annoyed about “everlasting” either.)

Eonian life is God’s own life, graciously shared with us, and that life is eternal. (Unless God withdraws it for some reason, but its roots are in God not in us: it doesn’t stop being eternal life if God takes it away from us.)

Eonian punishment or crisis is punishment from God, but that punishment isn’t eternal. (Even if God happened to continue it forever in temporal time, which I acknowledge to be theoretically possible: eonian punishment comes uniquely from God, but is not something God intrinsically does in His own self-existence. Whereas the Living God does live.)