'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 mearureless 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 idead 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.