Indeed! I am looking forward to ordering your book.
You were responding to me, right?
Yes, I think so, although I think his response applies to StudentOfTheWord’s too, as the “unseen” age is the “age to come”.
From Hebrews:
11 Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. 14 For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.
He has made perfect “forever”. This doesn’t seem to fit the universalist translation of aion (assuming that this is the word in the scriptures mentioned). He has made perfect “for the age to come”? do you think that this works? Seems like it doesn’t…
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Personally, I think so. He made perfect for the age to come, written as what ‘age to come’ although at the time it was written was a present reality. That, presently, the one sacrifice is now what was, and therefore is what is now is continues into what is to come. We are in that present perfect “forever”, whereas prior to the one sacrifice, it was for an age to come.
Writing from France, so only occasionally in touch this next week. StudentoftheWord’s answer sounds like a good answer to me. By the way, I’m negotiating with the publisher to produce an affordable version of Terms for Eternity.
Warmest wishes, DavidThanks for the reply, David. I can’t get the grammar for this statement: “He made perfect for the age to come, written as what ‘age to come’ although at the time it was written was a present reality.”
"written as what “age to come”- what does that mean?
Oops. Sorry Roofus.
Let me make a picture.
So from Paul’s perspective when he wrote this, he was looking backward to prior to the One Sacrifice, stating that prior they were looking forward to the Perfect Age. He was explaining a past event that had already come to pass.
He, and so are we, and those to come are presently in the perfect age (which was (Paul’s time), which is (Our present time), and is to come (Our children’s future).
If any of you know David Bradshaw (University of Kentucky), author of Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007), he also has an interesting article on time as understood by the Greek fathers.
Tom
Time and Eternity in Greek Fathers (published).pdf (2.47 MB)
I don’t understand why this is an issue. The chains can be eternal, everlasting; but there is no reason to believe that the angels will continue to be bound by the “eternal” chains (meant to be understood as literal or metaphorical?) after the judgment, especially if one understands the judgment to be remedial and reconcilatory in nature and purpose. God’s dealings in His realm, the realm beyond time, sometimes breaks into this realm of time like with the destruction of Sodom by “eternal fire”.
To me, the primary understanding of aionios needs to be based on the Hebrew concept of olam, which is more pictoral and not as linear and specific as the Greek. When we read aionios in the Greek text, it is attempting to communicate the Hebrew concept of olam.
Fascinating and extensive research! I look forward to reading Dr. Konstan’s book when I can. I see that Dr. Konstan has not posted in awhile, but I do have a question for him.
Dr. Konstan, I was wondering what are your thoughts on the idea that ‘aion’ derives from the verb aio (which, I gather, meant “to breathe”), as some scholars have suggested? This particular etymology makes sense to me, for breathing is cyclical, just as the aions are. What do you think?
I’ve just emailed David, as he’s been away in Istanbul and I’m not sure he’s checked here for awhile…
Just because the adjective “αιωνιος” may be used to describe that which is everlasting DOES NOT IMPLY that the word sometimes MEANS “everlasting” — just as the fact that the word “tall” can be used to describe objects over 20 ft. high does not imply that “tall” sometimes MEANS “over 20 ft. high”. The meaning of “αιωνιος” is lasting. In secular Greek literature it was used to describe a stone wall. A stone wall is lasting. It can also be used to describe God. God is lasting. The fact that He also happens to be everlasting is irrelevant as far as the meaning of the word is concerned.
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I don’t know whether aio and aion are related; perhaps so, but that’s a question for linguists, and I fear I’m not the best authority on that.
Below is a brief summary of the aionios question.
Ancient Greek had two words that are common translated as “eternal”: aidios and aionios. The latter of these terms is an adjective clearly deriving from the noun aion, from which we get the English “eon”: it is an old word, appearing already in Homer, where it refers normally to a lifetime, or else some definite period of time. It never suggests an infinite stretch of time, and in later writers it continues to mean, almost always, either a lifetime or some particular period of time.
What, then, about the adjective aionios? Here is where problems arise, since the adjective seems first to occur in Plato, and Plato adapts it to a very special sense. Plato had the idea that time was a moving image of eternity, with the implication that eternity itself does not move or change: it is not an infinite length of time, but a state of timelessness (think of what time must have been like before God created the universe). This is quite different from the common meaning of aidios, which the presocratic philosophers had already used to express precisely an infinite stretch of time, with no beginning and no end; and this is what aidios continued to mean.
So, we have two adjectives in use: one of them clearly means “infinite,” when applied to time; but the other does not, and what is more, it is connected with a common noun – aion – that means simply a lifetime, with no suggestion of eternity. Aionios remains relatively rare in classical Greek, and then we come to the Septuagint, or the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, where it occurs very frequently (aidios, by contrast, only appears twice, and those in parts originally written in Greek). Now, aionios here can refer to things that are very old (as we say in English, “old as the hills”), but by no means eternal – what in this world is eternal? This is a very common usage, based on the Hebrew term. But it can also be used in reference to the world to come, and here we face the fundamental issue.
If one speaks of the next life, or something that happens in the next life, as aionios, does it mean simply the next era or eon, or does it carry the further implication of “eternal”? Many of the passages in the Septuagint seem to indicate that the meaning is “of that eon” – and after all, it is a very long, but still finite period of time, that elapses between our death and judgment day and the resurrection, and this could be called an era. What is more, there is some reason to think that, after the resurrection, time itself will come to an end. So, saying that punishment in the afterlife is aionios may just mean “for that eon” or epoch, and not forever.
We argued that this sense was understood by many (or most) of the Church Fathers, and that when they used aionios of punishment in the afterlife, they were not necessarily implying that punishment would be eternal. Of course, one can only show this by careful examination of specific passages in context, and this is what we tried to do in our book. Very often, the evidence is ambiguous; for example, when God is described as aionios, it is very difficult to be sure whether the word means “of the other world” or simply “eternal,” since God is both. We hope readers will decide for themselves, on the basis of the evidence we collected and the interpretations we offered.
A very useful summary. Many thanks.
Indeed, a useful summary.
It is interesting to note that in at least one of the two scriptural incidences of aidios, it is used to refer to “chains” that are in use only until the judgment. So even what is clearly linguistically perpetual (“chains”), can be put to temporary use.
David,
I am not a university-studied linguist, or an educated archeologist, and with just a little bit of original research on my own, I have to say that it feels great to know that I came to the same conclusion as someone who has a professional interest in this field.
Thanks for your hard work and I really enjoyed the above summary.
Aion is not used in this verse; rather, it’s diēnekes. I think a better translation would be “for all time” (see, for example, the NET Bible). My understanding is that the author is saying that believers in Christ living both in the “last days” (when Hebrews was written) and afterwards during the age of the Messianic reign (the age which I believe commenced shortly after the letter was written) have no need of a repetition of the sacrifice that Jesus made “once for all” and have in this sense been “perfected for all time.”