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.
